The main event at the 96th Academy Awards is always filled with a curious mix, but this year might be one of the most eclectic collections to date.
If #Barbenheimer dominated the memes, it’s also got the Oscars in its grip as well. With eight and 13 nominations respectively, Barbie and Oppenheimer have done the rare thing of capturing the public imagination and scoring critical acclaim.
As always, these comments are my personal reflections on the films nominated. I’m not going to get into so-called ‘snubs’ or films I would have voted for. (I got to do that over at OFCS this year). If you are curious, my full ranked list of over 172 releases from 2023 can be found on Letterboxd, so feel free to follow and agree/disagree with me there.
And the nominees are:
American Fiction
Cord Jefferson’s film partly pokes fun at that award-bait culture while deftly showing that it is worthy of all those accolades and more. Like R.F. Kuang’s book Yellowface (also released last year) and (to a lesser extent) Zakiya Dalila Harris’ The Other Black Girl (also a 2023 TV series), Jefferson recognises the hypocritical relationship the publishing industry has with race and representation. That he does this within the confines of a laser-focused character study of a closed-off writer, magnificently played by Wright, makes it all the more insightful. It’s possible the very ending was a misstep, but it’s also perfectly in keeping with the metatextual conversation Jefferson initiated.
Will it win? Most people who see this film fall in love with it, but is charm, wit and a terrific cast enough to take the top gong? I suspect this is more likely to make a showing in the acting categories.
Anatomy of a Fall
There’s a lot more going on in Triet and Arthur Harari’s screenplay than a first glance might suggest. On the surface, ANATOMY OF A FALL is about a literal physical fall. The investigation and courtroom scenarios ensure that we remember that. There’s reconstructions, deconstructions, and reenactments a plenty. At one point, we literally watch a crash dummy repeatedly drop onto the scene of the alleged crime. Yet it’s about other falls too. The private emotional fall of a person and the consequential public fall(out). Read the full review here.
Will it win? With major wins on the festival circuit at Cannes — both the Palme d’Or and the Palme Dog — the Sydney Film Festival and more, Triet’s film emerged as an early favourite in May last year. Most of its subsequent victories have pegged it as a Best International favourite, although it’s not competing in that field at the Oscars mostly likely due to a prodigious use of English.
Barbie
If you’re looking for a brightly coloured version of the character coming to life in the real world, you’ll get that – for a time. If you want a timely exploration of toxic masculinity, that’s there too. Younger audiences will enjoy some of the humour, but may tune out for the speeches. Older audiences will wait through two acts of capering before they get to the meat of the piece. The messaging might ultimately be a positive one, that anyone can be either anything they want, or nothing at all – and that it’s okay either way. Yet in trying to be everything to everyone, it’s a lesson the film itself might have failed to learn. Nevertheless, it’s very vivid acknowledgement that we’re all human, trying to get through this thing called life one day at a time. Read the full review.
Will it win? You can’t spell Barbenheimer without Barb(ie). As the highest grossing film of 2023, and its strong messages that connected with so many viewers, it’s clearly the people’s favourite. That much was recognised by the new Golden Globe Award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. It also took Australia’s AACTA for Best Film. Even so, the odds seemed to be stacked against it — but we’ve learned not to count Barbie out before.
The Holdovers
It’s a rare thing for a Christmas film to be so real and grounded in a sense of place and time and also be completely free of treacle. This seems to be the magic power of Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti working in tandem. Payne leaves the emotional turns scattered like Christmas presents throughout the narrative, one that holes you up in a boarding school for a week or so and lets you be a fly on the wall for these three wonderful characters. It’s Dead Poet’s Society several drinks in.
Will it win? Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese’s exploration of the exploitation and targeted murder of the Osage in the first half of the twentieth century is an important story. What it does in 206 minutes is not so much adapt David Grann’s non-fiction book as plonk us down at a moment in time and allow us to watch the horror unfold. Beautifully shot, the camera lingers long on fine details, as if neither Scorsese or cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto were in a particular hurry to move on. However, this lack of hurry is very evident in the back half of the film. Leonardo DiCaprio gives one of his best performances in years, yet it is very much Lily Gladstone who is the real reason you show up here. Still, it is ultimately a Scorsese film, adapted from a book written by a non-First Nations author and co-scripted with another outsider. Indeed, it is quite literally Scorsese who has the final word in the film, and that’s telling.
