Internationally recognised art and literary critic, writer and cultural producer. Published in ELLE, Glamour, Esquire and Cosmopolitan; member of the Union of Writers.
The Oscar conversation has started. The lists are out. The long, slow, slightly undignified parade of speculation and prediction that takes us from the autumn festivals all the way to a Dolby Theatre stage in March.
And every year, you look at these lists of ‘hot tips’, and you have to ask yourself: what are we actually talking about here? Are we talking about the best films? The best performances? Or are we talking about something else entirely? Because the Oscar race isn’t really about art. Not really. It’s about narratives.
It’s a game of stories. And the person with the best story often wins.
At first, you just see a list of names. But if you look closer, you can see the different kinds of stories that are already being built, brick by painstaking brick.
First, you have the simplest, most powerful narrative of them all: The Force of Nature. And this year, that’s Jessie Buckley in Hamnet. The story here is that the performance is so undeniable, so emotionally pulverising, that it’s simply inevitable. Festival audiences are sobbing. Critics are running out of superlatives. The narrative is: this is not a competition. The Oscar is, as they say, ‘hers to lose’. The film itself, with Chloé Zhao directing and Paul Mescal in support, is a bona fide contender, which only strengthens the story. It’s the easiest narrative to sell, because it feels the most pure. It’s about the work.
Then you get the other classic narrative: The Overdue Veteran. And this year, we have a couple of beautiful examples. You have Paul Thomas Anderson, who has somehow never won an Oscar, with a film, One Battle After Another, that is dominating the conversation. And then you have Stellan Skarsgård, who at 74 might get his first ever nomination for Sentimental Value. Skarsgård is one of those actors who has been so consistently brilliant for so long that we’ve all just taken him for granted. He’s part of the furniture. And the story here is a simple one: it’s his time. The fact that he’s been charming and wry on the campaign trail, calling himself a “nepo Daddy,” only helps. It makes the story more personal, more human.
But then you get to the most calculated, most fascinating narrative of them all: The Serious Actor Gambit.
And this year’s prime specimen is Timothée Chalamet. He’s playing a real-life 1950s ping-pong champion. And the stories, my god, the stories. We are told he has been practising ping-pong for eight years. Eight. He took a ping-pong table with him to Cannes. This, of course, comes after last year’s campaign for the Bob Dylan film, where we were endlessly told about how he learned to sing and play the guitar.
The whole thing feels a bit like trying to get your child into one of those ridiculously over-subscribed primary schools near where I live. It’s not just about whether the kid can read; it’s about whether you, the parent, have attended the right fundraisers, volunteered for the right committees, said the right things to the headmistress. It’s a performance. And Chalamet is a master of this particular kind of performance. He is not just acting in the film. He is acting the role of ‘Serious Actor Preparing for a Role’. And you have to admit, it’s often very effective.
Actually, scrap that. It’s sometimes effective. Because this narrative can also backfire, spectacularly. Look at the other end of the spectrum this year. Dwayne Johnson in The Smashing Machine. All the ingredients were there. A respected director, a true story, a blockbuster star ‘stretching’ himself. It was his ‘now you must respect me’ moment. And… nothing. The film landed with a thud, the box office was a disaster, and the awards conversation evaporated overnight. It’s a brutal reminder that you can play the game perfectly, and still lose.
So what other stories are on the table this year?
There’s the The Institution Finally Catches Up narrative. This is Ryan Coogler’s story. A director who makes blockbusters that are also critically adored. Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture, but he was personally overlooked. Now he has Sinners, an original vampire film that was also a massive hit. The story here is a question aimed directly at the Academy: how can you ignore this man any longer? It’s a narrative about forcing a conservative institution to acknowledge a new kind of success.
And, of course, you have The Underdog stories. Horror, which is usually ignored, has a contender in Amy Madigan for her grotesque, meme-able turn in Weapons. Animation, usually a Disney/Pixar procession, might see a Netflix film about a monster-hunting K-pop group, KPop Demon Hunters, take the prize.
But the most powerful underdog story, by a mile, belongs to Jafar Panahi. An Iranian director, jailed for his work, who made his film in secret and smuggled it out of the country on a thumb drive. It then wins the top prize at Cannes. You simply cannot write a better story than that. It’s not just a film; it’s an act of defiance. It makes all the other campaign narratives, the talk of ping-pong practice and overdue veterans, seem rather trivial in comparison, doesn’t it?
The Oscar race is a strange beast. It’s a long, exhausting, and often deeply cynical process. It’s a business of building stories, of crafting perceptions. But every now and then, a performance, or a film, or a real-life story comes along that is so powerful, it just cuts through all the noise. And those are the moments that make you remember why you started caring about any of this in the first place. This year, it looks like we might have a few of them. Which, for now, is reason enough to keep watching.
