anatomy of a fall...of movies
on the 2023 oscars and who should and will win
(Mild spoilers for movies nominated for the upcoming Academy Awards honoring the films of 2023, airing March 10th on ABC)
My Super Bowl is nearly here! The Oscars are upon us, starting one hour earlier (mark your cals and clocks and iPhone alarms!) this Sunday March 10 to celebrate the wonderful year of movies that was 2023. When COVID threw the world into disarray (to put it mildly), Hollywood was no exception, and 2023 felt like the first year that movies were back to some semblance of pre-2020 ambition and execution.
In listening to a recent episode of The Ringer’s “The Big Picture” podcast, NYTimes critic Wesley Morris called Dune(s) director Denis Villanueve and Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan “frauds,” much to many a film bros’ chagrin. In explaining himself, he talked about how Oppenheimer, despite its bombast and spectacle and nearly Tenet-like structure of time-jumping, made him feel…nothing. No sensory reaction, no physical anything, only skepticism and likely the 🤨 emoji. And while I don’t 100% agree with him entirely on that movie (the Trinity scene is really something), for myself as someone who can be too online about film&tv&streaming and where “art” stands these days, it was refreshing to a hear a critic not over-intellectualize movies, and return to the basest reason that movies are great: telling a story via a longform visual medium in a way that makes us feel things.
So many films did that for me this year, inspired a physical reaction of awe or wonder or even discomfort - Past Lives and The Zone of Interest, my top 2 movies of the year, both stopped me cold in completely different ways. The marriage fight in Anatomy of a Fall, the now infamous America Ferrera monologue in Barbie, anything that came out of Sterling K. Brown’s mouth in American Fiction - feats of scriptwriting. The production design in Poor Things, the costuming of the Osage characters in Killers of the Flower Moon, triumphs of their crafts. Even outside of the 10 Best Picture nominees, my time taking in the movies of 2023 was filled with surprises that awoke something visceral in me: awe at the depth of Charles Melton in May December that few saw coming; the pure joy of watching Theater Camp alongside one of my best friends, who I met doing middle school theater & choir; a thrilling nervousness at the out of control stunt sequences in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning; affection at the wandering protagonists of Rye Land; nostalgia at seeing a childhood story come beautifully to life in Wonderful World of Henry Sugar; terror for the climate warriors of How to Blow Up a PIpeline; genuine, out-loud laughs at the charms of Iman Vellani in The Marvels and Marshawn Lynch in Bottoms; so much hunger during The Taste of Things I actually whipped out an everything bagel with cream cheese from my purse out to snack on in the middle of the high school auditorium where I saw the movie, at a local film festival; genuine tears during both Dungeons and Dragons and Wonka, to my surprise; hell, I even had a loud gag reflex guffaw during Saltburn that was not only audible to my companion but unfortunately also the entire theater. What a year at the movies, eh?
[Can you tell I’m one of those suckers that loves those movie montages?]
And even as disgusting as that Saltburn viewing was (and hilarious, thanks Rosamund Pike!) - I was still so glad just to feel something, anything, that reminded me of the worthiness of depicting the human condition, even that depiction required a nude dancey jaunt around a mansion to an absolute banger of a 2000s track. With my current crushing disappointment in the state and direction of the country I live in and the horrors it funds at home and abroad - movies not only helped me forget about our current hellscape for a couple of hours (even 3+ hours in some cases!) but it also helped me make sense of it. The Zone of Interest: the shocking tedium with which despicable acts are committed and the massive cost of looking away; Barbie: the affirmation of believing in and defining yourself in a world that wants to put you in a box; Past Lives: the sorrow and relief that can come from letting go of all the different versions of you you could have been; The Holdovers: the community you can find with anyone if you’re willing to try even just the smallest amount. I love the movies.
And with that cheesiness behind us - to the awards themselves! (Full list of nominees here)
Best Actor in a Supporting Role:
Will Win: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Should Win: Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Apologies to Bradley Cooper, but Robert Downey Jr. is the villain of my Oscar season. The fact that he has run away with every Supporting Actor award for basically playing a bureaucrat version of himself, in a nothingburger of a performance playing a character that should have been played by Jeff Daniels, is shocking to me, and shows how much of a networking game the Oscars and awards season still is. He is this year’s Jamie Lee Curtis, getting a career award as if he is overdue when he isn’t, also in a movie where he was out-acted in his own movie in his own category, like Curtis was with Stephanie Hsu last year. He was in fact out-acted in his own scenes in Oppenheimer by Alden Ehrenreich and Rami Malek, let alone many other actors across the movie - Matt Damon, David Krumholz, and Josh Hartnett are all better than him. And RDJ doesn’t even need this for his career! He is already immortalized as Iron Man, and the millions of dollars that come with that! As Don Draper said, that’s what the money is for! I truly wish Ryan Gosling could be recognized instead for his comedic brilliance as Ken, a part that is nearly impossible. Hell, he made Ken feel like the center of a movie named Barbie!
