Does Anyone ‘Deserve’ An Oscar? Ben Affleck Doesn’t, but Some Do

What makes a movie “Oscar-worthy”? The most cynical answer to this question is that it comes down to campaigning, but the more troubling one goes one step further: The Oscars are a popularity contest, and the strongest candidates speed to the front of the pack simply because they’re overdue for the recognition. 

The Academy, which wraps up its first round of voting this week, should consider the impulses behind each vote — especially when it comes to the four performance categories, where familiar faces often benefit the most from aggressive campaigns. Should the Oscars reward actors for taking the craft in exciting new directions — or should they do it for the sake of entitled movie stars who want validation and cred?

That seemed to be the logic of George Clooney’s case for his pal Ben Affleck’s supporting turn in “The Tender Bar.” In an interview last week with Deadline, Clooney turned heads when he made the case that Affleck’s performance in the movie, which Clooney himself directed from J.R. Moehringer’s memoir, deserved a gold statue for playing Uncle Charlie, the wise-cracking bar owner and literary guru who inspires the young protagonist’s ambitions as a writer.

The problem with that assertion: it gets in the way of a legitimate argument for movies and performances that deserve Oscars because of the specific impact those wins can have on conversations about the type of work this industry should support. Oscar wins can help with future employment, of course, but they also encourage more storytelling akin to the work that wins. So if you care about good movies, you should be rooting for the right frontrunners in every category.

Those aren’t the metrics Clooney was putting into action when making the case for Affleck. “He knows what it’s like to be at the top of the game, and he also has had some rough patches,” he said. “Some of them, as he has said many times, self-inflicted, but he’s a fighter, and he’s been out there, and he showed up on this one in such a big way and in such a gracious way, and he’s been doing it for a bit, and it’s fun to see the reactions towards him, and it’d be lovely if the same sort of attention was carried on [to the Oscars]. I think he would deserve it.” 

There’s a lot to unpack in that, including the possibility that Clooney truly meant to express the way Affleck has channeled his struggles with alcoholism and rocky career moves into a worldly bartender with a rough edge. Truth be told, Affleck is the sole strength of “The Tender Bar,” an otherwise routine, amiable coming-of-age story that doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. (Clooney’s eclectic directing career, which began 20 years ago with the bonkers Charlie Kaufman-scripted “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” has followed its own unpredictable rocky road to rival Affleck’s creative journey, but that’s a different conversation.) 

“The Tender Bar”

Claire Folger/ © 2021 Amazon Content Services LLC

In any case, Affleck doesn’t “deserve” an Oscar for…