The 97th Academy Awards will be held on the evening of March 2, local time in the United States. At last year's Oscars, Oppenheimer stood out and won seven awards including the Best Picture Award without any suspense. In comparison, this year's awards season is more complicated, and the leading films in each stage are different. Looking at the overall situation, although Anora won more vane awards, it cannot be said that Conspiracy has no chance of winning the award.
"Anora" leads the pack, but there are still surprises
Back in January, at the Golden Globe Awards, Emilia Perez and Savages won the best picture awards respectively. The Oscar nominations were also led by these two films, and it seemed that the two strong contenders this year were already very clear. However, in February, Sean Baker's Anora unexpectedly won the Critics' Choice Award, the Producers Guild Award, and the Directors Guild Award, allowing the film to surpass other competitors in an instant.
Poster of Anora
Interestingly, before that, many people had already excluded Anola from the Oscars because it did not win any Golden Globe Awards. After all, in the half century since 1975, only five films have won the Oscar without winning any Golden Globe Awards. Moreover, even at the Critics' Choice Awards in January, Anola was a runner-up for most of the night. It did not win any awards for actor, director, screenplay, photography, editing, music, and art direction, but the Best Picture Award was given to it, which made many people feel confused: Why did a movie that was not outstanding in any aspect become the best work of the year in the minds of these film critics?
As the awards season draws to a close, the situation quickly reverses. After all, the major industry unions with the highest overlap with their voters are the ones that best represent the views of the Oscar judges. The Directors Guild Award was won by Sean Baker, which can actually be said to be one of the biggest upsets so far in this awards season. Previously, the industry generally predicted that Brady Corbett, the director of "Brutalist", and Jacques Audiard, the director of "Emilia Perez", were more likely to win this award, and few people thought that Baker would stand out. There was also the Producers Guild Award, and "Anola", which was actually a very small production, also won despite being unpopular. Only in the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay, the film has always been a seed player, and it did win it in the end.
Moreover, Anora won the Producers Guild Award and the Directors Guild Award on February 8, and three days later on February 11, the final round of Oscar voting started; on February 15, the film won the Writers Guild Award, and three days later on February 18, the Oscar voting ended. Later, the Screen Actors Guild Award was announced on February 23, and its results had no impact on the Oscar judges' voting reference. In the annual Oscar competition stage, the most important thing is actually a "momentum". Whoever gets more publicity opportunities, who clearly occupies the C position, who can win awards and speak on stage continuously, the Oscar judges will naturally tilt the scale more towards him.
Emilia Perez poster
Another point that needs to be emphasized is that the voting for the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, and Writers Guild Awards basically took place before the speech controversy of Emilia Perez. In other words, even if Emilia Perez, which received the most Oscar nominations this year, had not encountered a public relations crisis, Hollywood insiders would have already chosen Anora instead of "outsiders."
In terms of predicting the Best Picture Oscar, the Producers Guild Awards, which have been the closest to the voting method in recent years, are the most sample. Of the past 34 Producers Guild Awards, 25 films eventually won the Best Picture Oscar, including last year's "Oppenheimer". Since the award began in 1989, the winner of the Producers Guild Award for Best Picture has only deviated from the winner of the Best Picture Oscar 10 times (the most recent four were "1917", "La La Land", "The Big Short" and "Little Miss Sunshine"). Moreover, there has only been one precedent in history of winning the three major guild awards for directors, writers and producers but failing to win the Best Picture Oscar, which was "Brokeback Mountain" in 2005. However, it was "Crash", which won the Screen Actors Guild Award, that "accidentally" took the crown from the film.
In fact, only 15 of the past 30 Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Ensemble have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, which is not an accurate indicator. But from another perspective, almost every work that "accidentally" won the Best Picture Award in Oscar history was the first to "accidentally" win the award, including "Shakespeare in Love" in 1998, "Crash" in 2005, "Spotlight" in 2015, "Parasite" in 2019 and "Hearing Girl" in 2021.
