Off to the Races: TIFF 2012 Kicks Off Oscar Season

The Toronto International Film Festival has just closed, signaling the official start of award season speculation. Sure, it’s technically a year-round musing, but now we can do away with arbitrary rumination on what’s what for the upcoming season. With some of the biggest films of the year officially screened and devoured, all the stirrings in Hollywood are developing base. With that, I couldn’t be more excited as I begin to map out my 2012 screening schedule. 

For non-avid film enthusiasts, the importance of the Toronto Independent Film Festival may seem ineffectual compared to household names like South by Southwest and Sundance; still, TIFF has consistently hosted preliminary screenings for numerous Best Picture underdogs, including ‘Slumdog Millionare’ and ‘The King’s Speech’. TIFF not only provides a showcase for studios to flaunt award season bait, but also provides a buying grounds for independent gems to be swept up by larger distribution centers. Much like Sundance introducing larger audiences to ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’, ‘Safety Not Guaranteed’, and ‘Compliance’, TIFF brings about its fair share of independent fan-favorites. 

If this year’s showcase has been any indication, 2013 may be the most gripping Oscar race since 2007’s showdown between ‘There Will be Blood’, ‘Juno’, ‘No Country for Old Men’, and ‘Atonement’. It seems that most of the emerging frontrunners have something either stylistically or contextually distinct to bring to the table, avoiding the pitfalls of award season clichés. Sure, there’s the shoe-in period pieces that get devoured contrary to public admiration, but this year’s choices ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘Lincoln’ take a bit of a different approach. After director Joe Wright got his toes wet with the daring ‘Atonement’, ‘Karenina’ approaches the material with an audacious perspective of setting the film literally within an ever-changing stage. The results have been polarizing, with Wright distinctly acknowledging his actors as separate from the portrayed characters, but it’s undaunted decisions such as these that define revolutionary film-making. I have less hope for ‘Lincoln’, the more typical period piece embedded within the costly scope of a Spielberg epic, but the commanding lead of Daniel Day-Lewis gives leverage that ‘Lincoln’ may be Spielberg’s post-2000’s opus. 

Lest we not forget the return of shoulda-been award winner Paul Thomas Anderson, who helmed the sweeping and engrossing industrialist epic ‘There Will Be Blood’. His careful psychological study of the breakdown of the human psyche combined with apt ability to drive a story home is back with ‘The Master’. Already greeted with universal praise and record-shattering limited release box office reports, this seems to be the early front-runner. Combined with the backing of aggressive movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, it’s very possible that Paul Thomas Anderson could get his due and take home the top prize for the 2013 Academy Awards. 

Speaking of Harvey Weinstein, this seems to be another year where he holds a distinguished role in the race to the top. After dominating the media by pioneering a war against the MPAA, he took home the top prize for the festival with the biggest upset of the year, ‘Silver Linings Playbook’. Starring  Hollywood darlings Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, this seemed to be more fluff than substance on paper. According to attendees, however, it’s brimming with emotional and satirical decadence, transcending its material to be a sincerely relatable piece. ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ is one of those rare big-named Hollywood comedies that could be a viable consideration in the race.

One of my favorite 00’s-era nominees was ‘Munich’, a gripping political thriller that was one of those rare movies that’s as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. This year we have two new politically charged thrillers; Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’ and Katheryn Bigelow’s unconventionally timely ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. After demonstrating a shocking turn as one of the best action/thriller directors of late, Ben Affleck is finally achieving purposeful recognition for ‘Argo’ as more than just a surprisingly phenomenal mishap. Bigelow, who won the award for the arguably overrated ‘The Hurt Locker’ acquired the rights to the assassination of Osama Bin Ladin amazingly quickly, crafting a film relevant to the modern political climate. As well as the casting of Jessica Chastain, last year’s breakout bombshell, Katheryn Bigelow demonstrated that she doesn’t fuck around with this one.

Toronto doesn’t include every film for the race. Not to mention the omission of a phenomenal summer backlog in the race discussion, including ‘Moonrise Kingdom’, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, and ‘Safety Not Guaranteed’, things are looking pretty tense for the best picture discussion. If the current media climate is any indication, and 2012 really is the end of the world, at least the film industry is going out in ostentatious style.