There was one incident that made me think, though. It must have been after some trip back to the Midwest for the holidays, I came across a misbegotten scratcher from Nebraska — Eppley Airfield, what up — and realized that if it ended up being a big winner, it would be a colossal pain to try and collect on. Of course, this wasn’t an actual concern, what with the terrible odds of lotteries in general, but a girl could dream. A winning lottery ticket with no place to cash it, such a sad state of affairs.
I was reminded of this pointless anecdote in recent days as film critics associations started announcing their winners for the best films and best performances of the year. A lot of Oscar frontrunners took home significant awards, with Chloé Zhao winning best director honors from both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle for her film “Nomadland” and Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow” winning best film at NYFCC, with strong showings for both Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” and Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”
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McQueen and “Small Axe” are nothing if not deserving of all the praise and more, as “Small Axe” is truly a transformative work of art. That’s not — and never has been — in question.
That being said, the awards outlets roundly embracing “Small Axe” at this juncture are groups of film critics. But you won’t see “Small Axe” or any of the individual works contained therein compete with similar films at the Academy Awards; it will compete at the Emmy Awards in the newly coined Outstanding Limited Series or Anthology Series category.
This categorization makes sense, as it’s the only place in either the Emmys or the Oscars that “Small Axe” can be judged as it was intended: as a collective, as opposed to individual films. But it still feels a bit strange that a work so roundly embraced by the film world to then make its major awards push amongst other actual TV shows.
After months of agonizing, the most accurate description I have for “Small Axe” is still this: It’s a collection of five films, of varying lengths — between 63 and 128 minutes long — meant to be considered as a whole. All five of the films premiered at film festivals, but none of them had theatrical runs. None of the films are TV movies and none of them are TV episodes. It will be competing as a TV anthology series at the Emmys. Probably not. But there’s always a small chance that some Emmy voters are turned off by the idea of a project that so clearly exists as a film anthology competing as a TV anthology. There’s also the fact that McQueen hates television. If the work is exceptional, does it matter that the creator despises the medium? If the work is exceptional, does it matter that it is reluctant to categorize itself as TV? If “Small Axe” is as roundly embraced by TV groups as it has been by film groups, look for it to have a big impact throughout the Winter TV Awards season, as guilds especially will reveal how TV industry insiders feel about the project. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
