Twitter

Where to Stream:

Manchester By The Sea

Of course, the Oscars are nothing if not a political game. Every week, new films are released, reviewed, and hyped by the Hollywood machine. And that means that every week, new frontrunners might emerge. The Oscar Grouch will be back every Wednesday to keep you updated on this year’s Oscar race.

As happens almost every year, we’ve now settled into that period of Oscar season where most of the big races feel wrapped up. Last year at this time, we knew for a certainty that Brie Larson and Leonardo DiCaprio were going to take home Best Actress and Best Actor, and we were pretty sure that Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu was winning Best Director.* In 2014, three of the acting winners (Julianne Moore, Patricia Arquette, J.K. Simmons) were sure things; ditto 2013 (Matthew McConaughey, Cate Blanchett, Jared Leto).

This year, once again, three of the acting categories appear to be all sewn up. Barring any shocking upsets:

Emma Stone is winning Best Actress for La La Land
Viola Davis is winning Best Supporting Actress for Fences
And after his SAG win, it’s safe to say Mahershala Ali is winning Supporting Actor for Moonlight

But another SAG win threw one race that had once seemed locked down back into chaos, when Denzel Washington beat Casey Affleck for Best Actor.

And with SAG representing actors (who are the largest voting bloc in the Academy), suddenly the biggest question in the Oscar race has become whether the two-time Oscar winner can make it to trophy number three despite Affleck having been presumably ahead all season. It’s easily the most intriguing race on the ballot, and it’s worth a bit of a dig, so here goes.

The Case for Casey Affleck

Up until a week ago, he’d won EVERYTHING. Golden Globe, National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics … all in all, according to IMDb, he’s won 43 prizes for his performance in Manchester by the Sea. FORTY-THREE. That’s not even counting the yet-to-be awarded Independent Spirit and BAFTA awards, which Affleck will certainly win (Denzel is nominated for neither).
The last three actors to win the Golden Globe, National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics, and New York Film Critics awards all in the same year were Forest Whitaker in 2006, Nicolas Cage in 1995, and Jack Nicholson in 1975. Only three since 1975! They all won the Oscar.
Casey hasn’t won an Oscar yet, while Denzel has won two. Historically, the Oscars are reticent to bestow a third acting Oscar on anyone. Denzel would be the seventh person ever to win a third acting Oscar.** It’s rare. The Oscars tend to prefer to initiate new members into the club rather than double- and triple-up.
The SAG Awards are not infallible as an Oscar predictor. Since their inception in 1994, the SAG winners have gone on to win the Oscar 64 out of 88 times. That’s an average of 2.9 per year. In other words, three SAG winners tend to win the Oscar while one goes home disappointed.

The Case for Denzel Washington

While the SAGs may be historically imperfect as Oscar predictors, they’re getting increasingly good at it. Since 2009, the SAG winners have matched Oscar’s winners exactly in four out of seven years. And two of the the three years they didn’t have asterisks: Django Unchained Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz wasn’t nominated for SAG in 2012; SAG winner Idris Elba (Beasts of No Nation) wasn’t nominated for Oscar last year. Viola Davis (for The Help in 2011) is the only actor in seven years to have won the SAG and then lost at the Oscars to one of the actors she beat. And that was to Meryl Streep.
While three-time Oscar winners are rare, Denzel has been Hollywood (and Oscar) royalty for over 25 years now. If the Academy members do indeed reserve this kind of repeat honor to only their most revered performers, Denzel surely qualifies. In addition, Washington would be the first black performer to win three times, the fact of which the Fences publicists would be wise to start reminding people.
Denzel would also be only third actor to ever direct himself to an Academy Award victory (after Laurence Olivier for Hamlet in 1948 and Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful in 1998). History abounds!
While Affleck’s sexual-harrassment scandal has been slow to catch on as a major stumbling block for the actor, weeks and months of low-level murmurs might be starting to take their toll. As Page Six noted last month. Brie Larson appeared frosty when she presented Affleck with his Golden Globe, and Fresh Off the Boat actress Constance Wu wrote a lengthy statement about why awarding Affleck would be the wrong move. Maybe enough awards voters are quietly agreeing.

Regardless of the outcome, the Best Actor race will undoubtedly provide Oscar Night with its biggest dose of intrigue. Will Denzel Washington win a historic Oscar? Will Casey Affleck pay off months of critical raves? It should be a nail-biter.

*Last year’s Oscars were actually an outlier in that we got two shocking Oscar night upsets (Mark Rylance for Supporting Actor and Spotlight for Picture) and one category that was a close call heading into Oscar night (Supporting Actress, which was won by Alicia Vikander).

**Walter Brennan, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Daniel Day-Lewis all have won three. Katharine Hepburn won four.

That said, here are Decider’s current predictions for who we think will win in all six major categories — not who we think deserves to (ranked in order of “buzziness”). Enter “The Oscar Grouch“: