The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.
Best Director
The nominees are:
Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh for Belfast
Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car
Steven Spielberg for West Side Story
It took 82 years for a woman to be named Best Director – Kathryn Bigelow in 2009. Last year, Chloé Zhao became the second. This year, Jane Campion, who is the only woman ever nominated twice for this award, is likely to become the third. That would be three times in 94 years. It obviously is not enough. But, consider also that only six black directors have ever been nominated for this award, and none has won. Not one. In 94 years. This despite the fact that two films by black directors have won Best Picture in the past 10 years (Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight). No black woman has ever been nominated.
This is to say: Things are improving – unless something absolutely stunning occurs, we are going to get our second consecutive woman director to win – but they are not improving for everybody. The Academy has done a lot to diversify its membership, and it is to be commended for that effort, but the work continues. It must continue until we are regularly hearing names like McQueen and Jenkins and Jordan Peele and Ava DuVernay and Dee Rees when the Best Director envelope is opened.
Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog – Campion does not seem to get the credit she deserves for being a trailblazer for women filmmakers. She was the first woman to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, winning in 1993 for her masterpiece, The Piano. As mentioned, she is the only woman with two Best Director nominations, the first of which made her just the second woman nominated in Academy history. She has a chance this year to become the first woman to win both the Original and Adapted Screenplay awards – 11 men previously have accomplished this feat.
And, all of that is simply in reference to her success with different awards groups. Her meditative, wryly funny style has been highly influential to the most recent generation of filmmakers, and her storytelling has helped set a standard for writers who hope to depict complex characters and ideas on screen. All of that comes into play on The Power of the Dog, a film whose greatness, by design, sneaks up on you, but when it arrives, it hits with the force of a stampeding herd of cattle. With this film, Campion proves she never went anywhere, and it was probably the audience that needed to catch up to her. The debate this film has stirred among film fans is evidence that we are still trying to catch up.
Steven Spielberg for West Side Story – Speaking of game-changing directors with dizzying Academy Awards stats: Spielberg. For fun, I will just rattle some off quickly. His eight Best Director nominations tie him for third all time with Billy Wilder. Only William Wyler (12) and Martin Scorsese (9) have more. He has directed 13 films nominated for Best Picture. Twenty-seven of his films have garnered at least one Academy Award nomination, and his films have been responsible for a total of 140 nominations and 34 wins. He is a legend, and the record speaks for itself.
West Side Story is Spielberg’s first musical, and the genre is a perfect fit for the director’s particular genius. To wit, Spielberg is one of the preeminent visual stylists in Hollywood history, and the musical form offers myriad opportunities for him to show off. His films are already so tightly orchestrated that adding the famed choreography of a classic musical to the equation only leads to greater precision and more bravura sequences. Spielberg is definitely showing off a bit in ways that don’t always serve the story, but every now and then, it’s just a joy to watch the master flex his muscles.
Kenneth Branagh for Belfast – Branagh has always been a little hard to pin down. He is a gifted Shakespearean performer and a marvelous director of actors. He was nominated for Best Actor and Best Director for his feature film debut, Henry V, in 1989 when he was just 29 years old. In recent years, however, it has felt like we lost him to big-budget Blockbuster Land, as he took the helm for Thor, Cinderella, Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile, which is still in theaters as I type this.
Then somehow, in the midst of all that fame and fortune, he found time to make his most personal movie yet and his most intimate film in ages. It is genuinely refreshing to see one of our most talented storytellers return to smaller, more grounded storytelling without the whizbang of big action and special effects. Clichéd as it may sound, the special effect in Belfast is human emotion, and Branagh once again reminds us why we were so taken with his work all those years ago.
Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza – Sometimes, I stare at Anderson’s filmography – nine feature films in total – and wonder how it is possible the same person made all of these films. How are There Will Be Blood and Licorice Pizza by the same writer-director? For that matter, how did Boogie Nights and Phantom Thread spring from the same mind? What is it that drives him to make these stories, each so utterly unique yet immediately identifiable as the work of PT Anderson?
Licorice Pizza finds the writer-director in Punch Drunk Love mode, crafting a good-natured drama about romance and finding one’s place in the world. It has the feel of an early Richard Linklater film, like Slacker or Dazed and Confused, organized more as a series of vignettes than a straight A-to-B plot. In this way, Anderson captures the feeling of long summer days and youth and anxiety over an uncertain future, creating a world that is a little seedy, a little dangerous, but also a hell of a lot of fun.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car – I had never seen a film by Hamaguchi before this year. I have been aware of his work and his stature in cinephile circles, but I have not watched his other critically acclaimed films such as Happy Hour or Asako I & II. However, I saw Drive My Car in theaters twice and intend to watch it again soon now that it is on HBO Max. The best compliment I can give is that I found it so moving and so well crafted that I am compelled to watch everything else he has done.
A fabulously slow burn, Drive My Car sucks you in, forces you to pay attention, then rewards you for that attention with layer after layer of depth and complexity. It is a smart film that treats its audience as smart people. Hamaguchi’s pacing may be deliberate, but he delivers themes and ideas at breakneck speed with such clarity of purpose that we are never at a loss for his intent. Each moment is so carefully planned and executed, each story beat so gingerly placed that by the end, when we have the full picture, we are satisfied. Satisfied not in some perfunctory, surface-level way, like so much popular cinema today, but in a truer, more holistic fashion, deep down, where it counts.
The final analysis
I wish there were some strange, complicated calculus I could do to see any other winner but Jane Campion. Not because I don’t think Campion deserves the award – she does – but because it would make for a more thrilling conclusion to this piece. Instead, what we have here are five excellent directors, each worthy of plaudits, each worthy of praise, discussion, and thought, and each worthy of our time and attention. But, this is the year of Jane.
Will win: Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
Should win: Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
Should have been here: Radu Jude for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Next time: Best Picture
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