Oscars Spotlight: Writing
I can't confidently predict Adapted Screenplay or Original Screenplay, but what I would vote for in each is a no-brainer.
The Nominees:
Adapted Screenplay
CODA
Screenplay by Siân Heder
DRIVE MY CAR
Screenplay by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe
DUNE
Screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth
THE LOST DAUGHTER
Written by Maggie Gyllenhaal
THE POWER OF THE DOG
Written by Jane Campion
Who Will Win: CODA
Who Could Win: The Power of the Dog
Who Should Win: Drive My Car
Image Credit: Vanity Fair
Original Screenplay
BELFAST
Written by Kenneth Branagh
DON'T LOOK UP
Screenplay by Adam McKay; Story by Adam McKay & David Sirota
KING RICHARD
Written by Zach Baylin
LICORICE PIZZA
Written by Paul Thomas Anderson
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
Written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
Who Will Win: Belfast
Who Could Win: Licorice Pizza or Don’t Look Up
Who Should Win: The Worst Person in the World
Image Credit: Vanity Fair
You’d think that as an English PhD and a writing professor I would have the screenplay categories all figured out. You’d be wrong. In fact, I’ve been hanging back on reviewing these two because I think they have been the toughest to predict this year, especially with the last round of precursor awards that came in last weekend. Most notably, the WGA (writer’s guild) surprisingly went to Don’t Look Up, which wasn’t even in the conversation for an Oscar win until then.
In general, each of the writing awards have spread across multiple nominees. In Adapted Screenplay, The Lost Daughter won the USC Scripter, CODA shockingly won the BAFTA (notably over The Power of the Dog) and WGA, but The Power of the Dog won Critic’s Choice. There’s been just as much chaos in Original Screenplay. BAFTA gave their prize to Licorice Pizza, Belfast won Critic’s Choice, and then, as I mentioned earlier, the WGA went to Don’t Look Up, revealing Licorice Pizza’s vulnerability. So the precursor strategy or “resume” — as the Mike, Mike, and Oscar podcast aptly calls it — is pretty much useless here.
The WGA can be a wonky precursor metric. This guild, unlike others, only nominates writers who have paid a membership fee, which means that frontrunners in some years may not even compete. The Power of the Dog and Belfast were not eligible, which means that we don’t really know how that group of writers would have voted differently had they been in their respective nominating pools.
So if I’m not relying heavily on precursor awards, what do I use? I’ve heard many pundits — but most recently Sean Fennessey and Joanna Robinson on The Big Picture — observe that in recent years, Original Screenplay is the category reserved for “the cool kids,” meaning that the more off-beat, creative, or edgy films that would not normally have the mass appeal to win Best Picture can get their nod here. This is the category that let Promising Young Woman, Parasite, Get Out, and Her shine. This is not to say that more paint by number and/or feel good movies can’t win. Green Book won in 2018. But I’d say it’s in the minority, especially in the past five years.
By this logic, Paul Thomas Anderson’s proto-hipster “staying of age” dramedy should be at the front of the line. PTA is a much beloved filmmaker, and he’s never won an Oscar despite being nominated 11 times. However! However. (You knew it was coming.) I don’t think Licorice Pizza is his strongest work to date and I suspect that many voters assume they’re going to get another chance to give him his statue.
What may be raining on PTA’s parade even more is the cluster of controversies surrounding the film. Many viewers object to a relationship between a 15-year-old and a 25-year-old on screen. Even more find the use of a fake Japanese accent by one of the white characters problematic.
Image Credit: The New York Times
When I saw the film, I was really bracing for impact because I knew about the controversies beforehand. While the relationship does sound suspect on paper, it seems fine in practice. Part of the point of the film is to put the main character, Alana, in a position where she feels like she has to choose to “grow up” or keep hanging out with “Gary and his 15-year-old friends.” This could still have been accomplished by aging Gary up to 18; I don’t think that diminishes the story at all, and people wouldn’t have had as much of a problem with it.
The fake Japanese accent is indeed awful — it makes fun of Asian accents in general and is extremely offensive. I do think that it is commenting on the racist attitudes Americans had in the 70s. The character — a restauranteur who tries to make his chain of Japanese restaurants more authentic by pretending to have a Japanese wife (we see him hire more than one actress to play the part over the course of the film) — is very clearly supposed to be ridiculous and in the wrong. The problem is, though, that PTA didn’t actually provide any subtextual commentary through which to understand that character as racist. If that really was what he was going for, he needed to make the discourse surrounding it more explicit and obvious. Instead it’s just a bit that’s not very funny and causes more harm than good when viewers see it.
If the revered auteur had gotten in front of the backlash and explained the historicizing of that type of casual racism and the commodification of Asian culture, the Licorice Pizza Oscar campaign would be in a very different place now. Instead, Anderson chose to dismiss the controversy, saying in an interview with IndieWire that he is genuinely confused by the backlash. He says, “To me, I’m not sure what they — you know, what is the problem? The problem is that he was an idiot saying stupid shit?” When Eric Kohn rightfully pressed him on that by explaining that “The problem is that his racism could give people permission to laugh at the stereotype, rather than his stupidity.” PTA then made a comment about how it’s hard to separate his intentions from the way something lands. If only he had just explained what those intentions were a little more. I certainly would not be droning on about who’s going to win in Original Screenplay as much.
