OVP: Best Director (2022)
The Nominees Were...
Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Todd Field, Tar
Ruben Ostlund, Triangle of Sadness
My Thoughts: We are going to finish up our 2022 OVP ballot this week, the fastest series we've done in probably a decade for the OVP. My hope is that we'll do the next one even faster (I'm sitting on three more ceremonies & only have six more films to watch before I finish up a fourth, one of those films being on the docket to view this afternoon), as I've got an aggressive personal goal for myself over the next year to get through 8-9 of these given how far we still have to climb (I eventually want to get outside of the races from my lifetime). So this is all to say I'm hoping you're enjoying the plethora of articles coming out about the Oscar races, and are ready for us to finish off the 21st Century by the end of the year. Today, we tackle Best Director.
Todd Field's bizarre film career in many ways rivals Terrence Malick's, he works so infrequently and threatens to retire at virtually every corner (he's said, despite only being 59, that he's fairly certain Tar will be his final film). If it is, what a brilliant way to exit. Field's work here is marvelous, giving us a meticulous look at a woman who is at a crossroads, both intellectually and economically, trying to reckon with her past (the parts the world knows and the parts they don't). I love how deliberate he is-Tar works well because it unfolds in such a planned way, as if every moment feels fated from the opening scene. Not all films can give that sense of establishment, but Field's work here invests in his audience.
Steven Spielberg, thankfully, has not retired or waited 15 years to make a movie, though it is worth noting that this is the longest in recent memory I can recall Spielberg waiting to announce his next project. If The Fabelmans were an end to his career (I hope & suspect it won't be), it'd be a fitting finale to his time in the director's chair. You'd have to go back to ET to find a film that was clearly so personal to Spielberg, showing a version of his childhood onscreen while also introducing us to why he fell in love with the movies to begin with. Autobiographical pictures sometimes suffer because they become too specific to the director for the audience to be able to enter into, but Spielberg creates something universal in the way that he approaches his movie, and the way we are always trying to understand our parents & our past.
Martin McDonagh's work in The Banshees of Inisherin would be easy to dismiss if you were being glib. Banshees is one of those films where the director is definitely getting lesser billing to the actors & the script. But just because it's big doesn't mean he's not guiding the story. I love the way that he somehow gives the expanse in his camerawork of the island...while also underlining its limitations (few directors are as good at showing us precisely what a small town feels like...Jason Aldean, take notes). I also think the way that he frames conversation, giving us forward movement in the plot while not needing exposition in the dialogue, and the way that he makes talking so consequential is a specific skill that other directors would've gotten lost within.
Kwan & Scheinert (affectionately called "the Daniels") are the third pairing to win the Best Director Oscar, and here is where I am going to throw out a lot of the provisos I usually give about Everything Everywhere All at Once. I love the vision that they have in this movie. I think that the script sometimes gives us too much repetition in the back-half of the film, but the direction is maybe my favorite technical part of the picture, the way that it feels like each scene is building upon the last, like we are stacking multiverses on top of each other, each Evelyn & Joy feeling the weight of the others. If you are striving for originality in your work, this is a place to find it.
That's also true of Ruben Ostlund's Triangle of Sadness, a movie that works in three acts, and gives us a singular vision that Ostlund's films all have about the absurdity (and damage) that wealth and capitalism has on those around him. None of his films quite have the cruelty of this one, which is kind of the point, but unlike the other films, I do think some more care with the direction (or the director working with the editor to give us a less nauseating middle section of the picture) would've helped dramatically. Still, when this works it really works, and a lot of that is Ostlund refusing to look away from the worst parts of greed & power.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Steven Spielberg, who continues to be "just this close" to winning a third Oscar (Lincoln felt like it could've been his as well, and he was probably in second for West Side Story), besting the Daniels, McDonagh, Baz Luhrmann (Elvis), and James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water). The DGA favored the Daniels against Field, Spielberg, McDonagh, & Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick), while BAFTA went with Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) atop Field, McDonagh, the Daniels, Gina Prince-Blythewood (The Woman King), and Park Chan-Wook (Decision to Leave), the first time since 2012 that BAFTA gave this statue to someone Oscar wouldn't even nominate. Despite this, I honestly think that the Berger hype was maybe a bit much (BAFTA was doing its own thing in every category in 2022), and will stand behind the idea that Luhrmann, whom the director's branch seems to be allergic to but the Academy-at-large loves his movies, was in sixth place.
Directors I Would Have Nominated: I'm one of those old school Academy-types who thinks of a director as leading the charge on an epic film (the David Lean school of thought), and so sign me up for James Cameron getting his due here.
Oscar's Choice: The EEAAO stampede wasn't stopping to give Spielberg his third directing statue, as the Daniels took this one as well.
Oscar's Choice: The EEAAO stampede wasn't stopping to give Spielberg his third directing statue, as the Daniels took this one as well.
My Choice: I'm going to go with Spielberg, in a close contest with Todd Field. Spielberg's work feels more of a requirement to the film...it doesn't work if he isn't throwing a lot of himself into the way the movie is lensed and captured, but it's tight between those two. Behind them I'll go McDonagh, the Daniels, & then Ostlund.
Those were my thoughts-how about yours? Are you siding with me that this should've been Spielberg's big moment, or do you want to see the Daniels joyously winning? Do we think the moment has passed for Spielberg to get a third directing trophy, or could it still happen? And was it Luhrmann or Berger that was just out of reach here? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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