The Oscars: One Night and a Thousand Mornings - TU Dublin lecturer gives his Oscars 2024 predictions.
Opinion Article, Dr. Jesús Urda Lecturer in Spanish, Spanish Cultural Studies and Film Studies at TU Dublin.
This year’s Best Picture Oscar, in my view, should go for Cristopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, but Anatomy of a Fall, a French-German co-production, like Parasite in 2020 and All Quiet in the Western World last year, has triumphed in every single Film Festival around the globe, collecting 90 awards so far, including Best Picture in Cannes, both Best Picture and Best non-English language film at the Golden Globes and the BAFTA’s, among a long list of Independent and Critic’s Association Awards. Sandra Hüller’s rendition of a writer suspected of murdering her husband, whose deaf son is the main witness, increased considerably the number of awards for Justine Triet’s film. She garnered praised from left, right and centre. No one doubts Hüller will be a tough contender to beat in the Best Actress category on a leading role. She is up there against excellent and Oscar-hungry actresses, such as Emma Stone for Poor Things, Carey Mulligan for her extraordinary performance in Maestro, and Lilly Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon, who could be the first Native American actress to win an Oscar. All of them stand in front of the experienced and 4 times Oscar nominee Annette Bening for Nyad. Would her winning the Oscar be seen as a sympathy vote?
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer leads the way with 13 nominations, and a night with no surprises should see it come out triumphant with most Oscars from the top categories, and a few more for technical aspects like editing and sound design. Nolan’s achievements are undeniable, and Oppenheimer resonates with our present Cold-War moment of nuclear threats from paranoid leaders like Putin. The film irremediably brings the past of fear, atrocities, and annihilation back to the present. It raises relevant and moral questions and debates that we thought overcome. It is epic, political, and vitriolic, a harrowing journey into a life and mind of a scientist at the mercy of destruction and political manipulation. Since Memento (2002), Nolan has been nominated 5 times, but only one as director, for Dunkirk (2011). The other big contender in the list is Martin Scorsese, the quintessential American auteur, a mogul of recent Hollywood’s industry and history. Scorsese was nominated ten times, only winning once with The Departed (2007), which many people would agree is not his best film. He competes with Killers of the Flower Moon, a hypnotic slow burner about the murders of Osage Native Americans when oil is discovered in their land, full of social and political innuendos that point at social issues that, still today, divide Americans. It is not Scorsese at his highest, but remarkable, nonetheless. Nolan and Scorsese will measure up their talent vis-à-vis Yorgos Lanthinos for Poor things, a quirky and extravagant film recreation of Alasdair Gray’s postmodernist tale of female liberation, which runs up as one of the people’s favourite, as is Emma Stone on its leading role; Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest, an art-house experimental take on the daily routines of the people that made the Holocaust possible, mostly admired and favoured by critics and historians, and Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall, the only woman in the picture within this category.
The films from Best Director category also contend for Best Picture sharing the list with The Holdovers, Past Lives, Maestro, American Fiction and last summer’s box-office sensation Barbie. 9 films in total, maybe too many, which threats the odds-on Oppenheimer, considering the tricky voting system. Despite their bold and fun-laden ironic deconstruction of cultural myths, and exuberant performances acknowledged by way of nominations, the weakest of them all are Maestro, American Fiction and Barbie. Do not get me wrong, they are quality films that will make for an entertaining and pleasant viewing, but I can’t help thinking that they miss that special roundness a Best Picture Oscar winner should have. It is a very subjective appreciation, but is taste or an award ever objective?
Past Lives, by Korean Canadian director Celine Song, has that special roundness. It was a pleasant surprise. It is the perfect example of a transnational film which speaks overtly about transnational lives, i.e., crossing borders, embracing and moulding new identities while treasuring old ones, communicating in different languages, and experiencing life and love from the perspective of different cultures and their barriers. The movie feels like reading a good book you do not want to put down. It is a love-that-never-materialised film, albeit with the promise of a second chance thanks to the 21st century new technologies and global connections. Two inseparable Korean friends meet up again after years without hearing from one another. She emigrated to New York with her family as a kid, he stayed in Korea, and when they find each other again both become fascinated by their past lives connections as much as by their present exotic other. Past Lives matters because love, even that one you could never pursue, matters. Celine Song is also nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Completing the list are Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall, Bradley Cooper for Maestro, Sammy Burch for May December and David Hemingson for The Holdovers.
Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is another remarkable movie. Like Past Lives, it took everyone by surprise. It may look small, but it is quite a big achievement. The Holdovers has the capacity of entertaining as much as making you reflect on your own life and that of others. Reminiscent of the 1970s New Hollywood films, the period it is set in, it is both fresh and cheeky in tone, and yet full of pathos, poetry, and nostalgia, but without giving in to sentimentalism. Payne’s explores both desired and undesired loneliness through the strange bond emerging between a stoical cranky Boarding school teacher and a rebelliously apathetic middle-class student with no family to go to during the Christmas break. Buttressed with comic relief and witty dialogue, The Holdovers presents America as a lonely place where some people strive to hide their solitude while others fight to understand it and cope with it. In between those two attitudes, life beckons.
