Eternal Sunshine Best Pic in Film & Video’s Pre-Oscar Poll

Scorsese Wins Director Category as The Aviator and Ray Enjoy Broad Support

If the results reveal anything about this year’s Oscar race, it’s that the field remains wide open. At this time last year, F&V’s survey correctly showed The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to be the runaway favorite in every category where it was eligible. But things are different this year. Close on Eternal Sunshine’s Best Picture heels are Ray ( F&V, November 2004) and The Aviator ( F&V, December 2004)— its margin over those two runners-up is the slimmest in any category, and both of those titles enjoyed broader support across multiple categories.

" Oscar " courtesy of AMPAS

OUR METHODOLOGY

Oscar nominations were still up in the air as we went to press in mid-January, so we guessed at the front-runners in each category, based on our consultations with industry insiders, and invited readers to pick one or write in a neglected favorite. (The choices in visual effects and documentary categories were based on the Academy shortlists of eligible films that were announced late last year.) 151 F&V readers responded. Counting the top five vote-getters in each category as our Oscar-style "nominees"— but excluding titles that placed in only one category — the chart at left shows how the F&V picks break down.

Still, conventional wisdom has Oscar neglecting films released early in the year, which makes Eternal Sunshine’s victory all the more of a triumph. F&V readers lauded the film’s originality and power as well as the crew’s triumph in tackling its storytelling challenges. Whether Eternal Sunshine can generate similar enthusiasm among the Academy at large is a good question. (By the time you read this, the nominees will have been announced, but at press time we were flying on instruments.)

Our readers were somewhat less willing to hand Gondry, only a second-time feature filmmaker, the directing trophy. The dominating favorite in that category is Martin Scorsese, riding a steamrolling example of the kind of film Oscar likes best — a historical biopic sporting an all-star cast and stellar tech crew. (It’s also the first time Scorsese has done any significant work with CGI and digital-intermediate technology.) Scorsese’s almost a 2:1 favorite over Gondry.

Caleb Deschanel’s work on The Passion of the Christ led our cinematography category in another runaway victory. Robert Richardson’s photography of The Aviator came in second, followed at a similar distance by Emmanuel Lubezki’s lensing of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events ( F&V, January 2005). Also earning Passion plaudits was film editor John Wright, whose credits include such crisply made thrillers as The Hunt for Red October, Speed and The Last Action Hero. Thelma Schoonmaker’s work on The Aviator (that plane crash!) and Valdis Oskarsdottir’s wrangling of the tricky Eternal Sunshine narrative were runners-up.

Disaster ruled in visual effects, with the chilly imagery from The Day After Tomorrow team ( F&V, July 2004) cited over the retro-futurist environments of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (F&V, August 2004) and the vertiginous acrobatics of Spider-Man 2 (F&V, August, 2004). Ray won in both sound mixing and sound editing, recognizing the film’s effort to do justice to the man’s music and reflect the aural perspective of a blind protagonist.

Pixar continued its winning streak with an Incredibles animation victory over distant runner-up Shrek 2, and the fast-food jeremiad Super Size Me earned a super-sized win over Tupac: Resurrection and Touching the Void.

Finally, readers were asked to identify the most innovative technique they saw in a film this year. Eternal Sunshine was repeatedly singled out, as were the mixed-media lensing of Collateral (F&V, August 2004), the innovative mo-cap technology behind The Polar Express (F&V, November 2004), the dazzling animation of The Incredibles ( F&V, December 2004) and the "super-clean visuals" of Spider-Man 2.