30 Oscar losers that should have been Oscar winners
By Emily Scott
Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) losing to Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) – Best Adapted Screenplay (2015)
The Winner
The Imitation Game, the movie about the gay guy who made the machine that won World War II. Also about how they killed him afterward, for being gay. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing. Graham Moore, the writer, has otherwise only written one episode of TV and two shorts.
The Loser
Whiplash, the charming little film about a tortured student and his sadistic music teacher. J.K. Simmons destroys Miles Teller’s life with jazz. Chazelle went on to make the decidedly more frothy La La Land.
Why It Was Wrong
Is there a person alive who didn’t find The Imitation Game just so, unbelievably boring? I was so excited about and interested in learning about the story of Alan Turing. But this movie was not the way to do it.
It was very slow and technical. And, truthfully, I really didn’t like the way the script treated Turing. Moore stripped Turing of any and all emotion, sexuality, or romance. And while I’m sure he was a logical person, and I think Cumberbatch did a good job with what he was given, the Turing in that movie was not a real person. He was, basically, the machine. Churning out the numbers and letters necessary, devoid of real life.
Whiplash, on the other hand, was all about emotion. It was about obsession and failure and talent and lack of it. Chazelle, a newcomer at the time, turned out an incredible script that told the very real story and struggle of a young man being pushed to his limit. It was also a movie about deep insecurity, on the part of both the student and the teacher. The characters were well-rounded, and you were encouraged to imagine them in complex ways. The Imitation Game, despite its much higher budget, just didn’t deliver that authenticity.