Best Director feels like a wide-open category this year if you think about the win, but it seems locked in terms of nominees. Martin Scorsese leads the race with The Irishman – he has the name, the prestige passion project that received critical acclaim, strong box-office numbers (despite Netflix release strategy), a streaming giant backing the campaign and enough precursor awards love – in fact, The Irishman is one of the only 3 movies this year that secured nominations with the major guild awards (PGA, DGA, WGA and SAG). Bong Joon-ho directs Parasite and the movie is enough of a worldwide hit in order to generate Bong an Oscar nomination for Best Director – a Palme d’Or winner, multiple prizes winner and a cultural phenomenon – and he has just been nominated for the DGA (and the BAFTA, and the Golden Globe, and…). Quentin Tarantino is back to the Best Director race this year with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and he also feels like a lock in this category since the movie is expected to get a lot of love across the board and it might well be Tarantino’s biggest Oscar hit, so, a Best Director nod just sounds right. After the unexpected Best Director win at the Golden Globes, Sam Mendes (1917) went from “strong contender” to “it’s almost locked”: the movie is the kind of directing showcase and it is expected to hit the box-office as beautifully as it hit the awards season! For the last place, I would say it is a Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) v. Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) v. Greta Gerwig (Little Women), but given the recent controversy around the lack of recognition for female director and their movies this year, I would say the AMPAS will play safe with the internet and the media and Greta Gerwig will end up nominated for Little Women. And she’s deserving of such an honor – Little Women is one of the best movies of the year and that’s because of Gerwig singular approach to the source material in the narrative aspects without losing the classic novel’s heart. It’s a showcase for her sensitive directing hand and (if nominated) she will become the first female director to be nominated twice for Best Director in history!
The next tier is led by Taika Waititi for Jojo Rabbit: the movie overperformed with the guilds and even with the BAFTA (it actually matches The Irishman and Parasite as one of the three movies that scored PGA, DGA, WGA and SAG for Ensemble awards nods), plus it is a movie set during WWII and the Academy uses to love those. Noah Baumbach comes next with Marriage Story and despite losing buzz after missing most of the Best Director possible noms with the major precursors, he’s still the auteur of a passion movie – plus, the Best Original Screenplay frontrunner status benefits him. Then, Todd Phillips for his CAPS LOCK direction in Joker – the movie is a smashing box-office hit and he did fairly good with the precursors (Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Director, plus some Best Adapted Screenplay nods which always help), but he isn’t really a prestige name with a prestige project. The Farewell’s director Lulu Wang could benefit from the “they don’t nominate female directors” controversy and pop-up as a surprise Best Director nominee – the movie is a small production, but A24 can play really smart sometimes and The Farewell will get a couple of passion votes for sure (those who saw it, simply loved it). Finally, the Safdie brothers for Uncut Gems: the unexpected awards sensation, the Safdies managed to win a big couple of prestige critics prizes for their directing work in this one, plus a Critics Choice Award nod for Best Director (am I underestimating the A24’s champion movie of this season?).
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