Trust us, the film is far more subversive and slippery than even that description implies. It’s also bleakly funny and off-the-beaten-path for many awards voters. Indeed, the film was not nominated even at the Gothams for Director or Best Actor. The latter award went to Coleman Domingo for stunning work in Sing Sing, a striking new drama directed and co-written by Greg Kewedar about the theater program in the actual Sing Sing prison. Sing Sing also dominated the Gothams with wins in the Best Supporting Actor category, courtesy of Clarence Maclin’s performance, and a Film Tribute Award. Meanwhile Amazon/MGM’s Nickel Boys made an impression when it won Best Director for RaMell Ross and Breakthrough Performance for Brandon Wilson.
It should be noted, too, that Ross’ work on Nickel Boys is the only place of major overlap with the New York Film Critics Circle, with the prestigious critics organization mostly going head-over-heels for Brady Corbet’s pensive and formidable The Brutalist, another A24 release, this one clocking in at an astounding 3.5 hours (with an intermission). That film also seems much more the speed of the critics group that recently awarded Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon Best Picture, with The Brutalist being an epic study of the Jewish-American immigrant experience after World War II and the Holocaust. The Brutalist also won Best Actor for Adrien Brody.
Meanwhile two performances that haven’t been heavily featured in rotation among awards watchers’ blogs, that of Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths and Carol Kane in Between the Temples, won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. Elsewhere Kieran Culkin took Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain while Sean Baker picked up Best Screenplay for Anora.
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly about the state of the Oscar race, it is worth comparing these early wins with yesterday’s Independent Spirit Awards nominations, which like Gotham and the general tastes of the NYFCC voting body, celebrates independent American cinema. While Sing Sing is nominated for Best Picture by the Spirits, neither of Gotham’s or NYFCC’s biggest winners, A Different Man or The Brutalist, are. In their place is Anora and genre-fare like The Substance and I Saw the TV Glow.
Cumulatively, these films reveal a race that is in a complete state of flux with no obvious frontrunner.
It should be noted that none of these voting groups are obvious predictors of the voting tastes of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Most of the films nominated for Best Picture by the Spirit Awards never get nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. But with a single exception, four of the last five years featured one or two of the Best Picture Oscar nominees overlapping with the Spirits, and twice they shared the Best Picture winner: Nomadland and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Five of the last six Gotham Awards’ Best Picture winners likewise were nominated for the Oscars top prize with two of the Gothams’ winners—again Nomadland and Everything Everywhere—taking home the same big prize.