Best Actress in a Supporting Role:
Will Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Should Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
She is wonderful as Mary, one third of the lead trio, and would be worthy even if the Supporting Actress field this year weren’t so weirdly thin.
Best Adapted Screenplay:
Will Win: American Fiction, by Cord Jefferson
Should Win: Barbie, by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
Barbie has felt unduly ‘punished’ the latter half of this awards season, as if awards-voting bodies got together and decided that actually, we just all went through a brief blip last summer and a movie about a doll can’t actually be seriously good. But look back at the videos of woman of all ages crying at said movie about a doll - Gerwig really tapped into something deep here, especially with the turn the movie takes in the final third. Even if the messages felt to some to be too ‘Feminism 101’ - with the backsliding we’re seeing in 2024, both legally and culturally, many still need Feminism 101, Feminism 001, Feminism basics, Feminism anything - any reminder that women were still considered men’s property not really all that long ago. I wish a movie that made so many feel something could be recognized for doing so, and not dismissed just because a lot of the people reacting so viscerally were women. Plus, that fascism joke! That Pride & Prejudice BBC joke! Alas. I will still be happy for Cord Jefferson.
Best Original Screenplay:
Will Win: Anatomy of a Fall, by Justine Triet & Arthur Harari
Should Win: Past Lives, by Celine Song
Anatomy of a Fall is richly deserving of a win here - I just really loved Past Lives, if you couldn’t tell, and would love to see it recognized somewhere.
Best Actor in a Leading Role:
Will Win: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Should Win: Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Cillian Murphy is great in the titular role that the massive operation that is of Oppenheimer, but Nolan throws in some weird stuff for him in there (aka the two horrible sex scenes, what a waste of Florence Pugh). Jeffrey Wright’s multiple selves in American Fiction, though - insensitive hermit professor, snobbish author, his stereotypical Stagg R. Leigh persona, confused brother, devoted but resentful son - were really something.
Best Actress in a Leading Role:
Will Win: I’M SO TORN, but I think Emma Stone, Poor Things
Should Win: Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
Listen, I would be thrilled for Lily Gladstone to win - she was astounding in Killers of the Flower Moon, masterful and nuanced, outshining heavyweights DeNiro and DiCaprio both. But given how they chose to adapt KotFM by making DiCaprio the POV character, she is sidelined for much of the film. The book centers Mollie Burkhart in the first third to half, and then switches to FBI Agent Tom White in the second half. While the film wisely decenters White’s FBI agent (Jesse Plemons) in the film overall, it also made Leo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart the POV character instead of Mollie for the first third, one of the many adaptation choices I was disappointed with - she’s just edged out for my ‘Should Win’ by Sandra Hüller (ask me on another day, I may switch back). In contrast, Hüller is truly given a showcase in her film and nails a really tricky, nearly Carrie Bradshaw-level of an anti-hero character. And I sense the Academy does not want to be “bullied” into another historic representation win by awarding Gladstone, just one year after breaking barriers with Michelle Yeoh (as wrong as that notion is, the powers that be always like to remind us of our place) - so they will instead give it to Hollywood darling Emma Stone for doing the absolute most as directed by her longtime collaborator in Yorgos Lanthimos.
Best Director:
Will Win: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Should Win: Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
I was definitely miffed when Greta Gerwig lost out on a Best Director nomination for Barbie after picking up many precursors, but looking at the field who did get in, I was not nearly as frustrated as I was for her in in 2019, when she lost out for Little Women while the guy who directed Joker made it in. Any of the five nominees here would be worthy winners, but I continue to ruminate on the many choices Glazer made to end up with his understated film far more than the rest, which is saying something in a field that also has Martin Scorcese and Yorgos Lanthimos, directors also known for their ~choices (and Justine Triet, who made one of the best song choices of the year and cast Messi!).
Best Picture:
Will Win: Oppenheimer
Should Win: The Zone of Interest
Oppenheimer is maybe the most Picture of the year, and while it is technically brilliant and features some great performances, it does much less to interrogate the outcomes of Oppenheimer’s destructive invention than it thinks it does. The Zone of the Interest, on the other hand, is nearly the opposite - in half the runtime and with none of the bombast, it thrusts the moral impact of our choices front and center, where we can’t ignore them or hide behind them. Depending on how things turn, we may look back at the timing of this film as an all-too-prescient warning, and wish we had rewarded it as such.
And that’s all she wrote, literally. Let’s hope the speeches are warm and the jokes are great, and everyone gets the right envelope and no one slaps anyone. Until next time, with my personal acting Oscar picks for the road - and no, Robert Downey, Jr. did not even make my top 10 for supporting actor this year.
