Next to the Directors Guild of America, the guild that most reliably anticipates what boxes AMPAS voters are going to check off is the American Society of Cinematographers. (So reliable, in fact, that we’re still kicking ourselves for thinking that Nomadland would ride its popularity wave to a win in this category over ASC winner Mank.) But things got a little complicated on Sunday when the ASC gave their feature award to Mandy Walker for Elvis.
One of the biggest snubs when the Oscar nominations were announced was Top Gun: Maverick here, because that’s one bid that we would have expected Joseph Kosinski’s film to win in a walk. And after the ASC announced their nominees, we naturally assumed that sentiment would allow Maverick to easily soar toward a victory. And then we were reminded that the group has never given its feature award to a non-Oscar nominee in its entire history.
So, in the absence of Maverick, it’s tempting to go with one of the four other cinematographers who were nominated for the ASC feature award, especially Walker, as she represents the most popular film in the category (at least the box office). Also, Walker is now the first woman to ever win an ASC feature award, as well as the third woman to be nominated for an Oscar in this category. And if you believe that all signs continue to point to the new academy increasingly voting with its heart, then sentiment may also be enough to push her past the finish line.
But we’re going with the odds-on favorite here, All Quiet on the Western Front, even though, ironically, James Friend wasn’t even nominated for the ASC feature award. That’s because the film’s nine nominations speak to its broad appeal. And in the two biggest contests, BAFTA and BSC, where Walker had to compete alongside Friend, the former came up short.
It helps, too, that Friend’s fetching, if distinctly Malick-lite, images grab you from the start of All Quiet on the Western Front, where a crown of treetops viewed from below is neatly paralleled with a battlefield strewn with dead bodies viewed from above. Whether or not you think the film’s aesthetic vision is remarkable in any purposeful way is beside the point, because all that matters to the Oscar voter is that the images are purty and that they linger, and Elvis may be too frenetically edited for many Oscar voters to fully appreciate Walker’s work.
Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front
Could Win: Elvis
Should Win: Empire of Light
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