3 Big Questions Going Into Oscar-Nominations Day |
Are you feeling confident in your predictions for this year’s Oscar nominations? Good for you—I remain an uncertain wreck, days after Vanity Fair published our final picks in every category for feature films. This has been a most unpredictable season, from the rise of unconventional contenders like Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist to the devastating Los Angeles wildfires that essentially put campaigning on hold during the week members submitted their ballots. If you’re like me and you have personal favorites very much on the bubble, like RaMell Ross’s brilliant Nickel Boys, all you can do now is wait. (Well, after a few more hours—voting closes at 5 p.m. PT.)
I’m David Canfield, and ahead of Thursday’s final nominations, I thought I’d outline a few questions lingering for me as the race continues to swivel in unexpected directions. They’re based on conversations I’ve been having with colleagues and friends deep in the machinery of the season, as well as some of the shifts we’ve seen in the last gasp of precursor nominations, from the BAFTAs and the producers guild.
A Complete Unknown is strong—but how strong? The well-received Bob Dylan biopic has felt like a major awards contender from the moment it premiered, but it’s also been consistently underestimated. Few had James Mangold pegged as one of the five filmmakers who would be nominated by the directors guild, or Monica Barbaro (so good as Joan Baez) getting nominated by SAG. Will the Oscars follow the industry guilds’ suit, as most predictors still aren’t expecting—and if so, who gets booted out of those respective categories to make space for A Complete Unknown? Is Timothée Chalamet suddenly a clear best-actor front-runner? Is the movie an underdog on a preferential best-picture ballot, where being broadly well-liked can sometimes win the day? Stay tuned.
How will the international bloc shape the nominations? The Academy’s increasingly global membership always tilts this list in a more international direction than other industry groups. See recent best-picture nominations for the likes of Drive My Car and Triangle of Sadness, or big wins pulled off last year by Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest. With so many Academy members in LA affected by the fires, it’s possible these non-American members could have a greater impact than usual this year too. You’ve got I’m Still Here’s Fernanda Torres and Hard Truths’ Marianne Jean-Baptiste primed to disrupt the stacked best-actress lineup; The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat and All We Imagine as Light’s Payal Kapadia eager to take advantage of the high-brow directing branch’s tastes; and so on. I expect some big surprises to come along these lines.
Who is our overall front-runner? Hell if I know. Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist won the Globes, but the former is divisive for a preferential-ballot champion and the latter underperformed with the actors, the biggest branch in the Academy. Anora is extremely well-liked but hasn’t won enough yet. Wicked is weaker internationally than the modern Oscar winner typically demands. And so on. It’s a wide-open field, without an obvious choice—so the film that overperforms the most in nominations will likely rise to the top of the pack for me. From there, though, the race to the finish will only just begin. |
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