Oscar Predictions, Live from Copenhagen

Who will win, who should win, and whether I'm mad about it

Hej from Copenhagen, where John and I are spending a couple of weeks. The main thing I have ascertained about the Danish language is that nothing looks like it sounds. From what I can tell, this is because in spoken Danish, certain syllables are elided, almost swallowed. So “God morgen,” or good morning, becomes “God morn” with just the tiniest nano-hint that the speaker considered saying the g. When the metro announcer says Kongens Nytorv is the next station, it sounds more or less like “Kons’torv.” I tried to convince John that you can choose to drop any syllable from a Danish word. “Instead of god morn, you can say god mor or god gen,” I told him. “As long as you drop something, the Danes will understand you perfectly.” (Maybe I’m slipping, because he didn’t buy it.)

Because I’m in Europe, this will likely be the first year in memory that I don’t watch the Oscars live; I think they start at 2 a.m. Denmark time and who needs that? I cannot confidently say I would have gotten up to watch the moon landing at 2 a.m. But I still have my predictions and preferences, and here they are:

Best Picture. Will win: Oppenheimer. Should win: The Zone of Interest. Viciously overlooked: All of Us Strangers.

Am I mad: Not any more than usual. The Oscars are for a certain kind of movie, and Oppenheimer is a very well-made, intelligent example of that kind of movie. The Zone of Interest moved the art of cinema forward and jarred me into seeing the Holocaust through fresh eyes, something I would have thought impossible. Also, I consider it two movies, one visual and one aural, which seems like it should count for something. But you don’t win Oscars doing that stuff, and it’s fine.

Best Director. Will win: Christopher Nolan. Should win: Jonathan Glazer. Inexplicably overlooked: Greta Gerwig for Barbie¹

Am I mad: I mean, what would be the point. Nolan made a good film, he seems like a good guy, give him the thing, I don’t care. I’m a little worried this will accelerate his creeping case of Ron Howarditis, but there are worse afflictions.

Best Actor. Will win: Cillian Murphy, I think. But it could be Paul Giamatti. Should win: Jeffrey Wright. Hideously overlooked: Andrew Scott.

Am I mad: Slightly. American Fiction is all over the place tonally and story-wise, and I’m not sure it would work at all without Wright’s fluid, coherent, immensely pleasurable performance. (I also think he deserved a supporting nom for Asteroid City, based solely on the weird, manic jazz-cat-military-officer speech he delivers at the camp kickoff.) Murphy and Giamatti are both terrific; I’m not going to pitch a fit when one of them wins. I’ll just think Mistakes Were Made.

Best Actress. Will win: probably Lily Gladstone. Should win: Emma Stone. Monstrously overlooked: Teyana Taylor for A Thousand and One, Michelle Williams, Showing Up, Julia Louis-Dreyfus for You Hurt My Feelings.

Am I mad: no. Stone is my preference for the simple reason that within the first fifteen minutes of Poor Things I could no longer imagine any other human being playing Bella Baxter. But c’mon, how much of an ass would I have to be to get upset over someone as talented, interesting, and likable as Gladstone becoming a star and winning an Oscar at the Hollywood-ancient age of 38? It’s not her fault her role is underwritten and the film weirdly structured, and she does a lot with what she’s given. In response to complaints in certain circles that “all Gladstone does is stare silently,” I’ll note that Cillian Murphy does an awful lot of silent staring in Oppenheimer and I haven’t heard any bitching in those same circles over that.

Best Supporting Actor. Will win: Robert Downey, Jr. Should win: Ryan Gosling. Maddeningly overlooked: Jamie Bell for All of Us Strangers, John Magaro for Past Lives, Willem Dafoe for Poor Things, CHARLES FUCKING MELTON for May December.

Am I mad: YES, thank you very much. First off, I’m mad that Robert DeNiro (nothing performance) and Sterling K. Brown (good performance, flimsy role) are taking up slots that should have gone to any two of the actors above.