Licorice Pizza would not be my personal pick here anyway. My cool kids vote would go to Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier for The Worst Person in the World. That script represents the complexities of life without external judgment, very subtly yet powerfully shows how modern society suffocates women, and refuses to fit into a genre box in a way — all of which warrant a win above any other nominee in this category. The dialogue is smart, playful, yet serious when it needs to be, and the “chapter” structure isn’t just a cumbersome novelty; it’s a powerful narrative tool.
Image Credit: The New York Times
You might be wondering by now. Wait a minute…didn’t your “will win” at the top of the review say Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast was going to win? I know, I think it’s very strange and a little wrong too. Here’s the warped logic. Since Licorice Pizza underperformed in the precursors and Don’t Look Up is more polarizing, all the votes that would have gone to Licorice Pizza will end up switching to Branagh, who has been campaigning hard since last fall and who has 8 nominations but, like PTA, no win. Voters will want to reward his most personal film, even if it’s not a “cool kid” pick.
The Little Gold Men podcast and The Next Best Picture podcast had a very similar breakdown. David Canfield made a particularly astute observation on Little Gold Men; he said that Belfast makes more sense as a voter’s screenplay pick because “it’s a very personal, intimate, and gently funny memoir that will appeal as a piece of writing.” I don’t remember the writing being particularly sophisticated in Belfast, but I would agree that Branagh reflecting on his childhood would signal “writerly.”
For Adapted Screenplay, the prediction is relatively easier to make, but is still up in the air depending on how much momentum you think CODA has gained in the Best Picture race recently. With several surprise wins under its belt and a force of nature campaign that culminated at The White House (yes, that one), CODA will likely win in this category because back in early February, before as many people were singing its praises, the film only received three nominations: Adapted Screenplay, Actor in a Supporting Role, and Best Picture. Voters will now be eager to reward the film wherever they can, making a sweep of its nominations very possible.
This line of thinking works in the other direction as well. Screenplay categories in general often portend a Best Picture win. If CODA or The Power of the Dog prevail, pundits are going to lose their minds in anticipation of the final award of the night.
I don’t mean to sound overly confident here by any means. A lot of pundits say this is actually a three-way race between three female writers: Sian Heder, Jane Campion, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal has gotten a lot of attention because The Lost Daughter is her very successful directorial debut. I have some issues with the film overall, but my favorite part of it was its ability to capture the impressionistic sensation of reading a great novel. I wouldn’t blame voters if they wanted to reward that.
Personally, I think CODA’s screenplay is its weakest component. Yes, the family story is emotionally powerful. But the way Writer/Director Sian Heder tells that story is fairly standard, or at the very least neutral — functional more than artistic. I’m thinking of the “young woman discovers her talent and applies to college against all odds” part of the story. If voters, on the other hand, are mostly thinking of the scenes in which characters explicitly discuss the deaf experience and the ableist society they live in, then I can kind of see where they’re coming from.
Plus, CODA is in the Adapted category because it’s the remake of a 2014 French film, La Famille Bélier. If we’re focusing our choice more on the feat of adaptation, the Sundance darling that made a mainstream splash (emphasis on stream there, thanks to AppleTV+) is difficult to measure against the other four films that have adapted literary works, making a bigger jump from textual to cinematic narrative.
If I’m just basing my vote on degree of difficulty, I’m tempted to choose Dune (again) because Frank Herbert’s novel was until now famously considered unadaptable. But since Dune is the only source text on this list I’ve read, I can’t invoke that reasoning with much confidence. If I’m more broadly considering the quality of each of these screenplays, then Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car very quickly buoys to the surface. The pacing of the film is deliberate and even though it takes its time to tell the story, the structure laid out by the screenplay makes a three-hour film completely captivating; I barely noticed time passing because I was so preoccupied with the characters and story.
Image Credit: IndieWire
Complex and layered are the best words I can use to describe this screenplay. Hamaguchi and Oe juxtapose Chekhov’s words with what’s happening in the personal lives of the actors delivering them in a way that so elegantly creates subtext, metaphor, and broader themes. It’s figurative in the best way. It’s one of those narratives that slowly builds over time with huge payoffs at the end when all the delicate threads introduced early on loop back again. It’s never too much or too little — it’s always just enough.
I wish it weren’t relegated, per tradition, to winning in International Feature only; sadly, that will all but certainly be the case because the few times international films have made it into other categories, the results communicate that the nomination itself is supposed to be the reward. Were it not for this trend, it might be a serious contender in this category and in Best Picture. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I write about this film because it was the best film of the year for me, but I’ll take the opportunity now to recommend it. Even if it’s not your usual cup of tea; give it a chance.
Well, at least it’s easier to separate my heart from my head when predicting these categories. I’ll be on the edge of my seat waiting to see who wins these on Sunday.