Paul Giamatti’s performance contributed greatly to The Holdovers warm reception. He is also nominated for Best Actor on a leading role, probably the only real threat for Cillian Murphy’s likely win for his riveting performance in Oppenheimer. Without a doubt, Giamatti is a hungry monster, an Oscar-deserving actor at the peak of his career, and his mesmerising and memorable performance as Professor Paul Hunham did not go unnoticed. Giamatti was presented with the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a motion picture, while Murphy received the Golden Globe for Best Actor on a leading role. Murphy also came out victorious from the BAFTA’s and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It’s Murphy’s first Oscar nomination and Giamatti’s second since Cinderella Man in 2006. If he wins, Cillian Murphy would be the first Irish actor born in Ireland to get an Oscar for Best Actor. The competition becomes even more suffocating when you throw into the hat extraordinary actors with real chances to win like Bradley Cooper in Maestro, and Jeffrey Right in American Fiction. Members won’t have it easy either when it comes to vote for Best Actor in a supporting role, with big names, some past Oscar winners, like Robert de Niro, Robert Downey Jr., Ryan Gosling and Mark Ruffalo overshadowing the only underdog, Sterling K. Brown.
As a Spanish teenager, proud of belonging to that thing we call Europe, in those sleepless nights I looked forward to the Oscar for the Best Foreign film, especially when Almodóvar, Fernando Trueba or Alejandro Amenábar were nominated. When they won, it felt like winning the World Cup. Of this year’s nominees for Best International Film, J.A. Bayona’s Society of the Snow could once again win it for Spain, an epic film that tells the true story of a Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the winter snow of the Andes after surviving a plane crash. It is a lesson on filmmaking and a tribute to humans’ belief in their capacity to survive the impossible, some violent and shocking images will make you look away. The making of the film required titanic efforts from actors and crew alike, and huge amounts of patience and craft to recreate people’s and object’s deterioration under the extreme Andes’ climate.
Italian director Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano is also a survival story about the hardships African migrants must endure before reaching the European shores. Despite its pathos and tragic moments, Garrone manages to construct a film in which poetry, magical realism, and elements of the adventure film meet and fuse to denounce a reality that keeps dividing Europe’s political and public opinion. If Sandra Hüller got a nomination for Best Actress, Seydou Sarr should have also been considered for Best Actor. He is terrific.
The Zone of Interest, a German-language UK entry, manages to shock audiences by stirring and evoking their historical knowledge of what goes on in the background of the film, i.e., the zone of interest for the Nazis, the daily routines of torture and extermination. It is no Schindler’s List nor Son of Saul, and yet is not absent of fear and horror.
Also in German language, The Teacher’s Lounge is an intense narrative of investigation set within the walls of a secondary school, where an idealistic committed teacher falls victim to the immorality and corruption of both adults and students when trying to shed light on the disappearance of wallets and money.
In Perfect Days, a German Japanese co-production directed by the veteran Win Wenders, the everyday routines of Hirayama, interpreted by a superb Kõji Yakusho, a Tokyo public toiler cleaner, become a narrative excuse to reflect on the search for simplicity, peace, and the beauty of little things. Drawing on maser Yasujirõ Ozu’s film universe, Winders interweaves elegant and reflective visuals with his all-time favourite pop-rock soundtrack (The Kinks, Otis Reading, Patti Smith, The Velvet Underground) while Hirayama teaches us a new way of falling in love with life.
All films representing non-English language World Cinema in this category are a delight for the senses and a demonstration of how film can inoculate us with the humanity that politics and technology rob us daily. For international filmmakers and producers, recognition from Hollywood always felt like being anointed king by the Gods. Trueba’s speech after winning for Belle Epoque in 1992 was memorable, and I still boastfully recite it whenever I have chance: “I don’t believe in God, but I believe in Billy Wilder, so thank you mister Wilder”. Next day Wilder called Trueba on the phone and said: “Hi, it’s me, God”. Trueba hit the nail in the head. Hollywood directors and stars are God-like figures, we follow them, care about what they do, say, and endure as much as about the stories they tell us in their fictions. It is reassuring to see them support good causes, rally against the war, defend minorities or vindicate women’s rights. More than the films themselves, sometimes is about what the people who make them do for us when telling stories about ourselves, about our deficiencies as members of society or even as species. That’s the power of stardom, that’s the real power of the Oscars, the healing power of cinema.
There is one film that does exactly that. It will not compete for Best International Film nor Best Picture because it is a documentary. However, it is probably a film that should have contended in the three categories, and why not, maybe win the three Oscars. Its relevance is urgent because its story concerns us all as species. Like an alarm at dawn, it cries out in desperation like no other film discussed in this article. Just like the eye-shaped bulb in Picasso’s “Guernica”, Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol becomes a God in the sky who witnessed and registered the truth about unnecessary evils and horrors committed by men against men, women, and children. It throws us in the middle of the war in Ukraine for us to witness the despicable and unjustifiable use of the machinery of war against civilians. It is hard to watch. It shakes you, torments you. Lifts you from the seat and slaps you in the face. Burns your eyes and squeezes your heart out like no other film I have ever seen. It is not a historical film, but it is already history and I wish it could change the course of history. It did not use expensive costumes, nor DGI visuals or sound effects. It is raw reality, its screenwriter, Death itself. It is by and large the most important film of 2024.