March 1995, the Shrine Auditorium. The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction are both up for Best Picture, and both lose to Forrest Gump. Thirty years on, one of those three films is the top-rated title on IMDb, one rewired American independent cinema, and one is the film your dad puts on at Christmas. The Academy picked the Christmas one.

I have stopped being angry about it, because it is not a mistake. It is the pattern. Citizen Kane lost to How Green Was My Valley. Goodfellas lost to Dances with Wolves. Raging Bull lost to Ordinary People. There Will Be Blood lost to No Country for Old Men, which is the one year the loser and the winner were both great and I will allow it. Best Picture is not a curse because the winners are bad. It is a curse because it almost never goes to the film people will still be arguing about in a pub in thirty years. Here is why the room keeps voting the way it does.

The "Important Film" Problem

The Academy has always had a weakness for films that feel important over films that are important. There's a distinction, and it matters.

Gandhi (1982) is an important film about an important man. It's also three hours of Ben Kingsley being noble in a loincloth. It beat E.T., Tootsie, The Verdict, and Missing. How often do you reckon anyone rewatches Gandhi? How often do people rewatch E.T.? There's your answer.

Crash (2005) is perhaps the most notorious example. It's a film about racism that handles the topic with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer wrapped in a "RACISM IS BAD" banner. It beat Brokeback Mountain, which is a genuine masterpiece of emotional restraint and devastating understatement. The Academy chose the film that made them feel good about acknowledging racism over the film that made them uncomfortable about homophobia. Shocking, that.

Green Book (2018) continues the tradition. A feel-good racial harmony film where the white character's journey is centred over the Black character's experience. It beat Roma, The Favourite, and BlacKkKlansman. History will not be kind to that choice, and history shouldn't be.

The Weinstein Effect

You can't discuss the Best Picture curse without discussing Harvey Weinstein, who - before his conviction for sexual assault revealed him as a predator of the worst kind - was the most effective Oscar campaigner in history. Weinstein didn't just submit films for consideration; he engineered wins through relentless schmoozing, strategic screenings, and a "For Your Consideration" campaign machine that bordered on psychological warfare.

Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan in 1999 is the defining example. Spielberg's film is a visceral, era-defining war epic. Shakespeare in Love is a pleasant romantic comedy with excellent costumes. It won because Weinstein spent more on the campaign than most films spend on production. He personally lobbied Academy members, hosted lavish events, and overwhelmed the competition with sheer force of marketing.

The result is that when people say "Best Picture winner 1999," cinephiles wince. The award became a measurement of campaign spending rather than artistic merit, and everyone knew it, and nobody did anything about it for twenty years.

The Forgettable Champions

Quick quiz: without Googling, name the Best Picture winners from 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016.

Struggling? They were The King's Speech, Argo, Birdman, and Spotlight. Four perfectly competent films that most people would struggle to recall winning the biggest prize in cinema. Argo is a solidly entertaining thriller that you'd watch on a plane and enjoy. Is it the best picture of 2012? Was it better than Amour, Haneke's devastating portrait of dying love? Better than Django Unchained? Better than Life of Pi, even?

The Academy consistently rewards the middle. Not the bold, not the visionary, not the challenging - the competent. The well-made. The "good enough." Films that don't offend, don't challenge, and don't linger in the memory. They're the equivalent of voting for the blandest candidate because at least nobody can complain.

Try this: the 1994 Best Picture race featured Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Thirty years later, people are still arguing about whether Pulp Fiction or Shawshank is the greatest film of the '90s. Nobody argues about Forrest Gump, which won, because it's a nice film that you see once, go "that was nice," and never think about again.

Alright, some people still love Forrest Gump. But its cultural footprint is "box of chocolates" and Tom Hanks on a bench. Shawshank's cultural footprint is the highest-rated film on IMDb for thirty consecutive years.

When the Academy Gets It Right

In fairness, they don't always bottle it. The Godfather (1972), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Annie Hall (1977), Schindler's List (1993), No Country for Old Men (2007), Parasite (2020) - these are genuine masterpieces that deserved the award and have aged beautifully.

Parasite is perhaps the most encouraging example. A subtitled South Korean film winning Best Picture was unthinkable even a decade earlier. It suggested the Academy was finally expanding its definition of what constitutes "best" beyond English-language, American-produced prestige dramas. Whether that expansion continues or was a one-off aberration remains to be seen.

No Country for Old Men is another solid choice - a Cormac McCarthy adaptation by the Coen Brothers that's as uncompromising as anything they've ever made. It beat There Will Be Blood, which is arguably the better film, but at least both options were extraordinary. When the Academy has two masterpieces to choose from and picks one, that's not a curse. That's an embarrassment of riches.

The Real Curse: Expectations

There's a subtler dimension to the curse: winning Best Picture can actually harm a film's reputation over time. The award creates expectations that many films can't sustain. You watch The Artist (2011) cold and think, "That was charming." You watch it as a Best Picture winner and think, "This beat The Tree of Life?"

The label "Best Picture" invites a scrutiny that many perfectly good films can't withstand. A Beautiful Mind is a decent film. It's not Best Picture material, and knowing it won makes you judge it more harshly than you would otherwise. Chicago is a fun musical. Best Picture? Over The Pianist? Over The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? The award becomes a weight the film has to carry forever.

Meanwhile, the losers benefit from the opposite effect. The Shawshank Redemption became more beloved because it was "robbed." The perceived injustice of its loss became part of its mythology, fuelling decades of advocacy and rewatching. Would it be as beloved if it had won? Possibly. But the underdog narrative didn't hurt.

What Best Picture Actually Measures

Here's the uncomfortable truth: Best Picture doesn't measure quality. It measures consensus. It's the film that the most Academy members found least objectionable, which is a very different thing from the best film of the year. The preferential ballot system - designed to prevent controversial winners - actually ensures that the safest choice wins more often than the boldest one.

The "best" film in any given year is usually the one that takes the biggest risks, challenges the most conventions, and divides opinion most sharply. Academy voters - who are predominantly older, white, and industry-embedded - tend to reward comfort over challenge. This isn't corruption; it's human nature. People vote for what makes them feel good, not what makes them feel uncomfortable.

The result is an award that consistently, over nearly a century, has favoured the respectable over the revolutionary, the pleasant over the provocative, and the acceptable over the extraordinary. It's not a curse. It's a feature of how consensus voting works.

The best films don't need an Oscar. They just need time. And time, unlike the Academy, has excellent taste.

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