Last night, the Screen Actors Guild of America saluted the same acting contenders that everyone else figured were going to win; Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger, Brad Pitt, and Laura Dern. No surprises there.
However, people are flipping out that Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” won the top prize. Is it destined to become the first foreign-language film to ever win the Best Picture Oscar? Not necessarily. My money is still on “1917,” but “Parasite” now has a major shot.
If you look at last year’s winner, “Black Panther,” not to mention the 2015 winner, “Hidden Figures,” the SAG, and film critics for that matter, seem to be operating with the idea that they want to make a statement rather than actually name the best of the lot. Of course, “Parasite” is an excellent movie, but we need to be wary about the SAG award for best cast. I’m more inclined to take the recent PGA “1917” win much more seriously.
Actors are the Academy’s largest branch and dominate the votes. However, in recent years, the SAG winner doesn’t seem to overlap well with the Oscar race. Only 11 of the 24 previous SAG ensembles winners have won Best Picture. Nevertheless, this big win gives momentum to “Parasite,” which also won the prestigious ACE Eddie awards this past weekend.
However, the 12,000 SAG-AFTRA voters, who are a little bit more mainstream than the Academy, gave indication that they were enthusiastically backing “Parasite.” Here’s IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, who was at the ceremony:
The die was cast early in the evening, when the cast led by a grinning Song Kang Ho took the stage to introduce their film — and were met with a standing ovation. So when they won the top prize at the end of the night as the crowd cheered on their feet, Oscar watchers started to ask if the same could repeat February 9.
A key stat to look out for is that the last time a movie won both the PGA and Golden Globe Drama and didn’t win the Best Picture Oscar was “Brokeback Mountain” in 2005. “Parasite,” right now, is in a better position than ‘Brokeback’ was, given that there was a major problem back then with male voters reluctant to watch Ang Lee’s classic gay-romance western.
There’s also the case of last year’s race, when some believed Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” had a shot at winning Best Picture, but eventually lost the top prize to “Green Book.” Comparisons between “Parasite” and “Roma” should end there. “Parasite” is much more accessible than Cuaron’s film and has had the luxury of making $132 million worldwide. Unheard of for a Foreign-Language film.
Come Oscar night, Bong Joon-ho’s film will most likely be duking it out for Best Picture with Sam Mendes’ “1917”