OVP: Best Original Score (2022)
The Nominees Were...
Volker Bertelmann, All Quiet on the Western Front
Justin Hurwitz, Babylon
Carter Burwell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Son Lux, Everything Everywhere All at Once
John Williams, The Fabelmans
My Thoughts: We're moving into Best Score today for the 2022 Oscar project, and with it, one of those below-the-line categories that will inevitably be discussed by Oscar nerds forever, even if the general public will move on unlike, say, the Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain battle which still incites casual AMPAS watchers to have an opinion. This is because in a field of pretty decent contenders, Oscar chose violence, as the saying goes, though in this case literally, as they chose to give the score to the most violent movie...and the movie with the worst score.
All Quiet on the Western Front's greatest sin as a film isn't that it's bad-it's that it's disposable. The movie is not good, mind you, but it's really forgettable, saying nothing about a story that has been told multiple times on the big screen & therefore you need an angle more than just "more blood" to get a nuanced audience's attention. This is particularly true for its score, which is rife with wartime cliches, and whose only major attraction is a loud, synthesized three-note pattern that plays regularly across the score, but unlike Jaws, it reads less as ominous and more as loud. This is an actively not good score, one whose nomination would've been easier to forgive as overzealousness on the part of the Academy...had it not committed the sin of actually winning.
Speaking of Jaws, we have John Williams returning here. We're at the point with the maestro where every nomination could be his last (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which opened this past weekend, is the only score post-Fabelmans we know he'll be doing though he's claimed to be open to more). If this is his final nomination, it's a good one to go out on. Beautiful, melodic, and matching the melancholy hopefulness of the film itself, this doesn't go up against his most memorable tunes, but it does belong in their company, as he is almost able to frame a type of nostalgia around each song, wistfully recalling something that the audience is experiencing for the first time.
Carter Burwell is a weird hybrid as a composer between Danny Elfman & John Williams, and now on his third Oscar nomination (it should be more), he gives us the right film to combine those two men in in Banshees of Inisherin. The softness of this score matches Williams, and the story as well, as Banshees' best parts are underlining how we don't entirely know whose story this is (or where it will end), while the playfulness of his score (here borrowing from Elfman) showcases that this is a pretty funny comedy in addition to a heartfelt look at friendship. I particularly loved the reliance on marimba in the film, as the movie is a journey, and this emulates walking forward to me, even when you're not sure where you need to trek.
Babylon was the critical consensus pick of the bunch, and was expected by a number of people to get the upset on the way out the door. I wasn't totally sold on this (especially this prediction), but I get the impulse given Hurwitz's completely new sound here, a frantically-paced, frequently reliant on vocals score that gives you a cocaine-filled orgy of bodies & sex onscreen as the audience doesn't know where to turn next. My problem with this nomination (to a degree) is that it doesn't relent, and takes away from the quieter moments in the movie too quickly. This is one of those scores that plays better outside the movie than within it, and while I like it (and really liked Babylon, a movie that didn't deserve the "box office flop" fate that it endured), it feels off-kilter with the movie to the point where I could never love it.
Everything Everywhere All at Once made a lot of history in 2022, but one fact that you might miss-it's the first Best Picture winner to have been nominated for Score and Song to lose both of them. This has never happened before for a reason, and I'm going to be real-it's because the score is only okay. It's not a featured player in the movie in the way that the other four films listed here are (it got in almost exclusively based on the sweeping nature of the movie), but it plays as generic, frequently borrowing from other films with this type of motif (an elevated action movie) with lots of wind and string instruments without giving us enough originality outside of the "This is a Life" song pattern, which we've already nominated.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Grammys eligibility window for the best film score nomination is not the same as Oscar's so oftentimes you'll see films from two different years getting citations, and in this case we still haven't reached next year's Grammys to know if some of the films that weren't eligible yet (like The Fabelmans or Babylon) will get into the race. They didn't nominate any of Oscar's choices yet, in fact, though they did cite the 2022 film The Batman for a nod (it lost to Encanto). The Globes gave their statue to Babylon against Banshees, Fabelmans, Women Talking, and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, while BAFTA went with All Quiet atop Babylon, Banshees, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. I'm occasionally contrarian in these situations, but not this time-in guessing sixth place, I think the Desplat of it all means Pinocchio was right next to a nomination earlier this year.
Films I Would Have Nominated: If we're being truthful, the Score race in 2022 was never going to be an all-timer...in an era where most of the films out are retreads or sequels, originality with scores is harder to achieve. But I will say that this makes the snub of Michael Abels' fabulous score to Nope even more heartbreaking, given how much better it is than virtually everything else.
Oscar’s Choice: In a battle between WWI and the Swinging Twenties, Oscar chose the doldrums of All Quiet on the Western Front.
My Choice: I'm totally in my own world, picking Banshees just barely over Fabelmans...both composers I enjoy, neither of them doing their best work but doing well in a middling year. Behind them I'll go Babylon, EEAAO, and All Quiet.
Those are my thoughts-how about yours? Do you stick with Oscar's love of WWI remakes or do you want to say hi to Jenny the Donkey over in my corner? What's it going to take at this point to get Carter Burwell a statue? And after another surprise snub...will Oscar ever get back together with Alexandre Desplat? Share your thoughts below!
Past Best Score Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
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