Second: I love RDJ, and he’s the best thing in Oppenheimer. It’s a worthy performance. It’s just that Gosling’s is even worthier. Barbie’s thesis—that patriarchy contorts all of us into misery—would collapse without a Ken who we want to see defeated but not destroyed. Gosling doesn’t try to turn Ken into some kind of holy fool. He knows this guy is, uh, limited in major (and mostly very funny) ways. But behind Ken’s glee at discovering that “horses are men-extenders” and the edge of real meanness he shows after taking over Barbieland, Gosling also finds his sadness and bewilderment and loneliness. In the real world, a woman asks him for the time. “You respect me!” Ken replies in astonishment (before admitting he has no idea what time it is), and fuck if I didn’t feel his hurt.

Also, because I know Oscar loves degree-of-difficulty performances: Ken dances! He sings! He plays guitar at us! He does beach! Ooh, does Bradley Cooper conduct an orchestra for a whole two minutes in Maestro? Big deal. Ryan Gosling leads a war fought with pool noodles. Also, he’s very tan. Give him the prize.

Best Supporting Actress. Will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Should win: Jodie Foster. Sadistically overlooked: Claire Foy for All of Us Strangers; Rosamund Pike for Saltburn; Rachel McAdams for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Am I mad: a little, but I feel guilty about it. Look, Randolph is great in The Holdovers. I was braced for a Magical Negro scenario where the black cook shows the classics professor and his poor-little-rich-boy student what really matters in life. That the movie presents something more complicated is thanks in part to Alexander Payne’s script, but equally to Randoph’s gentle refusal to go there, to consistently turn fifteen degrees away from where we think she’s headed. I’m just more personally taken by the way Jodie Foster makes ordinariness fascinating in the otherwise mediocre Nyad, something I’ve already written about at length so won’t belabor here. It’s a me thing, about the kind of roles and acting I like. But it’s not what the Oscars are for.

Best Original Screenplay. Will win: Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall. Should win: Samy Burch for May December.

Am I mad: No, I’m too bored to be mad. I love an icy, cerebral film, but Anatomy was just missing something for me. May December is such a strange, slippery film that I’m surprised its screenplay was even nominated, and I like to daydream about very different outcomes with different directors, the Cronenberg version vs the Sciamma version vs the Gerwig one. Is it a tragedy? A horror film? A farce? It seems to me to contain all of the above, and that richness, or elusive nature, makes it my pick.

Best Adapted Screenplay. Will win: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie. Should win: Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest. Brutally overlooked: Kelly Fremon Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Am I mad: It’s more that this feels like the wrong place for Barbie, a film I love and have seen four times, to be rewarded. The script has issues—just for starters, the whole Mattel section feels like a first draft—and ultimately the film succeeds in spite of it. Gerwig and Baumbach have each written much, much better ones; her Little Women adaptation is a masterpiece and from his long career, I’d pick The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) as particularly good at the script level. So it’s just weird that this might be how they both end up winning?

Also, I’m partial to adaptations that are very writerly, eg true re-envisionings of source material that might not seem super cinematic. (Think Harold Pinter’s adaptation of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which finds a novel framework for capturing the book’s hard-to-translate narrative style.) And of the non-Barbie nominees, The Zone of Interest fills that bucket for me.

And a few quick hits:

Editing. Will win: Oppenheimer. Should win: Anatomy of a Fall.

Cinematography: Will win: Oppenheimer. Should win: Oppenheimer.

International Feature. Will win: The Zone of Interest. Should win: same. Inexplicably overlooked: Monster, from Japan’s great Hirokazu Kore-eda.

Costume Design: Will win: Poor Things. Should win: Barbie.

Production Design. Will win: Poor Things or Barbie. Should win: Either one is fine w me. Hatefully overlooked: Saltburn.

Original Song. Will win: “What Was I Made For?” Should win: “I’m Just Ken.” I’m just Ken and that’s enough/And I’m great at doing stuff. COME ON. GIVE IT THE TROPHY.

And last but far from least, Sound Design. Will win: Oppenheimer or The Zone of Interest. Should win: The Zone of Interest. I will RIOT if TZoI is denied. This is the one I’m investing in emotionally. If you’ve seen the film, especially in a theater, you know why. So keep an eye on Danish television, because I may be making the news.

1. Though maybe this isn’t really inexplicable, and I don’t chalk it up to gender, but to the fact that Barbie is a weird and messy movie in both intentional and unintentional ways, and the Oscars don’t like messy.