Will Oscar voters really treat a black director acquitted of rape charges more harshly than admitted rapist Roman Polanski, who went on to win a Best Director award a quarter-century after he fled the country to avoid sentencing?
To me, that’s the real question to ask when considering the impact of director Nate Parker’s 1999 rape case on the Oscar chances of his film “The Birth of a Nation,” which was instantly proclaimed this year’s Oscar front-runner when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival seven months ago.
The disclosure that Parker’s accuser committed suicide in 2012 gave life to this previously little-known and sordid chapter in Parker’s life — which Hollywood trade publications apparently chose to ignore back in January because it conflicted with the narrative of Parker emerging as Oscar’s Great Black Hope for the 2017 ceremony, after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that erupted when there were no acting nominees of color announced that same month.
The media focus on Parker’s rape case — his “Birth” co-writer, Jean Celestin, was convicted, but that verdict was set aside on appeal — may well hurt the box-office chances of this drama about a real-life slave revolt in 1831 Virginia when it’s released on Oct. 7 by Fox Searchlight, which paid a record $17.5 million to purchase it at Sundance.
But will it really influence Academy voters? History suggests not.
There was an uproar in 2002 when Polanski scored an Oscar nomination for his Holocaust drama “The Pianist.” But despite a concerted campaign against him, Polanski went on to win the Oscar, which he accepted in absentia.
Academy voters’ tendency to not punish artists for their personal lives surfaced again in 2014, after Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine” received three Oscar nominations. His adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, came forward to revive allegations that he had sexually abused her as a child (no charges were brought by authorities after a seven-month investigation in 1993, and Allen has repeatedly denied anything happened).
Dylan Farrow’s mother, Mia, and her brother Ronan joined in the plea to Oscar voters not to give the Best Actress award to “Blue Jasmine” star Cate Blanchett. She won.
Parker has certainly done himself no favors with interviews in which he portrayed himself as a victim — showing no contrition, as he admitted in a Facebook post Tuesday, until after he learned his accuser had killed herself.
But I don’t think the Oscar chances of “The Birth of a Nation” are really toast yet.
This “media firestorm,” as the Hollywood Reporter describes it, conveniently comes in the middle of August, when most of Hollywood is on vacation, and a couple of weeks before the informal kickoff of the Oscar season — the Telluride and Toronto International film festivals.
“The Birth of a Nation” will be having its first showings since Sundance in Toronto, and Fox Searchlight’s spin doctors will no doubt be helping Parker rehabilitate his image.
I finally got to see his film Thursday morning, and this veteran Oscar watcher thinks it will easily land a Best Picture nomination. That’s true if for no other reason than Parker (who also plays the lead role) managed to finally dramatize an important historical subject that has eluded previous attempts stretching back half a century. The academy’s actors branch, the largest, usually bends over backward to honor their own when they turn to directing.
At the same time, I’m not so sure “The Birth of a Nation” really has the stuff to go the distance to a Best Picture win after it has to go up against other contenders we haven’t yet seen — rather than leading the field pretty much by default.
For me, it didn’t live up to all the extreme Sundance hype — for two hours, I kept wishing the direction, writing, acting and visuals were more inspired. It has its moments, and I admired Parker’s effort, but it wasn’t the same sort of visceral experience as “12 Years a Slave,” which won the Best Picture Oscar two years ago. Or even “The Pianist,” for that matter.