At this moment, the race for Best Picture would appear to be One Battle After Another’s to lose. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic-length thriller/comedy/drama/action film has received some of the most rapturous reviews of the year, was relatively widely seen (more on that later), and is scooping up one pre-Oscar award after another (see what I did there?). Throw in the fact that Anderson is a beloved director who has never won an Oscar (despite eleven nominations), and it’s easy to see how the Academy might also be thinking, “It’s time.”
Looking out at the remaining field of Best Picture contenders who might be able to pull an Oscar night upset, I see only two. Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet has also been greeted by extraordinary reviews, and the emotional response from those who’ve seen it is becoming legendary. I witnessed it myself earlier this year at the Virginia Film Festival. The reaction of the one thousand or so in attendance at Hamnet’s screening was something I’ve never seen or heard in all my years of film-going. The movie connects on a visceral emotional level. To lay my cards on the table, I think it’s the best film of the year, and I don’t believe it’s close.
That being said, I don’t know if enough people are going to see a film about Shakespeare and his wife dealing with the grief of losing their only son. Of course, “people” don’t need to see it and respond to it as much as Academy voters do, but you do get the sense that Hamnet may have peaked early and won’t stay in the Best Picture discussion at the same level as One Battle After Another.
Sinners might appear to be a strange choice for a long-shot sleeper candidate. Ryan Coogler’s period drama, which mixes race relations and vampires, is one of the biggest hits of the year and has been exceptionally well-received. It’s entirely possible that Sinners could become a consensus choice for Best Picture. It even has some advantages over One Battle After Another.
Firstly, it’s a much bigger hit. Sinners made $281 million at the box office, almost precisely four times as much as One Battle After Another. People love this movie. There could also be some sentiment about how the film’s turnstile success was covered in the media. After Sinners opened in April with a gobsmacking $48 million first weekend, many industry trade publications immediately started talking about the film’s “long road to profitability.” It was a curious way to cover the movie, and struck many as prejudicial. Especially when you consider that One Battle After Another was far more expensive to make ($130 million budget vs. Sinners $90 million) and Anderson’s film opened at the end of September to less than half that of Coogler’s. Only recently, now that One Battle After Another is nearing the end of its theatrical run, are film writers taking note that Anderson’s film is going to lose a sizable sum of money. Does the coverage matter in terms of Oscar voting? Maybe not, but never underestimate the desire to root for the underdog, or at least an alternative.
Thus far, One Battle After Another has been remarkably backlash-free. The sort of whispers that damaged hot-button films like Zero Dark Thirty haven’t occurred. Anderson’s film has been embraced by liberals who find it revolutionary and profound, but I’ve yet to read a convincing piece that explains what One Battle After Another is really trying to say. Paradoxically, that may work in the film’s favor, as viewers can project whatever they want onto the movie due to its opacity.
Yet, it’s hard not to look at Sinners and think that, despite the vampires, it isn’t a film that makes a firmer, more purposeful declaration than One Battle After Another. Most of the film is a straight period piece about the post-depression era South, and how Black people of that era managed to get by (or not) and thrive (or not). Even the vampires are used to illuminate the history of prejudice in the United States. By making the “villains” of poor Irish descent, Coogler connects their historical miseries to the Black struggle, while also making a statement on how poor people of different ethnicities are pitted against one another.
That’s heady subject matter for a film that concludes with a wild brawl between humans and the undead. Sinners also had one of the single most talked-about scenes of the year: the musical performance by Miles Caton, which connected the history and evolution of Black music in America through Caton’s blues-based juke joint performance.
The groundswell for Sinners may be quiet, but it is real. Coogler’s film was listed alongside Anderson’s by the American Film Institute and the National Board of Review as one of the year’s best films. Sinners, unsurprisingly, dominated the awards given out by the African American Film Critics Association. Coogler’s film also led the way for the Critics’ Choice Awards with seventeen nominations. That’s three more than One Battle After Another received, if you’re scoring at home. Lastly, the Golden Globes nominated One Battle After Another nine times, with Sinners close behind, receiving seven nods.
What’s notable about those seven Golden Globe nominations is that the Globes have notoriously undervalued Black cinema. In 2021, the Los Angeles Times reported that the bloc of Globe voters (the Hollywood Foreign Press Association) had no Black members on its roster. While the organization has since taken steps to diversify its membership, I do think you still have to grade their nominations on a curve. To put it another way, Sinners getting seven nominations from this body of voters is a big fucking deal.
Warner Brothers (while it is still called that, with Netflix and Paramount looming as potential buyers of the venerable studio) has done excellent work promoting the film. Not only has Warner effectively put Sinners on the Oscar map despite being released way back in late spring, but it has done so without controversy. Tonight, Sinners is being rereleased in IMAX, allowing audiences to see the film in the widest of widescreen glory and giving it a second box office shot in the arm, while also creating more awards-based coverage.
Of course, Warner is also the studio behind One Battle After Another, and their campaign for Anderson’s film is a healthy one as well. What’s instructive is that Warner is treating both films equally, as opposed to putting all their chips on the frontrunner. They have decided to keep Sinners in the fight.
We are still a long way from Oscar night on March 15, and narratives could (and probably will) change, including the current one that has One Battle After Another as the prohibitive Best Picture favorite. The race may well shift, and is already shifting, to a battle between two titans: One Battle After Another and Sinners.
They may be far more equally matched than we think.
