In early days, Paul Thomas Anderson seems poised to collect at least one Oscar next March for One Battle After Another. Will (and should) anyone stand in his way?
Across his 30-year career, Paul Thomas Anderson received 11 Academy Award nominations. He has yet to win. Nothing for Boogie Nights. Nada for There Will Be Blood. Zip for Phantom Thread. You can absolutely proclaim him overdue, and you would not be wrong. Yet, PTA has never compromised. He always made the films that he wanted to make regardless of their popular (re: Academy) appeal. A handful of his films could be mentioned in a “masterpieces” conversation, but his refusal to deliver “Academy friendly fare” likely had its consequences on actual wins.
But all that will likely change with One Battle After Another.
You could say The Academy gradually warmed to Anderson. You could also say that the influx of younger, more international-leaning voters kind of bends The Academy’s tastes toward his films. But in One Battle After Another, he made a film that echoes who most members of The Academy think they are. They want to be seen as revolutionaries. They want to feel good about the art that they make and their place in the world. One Battle After Another gives them a rallying cry. It gives them the thrill of revolutionary angst. It also gives them very specific, near-cartoonishly rendered, villains to direct their hatred.
Politics aside, Paul Thomas Anderson also made his most accessible film since 1997’s Boogie Nights. It’s a blistering entertainment filled with gorgeously rendered set pieces. Right now, nearly everyone adores the film and that adoration has a rising tides effect. Judging from our first The Contending Best Director predictions, he’s nearly unanimously considered the de facto frontrunner.
What Makes PTA the Frontrunner?
The Overdue Narrative works perfectly in his favor. Anderson almost won in 2007 for There Will Be Blood, but No Country For Old Men was simply too strong. He steadily worked with some of the greatest actors and craftspersons in the industry. He has also matured as a filmmaker and human being, outgrowning that “brat of cinema” narrative that plagued his early career. His films frequently emerge on “Best of Lists.” He has paid his dues, yet he hasn’t even won for his excellent screenwriting skills. Thanks to all of this, Paul Thomas Anderson remains, in my opinion, the most overdue director consistently working today.
He works within the Studio System. You could easily imagine Anderson making niche film after film for a Neon or A24, but his last three Oscar-nominated films were released by Warner Bros., Focus Features, and United Artists. Somehow, and I’ll never understand how, he managed to convince Warner Bros. to spend somewhere around $150 million (give or take) on the nearly 3-hour One Battle. That’s Marvel money spent on a film with Leonardo DiCaprio as its only box office friendly star. Looking at the film’s content, I think it’s a total bad ass move. He refuses to seek easier (re: artist friendly) pastures and works within the same studio system that inspired his cinematic journey. I believe there’s a certain kind of awe around that, and I believe many in The Academy will agree.
Finally, One Battle After Another is simply a Wonderfully Crafted Film. I’m not in the “It’s a masterpiece” camp, but I recognize brilliant filmmaking when I see it. On our latest podcast, I talked about how the film reminded me of the kinetic energy of Boogie Nights. That film leveraged infectiously upbeat disco music to propel viewers through its first hour as if the whole thing were on fire. Coming off of Hard Eight, you would never have known that Anderson’s next move would be such a bravura directorial achievement. Even his playful, some would say meandering, Alfred Molina-led sequence (remember those pop caps?) had the feeling of someone just having a total blast making this film. That’s the vibe One Battle After Another gave me. I’ll point to the chase sequence set on the hilly desert highway that closes the film as an example of brilliant direction. Sure, it kind of makes no sense logically (why did the Christmas Adventurers Club guy go back for the white car anyway?), but it incredibly fun to watch. It’s the directorial cherry on a very delicious sundae.
So Who Could Beat Him?
Honestly, here on October 3, I don’t see anyone rising above Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director. Best Picture is another story for another day, but I really believe it’s Anderson’s to lose. And I’m totally good with that. He deserves to win for the three reasons I outline above and more. One Battle After Another won’t be my favorite film of the year, but I would happily applaud his moment. It’s long overdue.
But, for argument’s sake, who could beat him?
Hamnet‘s Chloé Zhao already has an Oscar thanks to COVID-19 and Nomadland, otherwise she would be making this a much tougher race. Her direction of Hamnet blends a gorgeous sense of nature that echoes the great Terrence Malick with an expert handling of the heavily emotional beats of the film. She understands the craft of acting and allows her actors the space they need to fully realize the piece. She melds a deeply artistic touch within a very accessible (re: audience and Academy friendly) framework. Hamnet isn’t just Oscar bait; rather, it’s a beautiful exploration of grief, trauma, and the healing power of art. The Academy could make history and award a female director with a second Oscar for direction. Yet, it seems perverse to do so when Anderson has none.
