We are just weeks away from the 96th Academy Awards, and the races in each category are starting to come to a head. This past weekend, the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Screen Actor Guild Awards each took place, giving cinephiles a better indication of the films and performances that may come out on top at this year’s Oscars.
SAG AWARDS
This year’s SAG Awards generally went as expected in almost every category. Da’Vine Joy Randolph took home Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Holdovers. She expressed her gratitude and deep love for the craft in a beautiful acceptance speech. If she wasn’t already a lock to win the Oscar, this will definitely sway voters who may have been on the fence. Meanwhile, Robert Downey Jr. has also been sweeping all season and once again took home the award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Oppenheimer. He is competing in a more competitive field, and some pundits were holding out hope that perhaps Ryan Gosling would win the SAG and turn this category into an unpredictable race.
Another category that seems fairly locked-in at this point is Best Actor. For a while it seemed as if there was a groundswell of support for Paul Giamatti for his performance in The Holdovers. His Golden Globes speech (and in-and-out afterparty) went viral and an overdue narrative began to form. However, Cillian Murphy’s intense and layered portrayal of Robert J. Oppenheimer is clearly in another league, and the industry seems to agree, as he’s won every major award since unexpectedly losing the Critics Choice Award to Giamatti.
The only acting category that still seems like a race is Best Actress, where we have an established A-lister in her prime going against a relative newcomer with an incredibly compelling narrative. Emma Stone’s demanding and committed performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things is widely agreed to be her crowning achievement. Since the film premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival, she has been winning over the hearts of audiences and established herself as an early frontrunner to win her second Best Actress prize! However, once critics groups started awarding their winners, they started siding with Lily Gladstone, who delivers a far more subtle and meaningful performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. Stone tipped the scale in her favour when she won the Critics Choice Award and the BAFTA, but Gladstone unexpectedly took home the SAG. They usually go for more in-your-face performances, so the fact that they chose Gladstone over Stone is telling and foreshadows the most probable outcome at the Oscars
Oppenheimer expectedly took home SAG ensemble over Barbie, proving that it is as close as something could get to a lock to win Best Picture.
INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS
The Film Independent Spirit Awards announced their winners this past weekend. While not nearly as important to the Oscar race as the SAGs, it is the only major awards ceremony voted on by primarily film enthusiasts who aren’t working within the industry, so it’s always interesting to take a look at the winners.
Past Lives, one of this past year’s most beloved film, and one that will unfortunately likely go home empty handed at the Oscars, it thankfully got its due at the Independent Spirit Awards. The film won Best Feature, and Celine Song took home the statue for Best Director. However, the film didn’t sweep in the way that many expected it to.
Best Lead Performance went to Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction over Greta Lee. Wright is a fan favourite who is finally getting his due this year after an impressive long standing career in both independent and mainstream cinema and television. He was also the only nominee in this category to earn an Oscar nomination. The film also won Best Screenplay for Cord Jefferson, who is starting to look like a likely candidate to win Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph took home Best Supporting Performance for her role in The Holdovers, which she will certainly repeat at the Oscars. Her soulful and warm performance struck a chord with both audiences and critics, who unanimously agree she delivered one of the strongest performances of the year. Her co-star, Dominic Sessa, took home Best Breakthrough Performance. The film also unexpectedly won Best Cinematography, for its grainy, yet subtle imitation of 1970s aesthetics.
While Charles Melton may have lost in the Best Supporting Performance category to Randolph, May December did take home Best First Screenplay for Samy Burch. A.V. Rockwell won Best First Feature for her directorial work on the Sundance breakout hit, A Thousand and One. Four Daughters took home Best Documentary Feature, while Anatomy of a Fall won Best International Feature over The Zone of Interest. While the Film Independent Spirit Awards has started to increasingly crossover with the Academy Awards in recent years, they proved that they still have room to award true blue indies, as they gave Best Editing to How to Blow Up a Pipeline.
Stay tuned for more awards coverage as we inch closer and closer to the upcoming 96th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 10th.
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