In other words, if such an accident happens again this year, then "The Conclave", winner of the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble, is likely to be the final winner. Moreover, at the British Academy Film Awards announced on February 16, "The Conclave" also defeated "Anola" to win the Best Picture Award, while "Anola" only won the Best Actress Award (but Mickey Madison defeated Demi Moore, who was in the limelight this year) and the Best Casting Director Award.
The Best Actor Award is the most interesting
Of the four acting awards this year, there is almost no suspense about three of them, namely Best Actress Demi Moore (Some Kind of Material), Best Supporting Actor Kieran Culkin (True Pain) and Best Supporting Actress Zoe Saldana (Emilia Perez). Only the Best Actor award is still worth watching.
Stills from "Nobody"
Previously, Adrien Brody of "Brutal" won all the important awards such as the Golden Globe Award, the Critics' Choice Award and the British Academy Film Award, but lost the Screen Actors Guild Award to Timothée Chalamet of "Nobody". "Brutal" received two more Oscar nominations than "Nobody", but "Nobody" won because it was more mainstream. Unlike "Brutal", the film itself was three and a half hours long, and many Oscar judges were unable to watch it in its entirety.
22 years ago, Adrien Brody won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Pianist. It is not easy to win the award twice, and only ten people have done so so far. Look at these names: Daniel Day-Lewis (the only person to win the Best Actor Oscar three times), Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Penn. Will the Oscar judges think that Adrien Brody's name can also be included in this list? Or will they tend to support the first post-90s winner of the award?
Stills from Brutalism
As for the other awards, the Best Director Award is likely to be between Sean Baker of "Anola" and Brady Corbett of "Brutalist"; the Best Original Screenplay Award will be between "Anola" and "True Misery"; the Best Adapted Screenplay Award is led by "Conclave" and there is no change; the Best Animated Feature Award will almost certainly be won by "Wild Robots"; and the Best International Feature Award should be won by the scandal-ridden "Emilia Perez" and the Brazilian film "I Am Still Here".
As for the Best Cinematography Award, the cinematographer of "Brutalism", Noel Crowley, is very popular, but the cinematographer of "Maria", Edward Lachman, has previously won the Cinematographers Guild Award. However, in the previous 38 American Cinematographers Guild Awards, the winners finally won the golden statue only 18 times, and did not win the award 20 times. Of course, in the past five years, the two sides have overlapped four times, including last year's "Oppenheimer" cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema.
Awards ceremony may become a political arena
After talking about the important awards, let's take a look at the awards ceremony itself. Back a few decades ago, the stars' acceptance speeches at the Oscars mostly talked about art, and rarely touched on real-life topics and political demands. But in recent decades, as social contradictions in the United States have intensified, the political gunpowder on the Oscar stage has become increasingly strong, including in 2003 when documentary director Michael Moore took the stage and boldly criticized then-US President George W. Bush, and in 2018 when the Best Actress winner Frances McDormand passionately called on Hollywood to actively pursue diversity, both of which left a deep impression on people, and some in the United States supported and some opposed it.
This year is the first Oscars ceremony after Trump's second term as US President. He has long had bad relations with Hollywood filmmakers who are heavily biased towards the Democratic Party. There is indeed a lot of suspense about whether someone will speak directly to the US President after taking office. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), this year's Oscars may be the most political one in recent years: "The Apprentice", which was nominated for an actor award, features Trump as the protagonist, "Emilia Perez", which received the most nominations, stars a transgender actor, "Wild School" and "Anora", which received multiple nominations, involve immigration themes, while "Wicked" and "I'm Still Here" both feature resistance to tyranny, and "Nickelback" and "Prison Theater" focus on the stubborn disease of racial discrimination. Putting all of the above in the context of the current American political ecology, it can be said that a hundred flowers bloom and each has its own highlights.
