Oscars 2022: CODA vs The Power of the Dog in Best Picture race
With just a few days to go until cinema’s night of nights, we make the case for each of the nominated films and directors, and predict a surprise upset in Best Picture.
Ever since The Power of the Dog premiered at the Venice Film Festival, awards season prognosticators have predicted it as the one film to rule them all. Jane Campion’s first production in more than a decade, with a powerhouse cast and impeccable craft, the film looked set to sweep.
Except … it hasn’t. Sure, The Power of the Dog has picked up several awards, including Best Picture at the BAFTAs and a Directors Guild Award for Campion. But so has CODA, AppleTV+’s feel-good drama about a deaf family starring Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur and Emilia Jones. CODA has been award Best Ensemble at the SAGs, Best Picture at the Producers Guild Awards and a brace of Best Supporting Actor prizes for Kotsur.
Could the intimate, small-scale CODA topple The Power of the Dog’s sweeping expanse? Could the little indie Sundance hit overwhelm the might of the biggest streaming player in the business? Maybe. Here, Prestige writers make the case for each of the Best Picture and Best Director nominees.
–
Best Picture
Belfast
My only qualm with this film is a superficial one: I had trouble getting past the frankly disconcerting attractiveness of Jamie Dornan and Catrinona Balfe as the leads, as if, if they were to walk down an average, working-class Irish street, pulling off their ’60s wool polos like they do, that the pavement wouldn’t cleave clean in two to let them through. It’s simply unrealistic. But everything else in Belfast? Oh, it’s a dream. The superb acting, the love stories that take place at every generation’s level. The film is also shot entirely in black and white film, which can feel like a gimmick in other stories — but here, it anchors it in its time, giving a beautiful, nostalgic quality to the whole affair. — Divya Venkataraman
CODA
This story of a deaf family and their hearing daughter who dreams of going to music college won every prize at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival – and Best Ensemble at the SAGs – and it’s easy to see why. CODA is both a well-made, intimate family portrait and a feel good comedy that unashamedly wears its heart on its sleeve. Yes, it’s sentimental – and there’s nothing wrong with that. CODA is so winning and warm and heart-jumpingly alive, a portrait of real life that is both universal and unique. Unique courtesy of its portrayal of deafness as just one small part of this family and their nuances; universal in that this is a movie all about love. People adore this movie. Don’t be surprised if it takes it all on Monday. — Hannah-Rose Yee
Don’t Look Up
For all its Hollywood bravado and at-times clunky climate change messaging, Netflix’s disaster-comedy Don’t Look Up has heart. Chronicling several powerful individuals in the face of an asteroid apocalypse, the socially-conscious star vehicle makes deep points about our post-truth world; Meryl Streep as a Trumpian president brought back memories of rallies with seas of red hats, while Mark Rylance’s billionaire tech mogul is an eerie parody of the world’s Musks and Zuckerbergs. It might be swept out of the Best Picture race by an indie underdog, but Don’t Look Up effectively does one thing we’re all tired of doing in 2022: it makes you think. — Jonah Waterhouse
Drive My Car
Drive My Car is the only nomination that feels genuinely shocking. A three-hour Japanese film (!!) adapted from a Haruki Murakami short (!!) which prominently features a bizarre production of ‘Uncle Vanya’ (!!). It’s the first Japanese film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. If it wins, it will be the second foreign language film with that honour (Parasite being the first.) Something to celebrate! I drank a king sized post-mix Coca Cola during the three hour screening and didn’t dare get up to use the bathroom once. You will leave the cinema with an enormous sense of life, with all its heartbreaking minutiae, and early symptoms of and advancing UTI. — Geordie Gray
Dune
Dune is, far and away, the most “cinematic” film on this list. Directed by Denis Villeneuve with oodles of style, and enough substance to carry it, this adaptation of Frank Herbert’s unadaptable sci-fi opus is an incredible feat of movie making. From the sound design and score (Hans Zimmer created new instruments to fulfil his vision of Arrakis’ sound), to the practical effects, the whole thing is crafted with the highest care and dedication. And, it’s that world building that piqued a level of curiosity in this lore that hasn’t been met since I was a kid. In my opinion, it’s ridiculous that Villeneuve wasn’t nominated for Best Director just for the sheer difficulty of the task he accomplished. I sadly don’t think Dune will win Best Picture, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Academy comes to its sense when the sequel comes out and showers it in praise a la Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. — Charlie Calver
King Richard
King Richard is Oscar catnip. It’s a concise, satisfying and well-acted film about real people we all know well — the Williams sisters and their father Richard. It’s not the most challenging film on this list, nor is it likely to have the longest legacy, but it is probably one of the most polished, least divisive, and all-around ‘really good’ films on here. When it comes to the Academy’s preferential voting system that is a huge asset. — CC
