‘Anora’ surges ahead in the Best Picture race after surprise PGA, DGA wins: Oscar analysis
Maybe Anora was the frontrunner all along.
In the weeks since the Oscar nominations were announced, Oscar pundits and awards strategists have treated the wide-open Best Picture race like an adaptation of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, searching somewhat fruitlessly for a contender that felt “just right.” However, on Saturday night, Sean Baker won Best Director at the Directors Guild Awards, and about an hour later, Baker and his film took top honors at the Producers Guild Awards. What had been considered a toss-up is now trending back to where the consensus was throughout the fall.
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How did we get here, and what comes next? Ahead, here are three takeaways from the big weekend for Anora.
When it comes to Best Picture, always wait for the industry
For months, Anora stood atop the Gold Derby Best Picture charts. But after the Neon release got blanked at the Golden Globe Awards — notably voted on by a group of non-industry journalists — it dropped from that perch in favor of The Brutalist. In hindsight, that shift feels reactionary. Anora has hit every industry precursor, including nominations from the four significant guilds (writers, actors, directors, producers) and a bid for Best Film at the BAFTA Awards. (Because of eligibility rules at the Writers’ Guild, A Complete Unknown is the only other movie in the race that can claim such a windfall. However, while the Searchlight Pictures release has proven sticky with the industry, it hasn’t won anything yet. It would be the first biography about a musician to win Best Picture since Amadeus 40 years ago.)
Now that the industry has spoken, Anora is in the driver’s seat for Best Picture. Consider some of these stats: Since 2000, the only movies to win awards at the Directors Guild and Producers Guild but lose Best Picture at the Oscars are Brokeback Mountain, Gravity (although there’s an asterisk there because Gravity tied with 12 Years a Slave at the Producers Guild, and that movie eventually won Best Picture), La La Land, and 1917. The list of Directors Guild Awards winners who lost Best Director over that time frame is similarly small: Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Rob Marshall (Chicago), and Sam Mendes (1917). (Ben Affleck also won at the Directors Guild for Argo in 2013, but Affleck was rather infamously snubbed at the Oscars that year and thus not in competition to win or lose at the ceremony.)
The best part about the Anora Best Picture hopes is what’s ahead. Baker is the top pick to win Best Original Screenplay at the Writers Guild Awards next weekend (although, due to those aforementioned eligibility rules, the only other Oscar nominee in the original screenplay category also nominated at the Oscars is A Real Pain). Then, the film will compete for Best Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Feb. 23. The SAG Awards ensemble prize is not always a reliable indicator of where the Academy will go for its Best Picture vote — see past ensemble winners like The Trial of the Chicago 7, Black Panther, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Hidden Figures, American Hustle, and The Help. Currently, most expect Wicked to emerge there — the musical tied a record with five nominations from the Actors’ Guild — and if it did win, the mainstream hit would fit comfortably on that list of SAG ensemble winners that eventually failed to earn Best Picture. However, if Anora were to pull off the victory with SAG — joining Parasite as a Neon-released Palme d’Or to earn the top prize with the actors — could anything stop Baker’s movie from going all the way?
Best Director shocker
Anora winning at the Producers Guild was not unexpected. It has always been among the top Best Picture contenders and was never seen as polarizing in the same way that Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist might have been to some viewers. But Baker topping Brady Corbet at the Directors Guild Awards was a shocker. Most expected Corbet, the Silver Lion for Best Director winner at the Venice Film Festival, to cruise to a Best Director Oscar win regardless of whether his film also took Best Picture. Baker, meanwhile, has been routinely underestimated in the Best Director category: after the Oscar nominations were announced, he opened in fourth place in the Gold Derby odds behind Corbet, Jacques Audiard, and Coralie Fargeat.
However, maybe having Corbet as the frontrunner was a mirage. While The Brutalist is undoubtedly a directorial achievement — the kind of work that can win an Oscar separate from its film’s chances in the top category — Corbet is a relative newcomer to the awards scene. Plus, the filmmaker to whose work The Brutalist has been most compared, Paul Thomas Anderson, has never been an Academy favorite — despite 11 nominations, Anderson has never won an Oscar. It’s possible Corbet could be like Damien Chazelle, a wunderkind filmmaker who cruises through to Best Director while his film loses Best Picture — but Chazelle won at the Directors Guild and even the Critics Choice Awards. Corbet lost in both places, falling on Friday night to Wicked filmmaker Jon M. Chu at the Critics Choice ceremony. That doesn’t really matter — the Critics Choice Association is a non-industry group, after all — but the ostensible critical favorite probably should have won with the critics were he going to win at the Oscars.
Best Actress back in play
As late as Jan. 15, Anora star Mikey Madison led in the Best Actress odds over The Substance star Demi Moore. But on the back of her Golden Globe Awards win and acceptance speech — where she notably beat Madison head-to-head — Moore eventually took the pole position and has held firm in the weeks since the nominations were announced, adding another precursor win on Friday night at the Critics Choice Awards. However, the industry has not weighed in on this race, and The Substance — despite landing nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Hair and Makeup — arguably underperformed with the Academy. (While Anora carried Yura Borisov into the Best Supporting Actor field, The Substance could not do the same for Moore’s costar Margaret Qualley; The Substance failed to hit the Oscar shortlists in sound and visual effects, two categories where it could have appeared.) Does this mean Madison could prevail over Moore at the Oscars? Most expect Moore to win Best Actress at the SAG Awards in two weeks — the acting guild loves a comeback narrative, and Moore has one of the best of the year. But what happens next weekend at the BAFTA Awards is the key to this race. It’s a lot of ifs and weres and mights, but if Madison were to win with the British Film Academy, and if Anora is as strong of a Best Picture contender as it now seems, Best Actress might shift back toward the 25-year-old star. Consider that BAFTA accurately planted a flag for eventual Oscar winners Emma Stone, Anthony Hopkins, and Olivia Colman in recent years over fellow nominees with the “narrative” victory all but secured. The knock against Madison has been her quiet presence on the campaign trail — unlike the title character in Baker’s film, who is brassy and bold, Madison is thoughtful and introspective. But that also illustrates her strength as a performer; no one could claim Madison is “playing herself” in Anora, and the more she’s out there differentiating herself from her work (see Madison’s heartfelt speech at the National Board of Review gala in January, and her roasting of Baker at the DGA Awards on Saturday night), the better.
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