I used to think that the reason there weren’t films like Bonnie and Clyde or Midnight Cowboy or A Clockwork Orange or Taxi Driver or Apocalypse Now in the Oscar race was because the Oscar voters were too old to go there anymore. They’re facing the twilight of their years. They eat prozac and hip replacement meds for breakfast. I used to think it was their fault. Now I know that’s only partly true. There is a concerted effort made, and it starts right here, to exclude those kinds of movies because “they” won’t like them or vote for them. It starts here and then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that feeds into all of the early awards and eventually the bigger voting blocks like the PGA, the DGA and finally the Oscars.

Sure, we’ve all had our years where we stood firmly behind daring works like Inside Llewyn Davis, All is Lost and Gone Girl and had them come up totally and shockingly empty at the Oscars. There is a reality to dumbing the whole thing down to a palatable level. It isn’t made up by Oscar pundits. It is perpetuated by them, way too early on, just so that they (we) can be “right” at the end of the year. Everyone who works in this business knows that’s true.

When Cary Fukunaga’s extraordinary Beasts of No Nation hit Telluride that is exactly what the conversation swirled around: whether it was “too much” for Academy voters. Could they sit through it, would it bother them too much – would it make them reach for something light and easy, something inoffensive, something entirely forgettable? We know the answer to that one. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and sometimes the movies that play here deserve every bit of the praise that swells to greater heights once it’s clear “they” will like it.

This is a film that could not get an independent studio to stand behind it because it was too “rough” or “problematic.” They couldn’t sell it because it was thought no one would watch it. Netflix — a newly formed “studio” that is rewriting the rules that are holding Hollywood back — said not only will we buy it but we’ll finance a major theatrical release before making it available on Netflix. Here at Telluride, the 9pm crowd sat through this difficult two-hour uncompromising epic and did not wildly applaud at the end, not even when Cary Fukunaga and his lead actor, Abraham Atta, came back to the mic afterwards. There were a few people shouting “Bravo” but it was pretty clear from that reception how this movie might “play” with “them.”

How an audience responds to a film like this does tell you how it will do with consensus voters and overall white upper-middle-class audience members. The reason Telluride is so good at predicting Oscar movies is that the attendees are mostly well-to-do liberals heading towards retirement. They don’t look away from social justice but they do seem ill-equipped to handle a film like this. Thus, if there were no Oscar blogs and if there were no precursors and if there were no fixed game, an influential critic like Pauline Kael would take this movie and write the kind of review that would launch it into the stratosphere. Why, because sometimes people have to be told what is great and what isn’t. That was certainly the case with Bonnie and Clyde. Kael’s advocacy turned perception for that film completely around. Roger Ebert did the same thing with Martin Scorsese early on his career.

When the same people who write those reviews start playing the Oscar game, however? What they’re looking for is what “they” will like, rather than looking for greatness and then trying to convince “them” to like it. We know we can’t convince them. We know what our job is. We know mostly what will sell. And we know that all of the breathless advocacy in the world can’t make “them” like it or vote for it.

Still, knowing all this, and given the many years I’ve been Oscar watching — almost 17 now — I was still disappointed and surprised by the way many of my fellow colleagues were talking about this film. They will be “right” because they will have helped perpetuate a “muted” response to a film that can really only be described as a masterpiece. It won’t have a chance, not anywhere, because “they” won’t like it.

This narrative is increasingly dangerous. That downside is exiling films that are worthy of attention simply because they don’t fit that awards narrative. That is bad for movies, and bad for the Oscars. If you watch a film as good as Beasts and conclude the movie is not good enough — fine. That’s fair. But if you watch this film and reject it because “they” won’t go for it? You’re really not qualified to be writing about film at all.

History will eventually declare this film one of the best of all time. It might take twenty years. It might take thirty years but sooner or later that conclusion will be reached. Does that mean it has any chance of getting nominated? No. You know it and I know it. Unless Pauline Kael comes back from the dead.

This kind of audacity ought to be applauded and supported. Cary Fukanaga directed the first season of HBO’s True Detective, one of the best things ever seen on television. Cary Fukanaga wrote, directed and shot Beasts of No Nation. A talent like this ought to be given better treatment than to find no studio picking up this film. Sorry, but shame on them. I know it’s a money issue. I know it’s a selling issue. But wow, really?

Hollywood’s version of supporting a brilliant talent like Fukanaga is to say “here’s a superhero movie – lock yourself into our system and make us lots of money.” I don’t know if that’s Fukunaga’s fate yet. But I do know someone let him walk away from Stephen King’s It, and it looks like he’ll be doing what the best of them are — heading to television. When it’s this difficult to make movies like this, movies like this will not get made.

So what you likely want to know is what are this film’s Oscar chances? I’ll give you two answers to that one. The first one, it’s too “rough” for many of “them.” Many of them won’t be able to sit through it and many of them will either not put the screener in or they’ll stop it halfway through during the film’s more graphic moments. They will want to see something else, something that will remind them that they are still valuable in the world and that horrors like this do not exist. They might give Fukunaga a well deserved screenplay nomination. The directors branch might get their shit together to nominate Fukunaga (I’m not holding my breath on that one).

The second answer I would give you is this: imagine there were no names of studios that had influence, and that having your film distributed by Netflix didn’t make you were an outsider. Imagine if the Best Picture race was really about picking the truly best films of the year. Imagine a world where people still believed that was true. In that imagined world, Beasts of No Nation is getting nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Abraham Atta, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography.

You can go read the rest of the Telluride reports to find out what kind of world we actually live in. Either way, make it your objective to see this movie – and many of the other great films that have come out of here (or played elsewhere), especially Spotlight, Steve Jobs, Room, Carol, 45 Years, Son of Saul, Black Mass, Suffragette. Some of them aren’t perfect. Some of them are greatly flawed even. But all of them involve people who are committed to perpetuating the idea that film is still in the realm of art. We in the Oscar game often undermine their efforts, becoming part of the system that often rejects audacity.

Quentin Tarantino recently asked why there aren’t great movies like The Godfather anymore. I just saw one last night. You can figure out the rest of the story from here.