Will it win? 10 of Scorsese’s films have been nominated for Best Picture, making him third behind William Wyler and Steven Spielberg for all time film nods. Yet only one of these films has ever won: The Departed. I don’t reckon this is his year, but heaven help anybody going up against Gladstone for Best Actress.
Maestro
There are times when Bradley Cooper’s film just soars. The collision of gorgeous visuals and stirring music demands that you see this on something with the best sound system you have access to. The director/star disappears into those prosthetics that the Internet made a meal of not so long ago, and there is a clear passion for this character. Carey Mulligan is the true maestro here, giving a career performance that will leave few dry eyes. Yet it’s ultimately all so surface level, whipping through moments and ignoring anything that doesn’t serve this narrow narrative. At any rate, this is the best use of a giant Snoopy to punctuate an argument in the history of cinema.
Will it win? Vulture‘s Nate Jones argues that “Maestro has managed to become the season’s official villain without ever being a legitimate threat.” There’s no summary of its chances I could make that’s better than that. The only question left is who abandoned Snoopy in the vestibule?
Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan’s epic biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb”, arrives with a moment of quiet contemplation. It’s immediately followed by a literally explosive assault on the senses, coupled with textual reference to Prometheus. In these few moments, Nolan signals how he intends to go on, framing a life like the series of chain reactions that haunt its subject. Nolan delivers one of his most straightforward stories to date, but loses none of that explosive presence in the telling. Read the full review here.
Will it win? With Best Picture and equivalent victories at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Directors Guild of America Award and countless critics circles, Nolan’s film is the presumptive frontrunner.
Past Lives
Celine Song’s tale of missed connections over the course of decades is packed with so many emotional layers, we’ll be unpacking them for years. Here we watch Greta Lee and Teo Yoo’s characters live entire slabs of their life on screen, with all the intimacy of a documentary. This could have easily gone on for another four hours, or been a long-running drama, and I would have happily kept watching it. A wholly realised world told through the laser focus of these two people (and one other guy).
Will it win? In so many ways, Song’s love story is the little film that could. That worked in favour of last year’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, but will lightning strike twice? In the face of Oppenheimer, it seems unlikely. Don’t be sad it won’t win Best Picture, be happy this film exists in our world at this time.
Poor Things
Somewhere between the Island of Dr. Moreau and Mary Shelley’s Europe, a young woman throws herself off a bridge and launches an unsuspecting audience into a world unlike any Yorgos Lanthimos has created to date. Constantly winking at the audience, Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s feminist Frankenstein is not just highly quotable, but an uncensored and less commercial version of the same mirror Barbie so deftly held up this year. Is it completely unhinged? Unquestionably, but cheekily so. Is it gratuitous? Very likely.
Will it win? In any other year, this would have been a leading contender. Yet the combined power of Mattel marketing and Christopher Nolan’s fanbase have ensured that this remains in the mushroom-cloud shaped shadow of its closest competitors.
The Zone of Interest
It’s 2024 and it bears repeating: Nazis are bad. Yet in a year when even here in Australia we saw Nazis attempt to rally in the name of nationalism – with countless other examples here and elsewhere over the last few years – Jonathan Glazer’s film feels disturbingly salient. Actually, unnerving is a better word: from the titles that linger a little too long to the droning soundtrack, those long takes and minimal close-ups on humans, this picture never lets you relax. From the start, this point is clear: the garden in the shadow of Auschwitz is a nation with their head in the sand. By the end, the question still remains as to whether Glazer offers anything new on the subject or if the scenes we glimpse towards the end are the more powerful reminder of the evils of ignorant complacency.
Will it win? A film about societal complacency in the face of a visible genocide may be precisely the message the Academy wants to send this year. With nomination for Best International Film, do not count this out of the race.
