By Aaron Miller-
Netflix is gutted after spending over $100 million on its 2020 Oscar campaigns only to take home two Oscars. One of them was for the documentary American Factory and one for Laura Dern In Marriage Story who was considered a lock to win the Supporting Actress category from the start of awards season.
This year, Netflix’s list of potential contenders failed to produce much meaningful results. pool of possible awards contenders. Netflix spent an estimated $20 million apiece on its two biggest contenders: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. Netflix also nabbed nominations for Klaus, I Lost My Body, American Factory and The Two Popes. Its main problem was the presence of quality competition among the nominated films it was up against in the many categories. There was also the opposition coming from potent fraternities in the industry that perceived Neflix as being counterproductive anti-Netflix bias from Academy members who see Netflix’s attempts to disrupt the film making industry as harmful to the artform and the movie business.
OUTCLASSED
Put simply, Neflix was roundly outclassed by Parasite who went into the night with six nominations, coming up trumps in four major awards. Parasite cane through in Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, International Feature Film, and the biggest award of the night. Best Picture. The historical impact and significance of Parasite’s success was the fact it become the first South Korean film to win the Best International Feature Film category (which was previously known as Best Foreign Language Film) and the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture. The unprecedented success for the South Korean filing industry marks a new era in Hollywood.
The strong impression indicated by the shock success is an indication that the #OscarsSoWhite protests in 2015 and 2016, in which uproar was sparked over the exclusion of people of colour led to a review by Hollywood to consciously avoid any negative impression of industry bias against minority groups.
Leading the list for best actor was Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory, followed by Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, then Adam Driver, Marriage Story, and Joaquin Phoienix, Joker, and Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes.
Bradd Pitt won the first acting Oscar of his career – picking up the best supporting actor trophy for his role in Quentin Tarantino’s film.