Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a favourite, despite only appearing on Netflix. Photo / Netflix
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a favourite, despite only appearing on Netflix. Photo / Netflix
Opinion:
What's your Best Picture pick for Oscar night?
The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson's latest desperately tasteful European period piece? Or how about Steven Spielberg's vivacious West Side Story remake, or Denis Villeneuve's magisterial adaptation of Dune? And let's not discount Leos Carax's quirky pop musical Annette, with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, or the equally offbeat Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde.
Last year, a week after the Academy Awards, I confidently put the five titles above, sight-unseen, at the top of my own forecast for 2021.
Yes, although cinemas are closed throughout much of the world, and the studios are either running emergency manoeuvres or frozen in their tracks, awards season is here again. And what's more, it'll be with us for even longer than usual. The Oscar ceremony itself – the climax to the season, which also takes in the Baftas, the Golden Globes and the various guild awards – was pushed back last summer from February 28 to April 25, when it became clear that few of the expected heavyweights were likely to open in time. (The Baftas quickly followed suit, and moved to April 11.) But today, with a return to normality still some way off and most of last year's major films still mothballed, it's unclear what the delay has actually achieved, beyond further penalising the titles that emerged early in the extended 14-month (or in the Baftas' case, 15-month) eligibility period.
Frances McDormand in a scene from the film Nomadland. Photo / AP
With many of the obvious picks out of the picture, voters will be forced to do the one thing they've doggedly avoided for years: look further afield. The past year has produced as many great films as any other, but they haven't arrived with as much fanfare, since conventional premieres have been impossible and most major festivals were cancelled. The three exceptions were Sundance and Berlin, which both fell before the virus took hold in the West, and Venice, which ran a meticulously socially distanced event in the early autumn.
As usual, all three yielded some more-than-worthy contenders. Berlin had Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Eliza Hittman's low-key but searing drama about a pregnant teen from a small Pennsylvanian town seeking an abortion in New York. Sundance brought Minari, a 1980s-set immigrant tale about a Korean family settling on the Arkansas plains; The Father, an Alzheimer's drama starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman; and Promising Young Woman, a risqué thriller written and directed by Britain's own Emerald Fennell that's a kind of Basic Instinct for the MeToo age. Venice offered up Pieces of a Woman, with Vanessa Kirby as a mother coming to terms with the loss of her newborn daughter; One Night in Miami, Regina King's adaptation of the Kemp Powers play about a historic meeting of black American minds in 1964; and Nomadland, in which Frances McDormand plays a widow making a new life for herself on the road. And at Toronto, which ran an online edition, there was Ammonite, a romantic drama inspired by the story of fossil hunter Mary Anning, starring Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet.
In an ordinary year, films like these would be underdogs. They're a little bolder and more boundary-pushing than the Oscar-bait norm, and most feature unfamiliar voices and perspectives. But in 2021, there's no wall of front-runners to barge through – no equivalents of Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, 1917 or The Irishman, which dominated last year's shortlists. That means the field remains wide open – and nobody can work out what, if anything, is nosing ahead. For the first time, Academy and Bafta members have had no option but to work through their to-watch lists at home. The customary canapés and Q&As circuits in London, New York and Los Angeles have been silent, which means there's no way for publicists to gossip with voters, and gauge which titles are generating buzz.
Still, the mere fact that so much of the 2021 awards race is taking place online gives the two streaming giants, Netflix and Amazon, a considerable home-turf advantage. Amazon's awards portfolio this year is decidedly eclectic. One Night in Miami is theirs, as is the sublime Sound of Metal, featuring a never-better Riz Ahmed as a rock drummer losing his hearing, along with the acclaimed prison documentary Time (another Sundance pick-up) and a real wild card: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Netflix, on the other hand, has a very traditional slate, as the digital upstart continues to chase the Best Picture Oscar, after extremely near misses in 2019 with Roma and 2020 with Marriage Story and The Irishman. One advantage of having a business model that counts cinema screenings as an optional extra is that if cinemas happen to shut for months on end, you can quite happily proceed without them.
Throughout the pandemic, that's precisely what Netflix has done. Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods, a subversive war film in which a squad of black American veterans return to Vietnam to search for lost treasure, had once been destined for Cannes, but landed on the streaming service in June regardless. I'm Thinking of Ending Things, the enigmatic and nightmarish romantic drama from Charlie Kaufman, is exactly the kind of film that can cause a stir at the autumn festivals, and it turned up in early September, at what would normally be the start of the season. Aaron Sorkin's politically charged all-star courtroom showdown The Trial of the Chicago 7 appeared just as the US election rounded into the home stretch, as did the backwoods melodrama Hillbilly Elegy. Before Christmas, there was David Fincher's magnificent Mank, starring Gary Oldman, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, featuring an electric final performance from Chadwick Boseman – surely a shoo-in for Best Actor. January has already brought Pieces of a Woman, with British archaeological drama The Dig due in a fortnight, and the sweeping Tom Hanks/Paul Greengrass western News of the World after that.
Carey Mulligan stars in Promising Young Woman. Photo / Supplied
Coupled with their old-fashioned glamour and heft, the fact these films are all being beamed into every Netflix subscriber's living room gives them an edge: come April, they're likely to be the only films in contention of which the general public will have heard. If five of these make the Best Picture shortlist – which is far from unlikely – Netflix will match a studio record held by MGM since 1937. Going on instinct alone – because that's all anyone has to go on for now – I'd say that Nomadland feels like this year's Best Picture winner-in-waiting. However, The Trial of the Chicago 7's supreme topicality and crowd-pleasing verve, and Mank's pristine craft and dreamily intricate portrayal of golden-age Hollywood, make both extremely plausible alternatives.
Meanwhile, the triumph of Bong Joon-ho's Parasite last year – remember when that felt like an upheaval? – means that films in languages other than English can no longer be ruled out. Minari, a US film with mostly Korean dialogue, could hit a sweet spot. What's more, an unlikely silver lining has emerged. Embarrassingly, but conveniently, the mass postponing of (predominantly white and male-led) high-profile releases over the past 10 months has left the pool of potential nominees looking more diverse than ever before. It's a shame it took a global catastrophe to balance the scales, but after a year miserably short on optimism, the industry will be keen to seize on every scrap of good news it can get.
Eyes on the prize: 10 likely best picture contenders
Nomadland (Dir: Chloé Zhao): Frances McDormand on the road in heartland America.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Dir: Aaron Sorkin): Rollicking, blazingly topical ensemble courtroom drama.
MANK (Dir: David Fincher): Pristine old-Hollywood period piece with a dark undertow.
Minari (Dir: Lee Isaac Chung): A Korean family starts afresh in the American countryside.
Da 5 bloods (Dir: Spike Lee): Vietnam and Black Lives Matter collide in this era-straddling war drama.
Tenet (Dir: Christopher Nolan): Last year's lone Northern Hemisphere summer blockbuster, and a symbol of cinemas' fight for survival.
