Countdown to the Oscars: Best Director

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Director

The nominees are:

Martin McDonagh for The Banshees of Inisherin

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once

Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans

Todd Field for TÁR

Ruben Östlund for Triangle of Sadness

From 1960-1999, a span of 40 years, Best Picture and Best Director split just four times. Mike Nichols won Director for The Graduate in 1967, when In the Heat of the Night won Picture. Bob Fosse won Director in 1972 for Cabaret, beating out Francis Ford Coppola for his Best Picture-winning The Godfather. In 1981, Warren Beatty won Director for Reds, which lost Picture to Chariots of Fire. And, in 1989, Oliver Stone won his second directing Oscar for Born on the Fourth of July but lost Picture to the ever-controversial Driving Miss Daisy. That’s it. Four times in 40 years.

Since 2000, it has happened nine times, six in the past 10 years. I am not sure exactly what explains that shift. As we have discussed in previous years, splits tend to happen when there is a film voters admire but don’t love in the race, going up against a film they love but which maybe doesn’t display the same technical prowess. La La Land vs. Moonlight. The Revenant vs. Spotlight. The Power of the Dog vs. CODA, etc. This tends to hold pretty true.

They match when the well loved film can also boast some sterling crafts achievements, such as Birdman, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland. But, even then, movies don’t tend to win big anymore. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tied the all-time record with 11 Oscars in 2003. Since then, the highest totals came in 2008, when Slumdog Millionaire won eight awards, and 2009, when The Hurt Locker won six. Since 2012, no Best Picture winner has won more than four awards. That likely ends this year. Right now, the only question with Everything Everywhere All at Once is: How high can it go?

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once – Winning this award will make Kwan and Schinert the sixth- and eighth-youngest directing winners in history, respectively (Kwan is roughly eight months younger). Coincidentally, sandwiched between them at No. 7 on the list will be Lewis Milestone, who was 35 years, 36 days old when he won his second Best Director trophy for All Quiet on the Western Front. Kwan will be 35 years, 30 days old on Oscars Sunday. 

Milestone will remain the third-youngest winner, having won his first award just before his 34th birthday. Damien Chazelle sits at the top of that list, being roughly seven months younger than Norman Taurog was when he won for Skippy in 1931. Taurog held the record for 85 years before Chazelle came along with La La Land. Anyway, the Daniels. Usually, a Best Director Oscar gives you the freedom to do whatever you want the next time out, but if Swiss Army Man and Everything Everywhere All at Once don’t represent them doing whatever they want, then I can’t even imagine what it is they want to do. But, it sure will be interesting to see whatever it is.

Todd Field for TÁR – If you haven’t noticed, I am just so happy to have Todd Field back and directing movies again. It was a long wait between Little Children in 2006 and this, but it was worth it because Field came back with a masterpiece. It is an undeniable work, announcing its brilliance from the very beginning with a wild gambit: opening with the full credits, run in reverse. Instantly, we are made aware this will be unlike any movie we have ever seen.

Field then delivers on that promise over and over again. It’s not just the precision of the camerawork or the propulsive rhythm of the storytelling or the high-wire balancing act of character and tone. It is the way Field orchestrates all of them, conducting his film like Lydia Tár might conduct a symphony except that Field is very real and the results are plain as day for anyone to see. If you want to call this a comeback film, then it is the greatest comeback film ever made. Let’s just hope the next one comes a little quicker.

Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans – Spielberg is already part of a lot of Oscars history. For instance, with this nomination, his ninth, he ties Martin Scorsese for the second-most nominated director of all time, three behind William Wyler. An interesting tidbit I found: Spielberg was already on the list of 32 directors nominated in consecutive years when he achieved the feat for Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982. Now, after being nominated last year for West Side Story and this year, he joins the list of eight directors who have achieved the feat twice or more.

I’ll give you that list, in addition to Spielberg: Wyler was nominated four years in a row from 1939-1942; John Ford (1939-1941) and John Huston (1950-1952) were each nominated in three consecutive years; Billy Wilder achieved the double three times; and Clarence Brown, Frank Capra, and Fred Zinneman did it twice. If we’re playing “one of these things is not like the other things,” I’ll admit I had never heard of Clarence Brown. He’s actually a six-time nominee, good for eighth all time. Of those, I have heard of but never seen National Velvet and The Yearling, and the other four I have never even heard of. A knowledge gap I’ll need to rectify.

As far as Spielberg and The Fabelmans, the master still has his fastball, as they say. No films look like Spielberg films. No one moves the camera like he does, with due credit to his longtime cinematographer Janusz Kamiński. There is something classical about the feel to everything he does, which suits this material well. I wouldn’t call it my favorite Spielberg film of recent vintage, but there is no mistaking what makes the legend a legend.

Martin McDonagh for The Banshees of Inisherin – McDonagh gets unfairly painted as only a writer in certain film circles. It is true that his screenplays are second to none, but it is not true that he lacks a visual flair or a directorial stamp. On the contrary, his work reminds me most of ‘70s Terrence Mallick or William Friedkin: gritty but gorgeous. Everything is purposeful but never feels overplanned. Camera movements flow effortlessly, motivated by plot and character.

Coming from the stage, as he does, he is of course an actors’ director. Between this and his previous film, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, he has directed six different actors to nominations, garnering recognition in each of the four acting categories at the Oscars. That’s not an accident. The Banshees of Inisherin only works as well as it does because McDonagh is a smart, insightful director, in addition to being one of the great film writers of our time.

Ruben Östlund for Triangle of Sadness – This is what most Oscars watchers would call the wild card slot. It’s the fifth Best Director nominee that always feels like a one-for-us nod from the Directors Branch. In recent years, that has mostly meant recognition for foreign auteurs making critically acclaimed arthouse pictures. Last year, that would have been Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car. In 2020, Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round. Bong Joon-ho won it all from that position in 2019 with Parasite. In 2018, we got Paweł Pawlikowski with Cold War.

This time around, it’s Östlund’s turn with his Best Picture-nominated satire Triangle of Sadness. It’s likely Östlund’s fans, myself included, are more excited for this nomination than the Swedish auteur himself is, considering he is coming off winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this very film. That was his second Palme in as many features, an even shorter list than the one we talked about above with Spielberg. Triangle of Sadness is an excellent film, wonderfully directed by a world cinema master at peak form. Gotta love the Directors Branch for bringing him to the show.

The final analysis

The Daniels are just the fifth directing pair in history to be nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards. They will be the third pair to win, following Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961 and Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men in 2007. 

I could pretend like there’s some competition in this race, but there’s not really even a whiff of it in the air. Like the Coen Brothers before them, there is every likelihood the Daniels will win three awards on the big night: Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay. It’s a helluva coming out party for a duo with just one previous feature on their resumé.

Will win: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Todd Field for TÁR

Should have been here: Sarah Polley for Women Talking

A note about my favorite snub: There couldn’t be anything else here. Women Talking is the best film of the year, and apart from perhaps Todd Field’s work on Tár, it is also the best directed. From the color palette to the performances, to the way the camera soars in and out of certain sequences, Polley’s work is first in its class, and she deserved to join that all-too-short list of women nominated for Best Director.

Next time: Best Actor