Licorice Pizza
Licorice Pizza is the coolest film of the year. The Haim Sisters? A Jonny Greenwood score? Cooper Seymour Hoffman? A Safdie brother? They knew exactly what they were doing … Paul Thomas Anderson is at his most lighthearted and lackadaisical, and it’s sublime. Plot cedes ground to mood, and this freedom allows the audience to meander through the highly textured, rambling landscape of the San Fernando Valley, 1973. The film doesn’t really go anywhere, and it doesn’t have to. It captures the driftless romance of being a teenager, where time is of no consequence and you’re always waiting for something to happen. — GG
Nightmare Alley
No doubt many have already written off Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley from the Best Picture running — projects like Dune and West Side Story have been the topic of every conversation, and without the fuel of that popular buzz, it’s easy to assume del Toro’s film won’t make it past the starting line. But he’s done it before with Shape of Water (a film that was decidedly unconcerned with public opinion) and he just might do it again with his adaptation of Edmund Goulding’s original 1947 flick, a noirish tale of con artistry and carnival curiosities. A powerhouse cast, sumptuous cinematography from Dan Laustsen, and a looming sense of tragedy that reveals itself in madness and grotesque violence — in other words, it is del Toro doing what he does best. Who else is filling their frame with monsters, to remind us that men are far more frightening? — Gladys Lai
The Power of the Dog
Tortured and spellbinding. The Power of the Dog is slow-moving, but with more than enough punch to make up for its pace. Campion’s direction ties together the landscape, the acting, the movement, beautifully. — DV
West Side Story
Steven Spielberg made the pictures big again with West Side Story. A love story for the ages, anchored by old Hollywood star wattage and dance sequences that will take your breath away. In five years time when the movie musical is dead forever we’re going to be so mad at ourselves for not appreciating this as the masterpiece that it is. — HRY
Best Director
Kenneth Branagh
Branagh mined his childhood for Belfast, and his personal investment in the story shines through, infusing the film with pathos and heart. Here is a director who knows how to evoke just the right dose of emotion without veering into sentimentality: euphoric dance sequences give way to wrenching hospital bedside conversations which lead on to poignant shots of a young boy in love, framed against the peeling paint of a Belfast street corner. It’s all acutely purposeful, and very beautiful. — DV
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Patience is pleasure‘s greatest advocate — such is the case with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s masterly Drive My Car. A story about grief, love, eroticism, and the power of art, that unravels itself by inchmeal. Hamaguchi’s rich, layered storytelling, enriched by Hidetoshi Shinomiya’s cinematography, reaches bottomless emotional depths. — GG
Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson went back to his roots with Licorice Pizza, and the result was a film dripping in nostalgia, humour and that classic PTA feeling we fell in love with when he burst onto the scene with Boogie Nights. Once again, he proved why he is one of the modern masters of cinema by conjuring up a portrait of the ’70s San Fernando Valley where he grew up that makes me feel like I know it intimately without ever setting foot in the place. Props, of course, must be given to his two debut leads Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, but equally, it’s Anderson’s steady hand and direction that draws such flourishing performances out of Hollywood newcomers. Honestly, he should win this award for the Bradley Cooper sequence alone — my mouth was on the floor every moment that truck was in motion. — CC
Jane Campion
Jane Campion’s cinematic eye is a magnifying glass; where others use their cameras to sweep and gesture and proselytise, Campion squints. She lingers. She sniffs out the bigger picture in the close-up: the rage, the fear, the repressed agony. It’s why watching The Power of the Dog is often a harrowing experience; there were times, amid scenes of cruelty and abuse, when I felt my fingernails digging into my knees. But none of this is overdone. Her characters inflict suffering on others and themselves, and Campion peers through to understand why. She makes an incision with her lens to show us her discovery. Her ultimate thesis, that pain and love are not so different, is not communicated with a dramatic flourish; Campion’s magic is quiet, which makes it all the more magical, really. — GL
Steven Spielberg
Everybody said he couldn’t do it. Everybody scoffed at his desire to remake one of cinema’s most beloved musicals. And yet Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is a triumph of the highest order: not only does it work, it works so well that it might have even surpassed the original. Every frame looks like a painting, every dance routine like a dream, proof that at the age of 75 he is still one of our greatest artists, possessing the rare ability to make a flat screen feel like a whole entire world. I am aware that it’s not a hot take to say that Steven Spielberg is a good director but what he’s done with this film, reworking a true classic for a new audience, is astonishing. He already has two Oscars. Lucky number three? — HRY