Sinners’ Ryan Coogler once again takes a pulpy script and elevates it to an art form. His vampire film dripped in deeply Southern roots and Black culture captivated audiences last spring. It also kicked off a near-historic box office run for Warner Bros. For months, Oscar watchers proclaimed Coogler and his film as The One To Beat. Yet, now with the advent of Anderson, those same voices sought greener pastures. Some continue to pick at the film’s third act, but I think it’s perfect as-is. Coogler will one day win Best Director, but a win for Sinners seems unlikely. At least at this moment in time anyway.
A handful of foreign filmmakers will likely fill out the director five. Sentimental Value‘s Joachim Trier and It Was Just an Accident‘s Jafar Panahi seem most likely to hold those two slots. However, Park Chan-Wook received some of the best notices of his career for No Other Choice. Kaouther Ben Hania also made a huge splash at Venice with his Palestinian-focused docudrama The Voice of Hind Rajab. That film also has Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment behind it, so it shouldn’t be counted out. Other director contenders include Kathryn Bigelow (A House of Dynamite), Mona Fastvold (The Testament of Ann Lee), Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme), Guillermo Del Toro (Frankenstein), Noah Baumbach (Jay Kelly), Yorgos Lanthimos (Bugonia), and Jon M. Chu (Wicked: For Good).
The Best Picture race centering around three titles (One Battle After Another, Hamnet, and Sinners), and so it would make sense that the Best Director race follows that train of thought. Will we see a Picture / Director split? Or will it be One Battle After Another all the way? I have a feeling the answer isn’t exactly what the consensus would have you think.
But more on that another week.
Can beat him? Not sure outside Hamnet and Ms Zhao.
Should beat him though, Denmark's Second Victims and Switzerland's Late Should should but they are sadly not even part of the dialogue for international feature.
Of course former can't even be considered since Denmark didn't submit it. Thanks AMPAS for your prehistoric anti-merit rules (& in case of countries like Iran, fascist-regime supporting ones but then again, America of 2025..).
It's too early to call anything certain. Bong Joon Ho beating Mendes at the last minute shows that anything can happen. But Director is as locked as you can be at this stage, I guess.
I'm for some reason getting a Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood-style "early frontrunner with everything you could hope for that overheats and retreats to third place" contender vibe from One Battle After Another (despite me finding it very difficult to imagine that Anderson's film won't be my favorite best picture Oscar nominee this year). This isn't just because of the DiCaprio connection but they are both legendary Gen X directors' slightly odd studio blank checks that are pushed to the top of the heap early on in the race largely by the combination of an overdue narrative and them representing the kind of filmmaking people wish came out of Hollywood more often. However, beyond Anderson, I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to be the emotional hook of the film's Oscar narrative, the thing that makes people feel happy about voting for the film. And since Best Director seems to going more often hand-in-hand with Best Picture these days (the only exception this decade so far has been a case where the director wasn't nominated as the film had a very late surge, meaning that even though Heder wouldn't have won if nominated, it implies that the ideal circumstances in which a picture/director split happens these days are ones where there is not a strong direction in the Best Picture race).
Thus I'm currently leaning more towards Coogler or Zhao.
I think the emotional hook is the "timeliness" and "relevance to the current moment" that people are talking about.
The hook for Coogler would be that Sinners is fun and popular, the hook for Zhao I guess would be that people just really like the movie. We'll see, but the buzz seems to be with Anderson.
But when was the previous time that a best picture winner’s hook in awards season was the notion that it was “timely”? I feel like when Oscar winners have that quality, it is in the vaguest sense possible (I’m thinking in particular of The Shape of Water after the first year of Trump’s first term). And though I’d argue that at the end of the day One Battle After Another is not that much more aggressive in what it’s actually saying with its politics, positioning it as “the movie that meets the moment” might drive the discussion in a direction that makes it be perceived as being more aggressively political. That could be the very thing that raises it to become a movie the Oscars wish to award but it might also prove to be shaky ground for it to build a campaign on.
Shape of Water is the clearest recent example. In addition, part of the narrative for Shakespeare In Love was that it was a sex-positive story, and how that was relevant to what was happening in politics and culture at the time.
By the same token, Brokeback Mountain was obviously harmed by being associated with politics, and that could theoretically happen with OBAA. So I guess we'll see.