And here we are. It’s been a busy week here at MovieManifesto: We’ve already analyzed 18 feature categories at this year’s Oscars, including the lead and supporting actors, the screenplays, the big techies, and the odds and ends. Now, we get to the top two prizes. Will there be a Picture/Director split, as has happened three times in the past five years? Let’s find out!
BEST DIRECTOR
NOMINEES
Lee Isaac Chung—Minari
Emerald Fennell—Promising Young Woman
David Fincher—Mank
Thomas Vinterberg—Another Round
Chloé Zhao—Nomadland
WILL WIN
Zhao. Move along.
SHOULD WIN
The classicist in me is partial to Fincher’s smooth craftsmanship, while my inherent love of beautiful landscapes admires Zhao’s poetic approach to the road movie. But my pick is Fennell. Promising Young Woman isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s an extraordinarily exciting one, brimming with verve and passion and craft and anger. Even if it doesn’t fully hold together, it’s arresting from start to finish. That’s the mark of a great director.
MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT
Kantemir Balagov—Beanpole
Autumn de Wilde—Emma
Emerald Fennell—Promising Young Woman
Rose Glass—Saint Maud
Andrew Patterson—The Vast of Night
Balagov takes an utterly wrenching story of grief and leavens it with silky technique and quiet grace. De Wilde reinvigorates the costume drama, turning it into a blood sport that pulses with desire and heat. Glass takes a woman’s delusions and makes them both creepy and mesmerizing. Patterson, working on a shoestring budget, operates with the flair of a polished veteran.
MovieManifesto’s winner: Autumn de Wilde—Emma.
Honorable mention: Eliza Hittman—Never Rarely Sometimes Always; Christopher Nolan—Tenet.
BEST PICTURE
NOMINEES
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7
WILL WIN
The question this year isn’t, “Which Best Picture nominee is most likely to win?”; everyone agrees that Nomadland is most likely to win. The question is, what are the chances that Nomadland might lose?
And the answer is, somewhere north of “zero” but south of “pretty low”. Chloé Zhao’s contemplative drama is critically beloved. It’s thematically resonant. It’s politically conscious. It’s won virtually all of the precursor awards. (The exception is Best Ensemble Cast at SAG, where it wasn’t even nominated because it centers so heavily on one actor.) It’s the most decisive Best Picture favorite since La La Land.
Which, well, we all remember what happened there. And this year, it isn’t wildly implausible for a usurper to steal Nomadland’s crown. You can talk yourself into various upstarts, but the only one that’s really plausible is The Trial of the Chicago 7, a classically rousing courtroom drama that surely played well with older Academy voters. What are its chances? Probably about as high as the odds of seven brainy agitators winning a rigged trial in a kangaroo court when facing the fearsome power of a corrupt and vengeful State.
In other words: not real high. In a straight pool, Nomadland is the only reasonable pick. But its victory isn’t quite guaranteed.
SHOULD WIN
I like Nomadland a lot, and I’ll be content if/when it wins, even if it isn’t my favorite of the Best Picture nominees. The Trial of the Chicago 7 probably is my favorite of the nominees, but having immersed myself in online discourse for the past six months, I’m quite confident that the worst possible outcome for its legacy would be a Best Picture trophy. Instead, I’m rooting for Promising Young Woman—another controversial movie, but one that appears better poised to be able to weather the inevitable backlash that comes from triumphing at the Oscars.
MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT
Among the innumerable first-world consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic was the terrible way that it delayed and disrupted my viewing schedule. By which I mean, it’s mid-April and I still haven’t finalized my top 10 list for 2020. There are still a few must-see titles that I need to track down; with luck, that’ll finally happen at some point next month.
We’ll be back this weekend before the show with an omnibus prediction roundup.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.