Meanwhile “May December” seems to be leaving too many voters cold (and it was completely shut out by SAG and BAFTA), while the European trio of “Saltburn,” “All of Us Strangers,” and “Society of the Snow” have yet to make a dent with American awards voters. “Air” is still a possibility, and AFI picked “Across the Spider-Verse” for its top ten, but if either were a true contender here they likely would’ve been nominated with the Producers Guild.
And that brings us back to where we started—with “The Color Purple.” Yes, it’s surprising that it missed the cut with both the Globes and the Producers Guild, but it should have an advantage with the large numbers of Academy members in the craft branches, neither of which is the case in those other two voting bodies. As a big budget musical it’ll have ample attention from those craft voters, who may be far more excited to watch something bursting with color and dancing than they are a gray, subtitled Holocaust movie.
Anything could happen with that 10th spot, and I hope “The Zone of Interest” proves my pessimism wrong. But my head says it’ll be “The Color Purple.”
BEST DIRECTOR
Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”
Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”
Greta Gerwig, “Barbie”
Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”
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Alexander Payne, “The Holdovers”
Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”
Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”
J.A. Bayona, “Society of the Snow”
Celine Song, “Past Lives”
No Academy branch has been responsible for more shocking omissions over the last decade (for example, Ridley Scott in 2016, Bradley Cooper in 2019, and Denis Villeneuve in 2022) than the Directors Branch, so this is often the hardest category to predict. The Directors Branch is one of the oldest and least diverse in the Academy, and their selections often lean artier (in a good way), more international (in a good way), and more gate-keep-y (in a not-so-good way) than the rest of the Academy.
Nolan, Scorsese, and Lanthimos still feel fairly safe (with “fairly” being the key word, as Scorsese and Lanthimos both missed out with BAFTA), but after that things could get weird. Gerwig should be firmly in, but the strong candidacy of Justine Triet worries me for both of them; because the Branch is so heavily male, they often have a hard time nominating women when there’s more than one to choose from. The Directors Guild picked Gerwig and Payne for their final two nominees, but the Academy Directors Branch usually nominates someone behind a non-English-language film. In simple terms, I think the fourth slot will go to one of the two widely beloved movies (“Barbie” and “The Holdovers”), and the fifth slot will go to one of the two critically adored European art house films (“The Zone of Interest” and “Anatomy of a Fall”). In those theoretical matchups, I’d give slight edges to “Barbie” for being so visually resplendent and “The Zone of Interest” for being so formally daring.