Awards season

Losing and losing and losing

I had imagined that if I were ever to be nominated for an Oscar, it would go like this: a phone call. A friendly voice saying, “You may need to sit down.” A whoop of glee from someone - me, or the friendly voice, or whoever was. in my home with me at the time.But when it happened for the first time, there were no whoops. What I actually thought and maybe even said was, “Thank fuck for that.”

It’s awards season right now. The big awards won’t be handed out until early next year, but the competition for next year’s Oscars and BAFTAS and Golden Globes began at the end of this summer, with the festivals - Telluride, Toronto, New York, London. That’s when the starter’s flag goes up, and the runners launch themselves towards the distant finishing line. Some of them fall straight away; it’s hard to survive critical hostility and festival audience indifference. Those movies are usually shot, right there on the track, and carried away. But if you get out of them with rave reviews and an award (because awards are presented at the festivals too) , then you’re still alive.

There are clear favourites already. Conclave, the adaptation of my brother-in-law’s excellent thriller about a papal election, will get a fistful of Oscar nominations - for best actor, best adapted screenplay, best film, probably best director. It’s one of the big beasts of the season. Anora and The Brutalist will do well. Mikey Madison, the star of Anora, is favourite to win Best Actress; Angelina Jolie will be nominated for Maria. Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) is a nailed-on Best Actor nominee, as is Adrien Brody. A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan movie, was the last of the hopefuls to be screened, and there seems to be a feeling that Timothee Chalomet’s performance is easily strong enough to turn him into a contender. (It seems somehow very Dylan that the titles of two movies about him, this one and the documentary No Direction Home, are consecutive rhyming lines in the same song.) Nobody seems crazy about Steve McQueen’s Blitz, but it’s the kind of movie that seems a safe bet for a best picture nomination. None of this is inspired guesswork on my part, by the way. It’s been more or less settled already. The frontrunners have been decided, by the people who decide on these things.