With an almighty clang, Jane Campion has hit that tipping point at which the awards-season groupthink clusters around one particular movie. Her western psychodrama The Power of the Dog leads the tally list with a whopping 12 nominations. It is about a toxically dysfunctional confrontation between a rancher played by Benedict Cumberbatch in 1920s Montana and his sister-in-law, played by Kirsten Dunst, brother played by Jesse Plemons and his brother’s sensitive stepson played by Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Clearly, the Academy has responded to the classic quality of The Power of the Dog: the way it speaks to US culture and history and positions itself unambiguously in the heartland, but a heartland coloured and contorted by anger and sadness, rather like Chloé Zhao’s much-garlanded Nomadland did last year. It’s a movie that reminded me more than a little of the work of George Stevens, though with a 21st-century twist. It is interesting that the director comes from outside the US, and so does its leading man: those tokens of Americanness are being imagined and fabricated by outsiders.
Dune, with 10 nominations including best picture, is a film that displays its own “American classic” credentials: it is an eerie, wonderful spectacle orchestrated by Denis Villeneuve (who is not rewarded with a best director nomination) from the iconic Frank Herbert SF novel about a colonial imposition of power on a distant planet due to its fabulous mineral wealth.
Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast, inspired by his own childhood in Troubles-era Northern Ireland, comes jointly into the “bronze” medal position with seven nominations. This film has been subject to the annual tradition of the awards-season columnist backlash, in which pundits take against the consensus around a certain film. The admittedly warm-hearted and gentle quality of Belfast (so different from the accepted mode of angry despair) has been held against it – although I can think of two Belfast-born or Belfast-raised commentators who support this film. My personal theory is that the success of the TV comedy Derry Girls has moved the dial about what’s considered the correct tone for depicting this subject. Steven Spielberg’s glorious West Side Story gets seven nominations as well, and perhaps its awards-season gleam will persuade people to see this wonderful movie.
Elsewhere, King Richard, with six nominations, is a movie that, although not critically fashionable, has won hearts and minds. This is largely due to the barnstorming performance of Will Smith as Richard Williams, the formidable tennis-coach-slash-dad of the legendary Williams sisters. It is good to see Guillermo del Toro’s amazing noir melodrama Nightmare Alley come up with four nominations (I had feared an almost complete snub). Flee is an outstanding animated documentary about a gay Afghan man who as a child fled his country for Denmark after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal – remarkably, its three nominations span three separate categories in a triumphant style. I was hoping for more Oscar recognition for Paul Thomas Anderson’s staggeringly good comedy Licorice Pizza, but perhaps it is simply too wacky, too uncategorisable, and its age-gap theme too tricky a sell.
I found myself disappointed that Lady Gaga’s hilarious turn in House of Gucci was overlooked. (Come to think of it, so was Jared Leto’s florid impersonation of a minor Gucci – probably rightly. But critics are wrong to mock his intentionally camp and absurd performance. I laughed with it, not at it.) Jessica Chastain is rightly nominated for her warmly sympathetic lead as the televangelist diva in The Eyes of Tammy Faye; as is Kristen Stewart for her amusing impersonation of Diana, Princess of Wales in the overrated arthouse-Crown extravaganza Spencer. Olivia Colman may well get her second Oscar for her great turn in The Lost Daughter. But Nicole Kidman didn’t do her best work in Being the Ricardos; I would have preferred to see Ruth Negga in there for Passing.
Two years ago, Korean director Bong Joon-ho asked filmgoers to consider that subtitles aren’t so much of an obstacle, being only an inch or so high. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s marvellous Japanese film Drive My Car, an adaptation of a Haruki Murakami story, has had its own very heartening success with four nominations. In a way, this film is the success story of this year’s awards season.
Join Peter Bradshaw and a team of Guardian film critics for a Guardian Live online event about the Oscars on Thursday 24 March.
