We interrupt your previously scheduled Year in Review programming for a special bulletin: Nomination ballots went out yesterday to voters for the 2023 Academy Awards. There are a few contenders that seem locked into place and even a couple frontrunners beginning to emerge. I don’t want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about the fringe contenders that deserve to be in the conversation or the longshots that might not be anywhere near a nomination but should be. These are the achievements that voters should take an extra minute to consider before turning in their ballots.
We’ll leave out categories that are part of the shortlist process, where a predetermined set of contenders will be whittled down to the final five. These include the three shorts categories, both music categories, the Documentary, Animated, and International feature categories, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Visual Effects. With that out of the way, let’s go category by category:
Picture: All of Us Strangers
A beautiful story about love and grief that probably came out too late in the season to gain much traction in the awards race, Andrew Haigh’s film deserves to be seen far and wide. It is a stunning achievement. No spoilers, but you’ll read more about it in this space in the coming days.
Director: Radu Jude for Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Like a Lars Von Trier for a post-capitalist society, Jude’s formal experimentation and audacious risk-taking would be enough to impress, but his mastery of tone and singularity of vision come together to make him one of the most exciting directors working today.
Actress: Teyana Taylor for A Thousand and One
I wrote about Taylor in my column on the top performances of the year, but it remains true that she is the lifeblood of a movie that pulses with energy and insight. A.V. Rockwell’s film does not achieve the heights it does without a knockout performance at its center, and Taylor delivers.
Actor: Zac Efron in The Iron Claw
It’s a crowded race for Best Actor this year, as it often is, but in another year, Efron would be in the conversation for career-topping work as a wrestler trying to hold his family together in Sean Durkin’s tragic biopic. Even without a nomination, Efron has absolutely announced that the next phase of his career will be well worth watching.
Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton in The Killer
Not until Swinton shows up about three-quarters of the way into David Fincher’s assassin thriller do you realize what the movie has been missing. All due respect to Michael Fassbender, who does his best with not great material, but Swinton adds an edge and intrigue to a movie sorely lacking in both.
Supporting Actor: Ben Whishaw in Passages
Whishaw makes the inability to move on from the most toxic person you’ve ever met not only believable but heartbreaking. The actor brings truth and beauty to a very specific type of person we all know and helps us understand him in ways we perhaps never had.
Original Screenplay: El Conde
Written by Pablo Larraín and Guillermo Calderón, El Conde tells the story of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet … if Pinochet were a 250-year-old vampire with a death wish who had personally witnessed the beheading of Marie Antoinette. Audacious, darkly funny, and politically savvy, it is like nothing else you have ever seen.
Adapted Screenplay: The Taste of Things
This one comes in just under the wire since I saw it two nights ago, but it is a beautiful little romance about aging into love and appreciating what’s right in front of us. I also learned during the Q&A that while the film is adapted, only the second half of the film is from the book. Writer-director Tran Anh Hung added the opening half, but it never feels like two stories jammed together, its own tremendous feat of adaptation.
Cinematography: Saltburn
How wild it is to conceive of one of the most stunning, gorgeous, complicated shots you’ve ever seen, hold on it for less than two seconds, never return to it, then just move on to the next most stunning, gorgeous shot you’ve ever seen. Director Emerald Fennell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren do just that over and over throughout Saltburn. Remarkable stuff.
Editing: Knock at the Cabin
Nearly a year later, I am not entirely sure how I feel about M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, but I know how I felt while watching it in the theater: tense. Shyamalan and editor Noemi Preiswerk do an expert job of pacing their apocalypse, twisting every screw at just the right time for maximum effect.
Art Direction: Beau Is Afraid
I love writer-director Ari Aster, but I hated this movie, the ultimate “there’s no ‘there’ there” of a flick. However, the physical worlds created by production designer Fiona Crombie are unparalleled, giving each section of this shaggy dog story a distinct feeling and texture.
Costumes: Wonka
Maybe this film is on the edge of the conversation, but it doesn’t seem like it right now, and it should be. Lindy Hemming’s fantastical designs are the perfect complement to the Wonka universe director Paul King is creating. It is no easy feat to take such well established iconography and put your own unique spin on it. Hemming pulls this off with aplomb.
Sound: The Zone of Interest
How do you portray a genocide on screen without ever showing a death? Through sound. Jonathan Glazer’s formally daring Holocaust drama never goes over the wall to show us what is happening in Auschwitz, but we hear it, in the distance, an ever-present part of life. It is appropriately haunting.
Okay, that’s it. Let’s hope the voters heed these words and consider a few things outside the usual realm of nominations. I’m looking forward to regrouping in this space in a couple weeks to see how this all shakes out. Until then, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
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