From nowhere, like a Lazarus of film awards, the Oscars feel alive again. This is more surprising than Harry Styles starring in Dunkirk. During the years of #oscarssowhite protests and assorted accusations of irrelevance, nobody expected it to happen, but the nine nominees for best picture this year include a race satire (Get Out) and a love story between a woman and a fish (The Shape of Water). One film has a boy making love to a peach.
The voters even — and this is just incredible — nominated a woman for best director, not to mention a black director and two black men for best actor. Out of five! There are also two black women in the running for supporting actress. A trans director is up for best documentary, a Pakistan-born writer could scoop best original screenplay and the frontrunner for best animated film is a lovely story about Mexico.
But this isn’t just diversity bingo. Rather, it’s a pat on the back, and a welcome change that allows fans actually to enjoy the Oscars and not feel they’re on the edge of some tired old racist swamp.
The problem of the past decade or so was that Academy voters were 94% white and 77% male, and thus tended to pick something cosy, like a film about theatres (Birdman), rather than something that made them feel guilty, such as the Martin Luther King biopic Selma.
Two years ago, though, promises were made about membership, to bring in more diversity, and the past couple of line-ups show how seismic those shifts have been. The current best picture is the gay and black Moonlight, while the best bet in 2018 is Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which bares the soul of an older woman (Frances McDormand) out for revenge after her daughter is murdered.
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This year’s other big movies include Get Out, about the vicious treatment of black people by white America, and Call Me by Your Name, in which two gorgeous male actors fondle each other in Italy.
So that’s feminist, black and gay content, with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour — Second World War films that would have been certs for a win a decade ago — in the mix, but way off taking the main prize home.
Cynics, probably using the word “snowflake”, will say this is pandering to a hashtag: a venerable institution is being made to look weak because lefties are good at tweeting. But let’s take the best director category. The five nominees are Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread); Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water); Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird); Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk); and Jordan Peele (Get Out). Which film makers do you think have been unjustly snubbed? For argument’s sake, who do you think Gerwig and Peele have taken the place of, in the voters’ buckling under accusations of non-diversity? Steven Spielberg, for his effective but routine The Post? Martin McDonagh, for his messy Three Billboards? Joe Wright, for Gary Oldman’s prosthetics in the 457th film about Churchill? Well, quite.
The directors nominated are just the five best of the year — though I’d like to have seen Luca Guadagnino on a list of six for Call Me by Your Name. This isn’t affirmative action, it’s talent rising to the top, thanks to a voter pool more likely actually to watch their films. (Not all voters see everything. The members get the screeners, then it is up to them.)
Saving the best for last, though, let’s give huge praise to the Academy — feels odd, doesn’t it? — for putting Gerwig among the men for the director of the year gong. Her Lady Bird is exceptional, so smartly made and seamlessly cut that its technical bravura is hidden. In 90 minutes, viewers get under the skin of a dozen characters, and it is pathetic that Bafta voters ignored that.
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The Oscars didn’t, so they can be seen, contrary to all the headlines, as the brains of film again, celebrating the varied and strange — #oscarssoright, right?
Oscars 2018: list of nominees for the big four awards
Best picture
Call Me By Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best director
Dunkirk — Christopher Nolan
Get Out — Jordan Peele
Lady Bird — Greta Gerwig
Phantom Thread — Paul Thomas Anderson
The Shape of Water — Guillermo Del Toro
Best actress
Sally Hawkins — The Shape of Water
Frances McDormand — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie — I, Tonya
Saoirse Ronan — Lady Bird
Meryl Streep — The Post
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Best actor
Timothée Chalamet — Call Me By Your Name
Daniel Day-Lewis — Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya — Get Out
Gary Oldman — Darkest Hour
Denzel Washington — Roman J Israel, Esq
