With the 72nd Cannes Film Festival winding down before voting begins by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s jury to select the winner of the Palme d’Or and other prizes, there is lots of speculation about who will get them. Knowing the completely unpredictable nature of past Cannes juries I won’t engage in futile predictions. I never do. I mean, who knows which way those winds are blowing? But looking forward I can forecast some of the films coming out of this very good Cannes selection that might resonate all the way to the Oscars, and isn’t that what we really want to dish on?
In recent years, other than setting the table for the Foreign Language Film race (now called Best International Film), the Cannes Film Festival’s mid-May berth hasn’t been exactly friendly to the agendas of most campaigns, and thus has lost steam to Venice, which launches the more Oscar-centric fall festival season. That is where Roma, The Shape of Water, La La Land and many others have chosen to open lately. No Palme d’Or winner has gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar since Marty in 1955, though I have a feeling Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, winner of three other key Oscars, came very close.
Last year’s Grand Prize (second place) winner, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, did go on to six Oscar nominations including Best Picture with an Adapted Screenplay win. Not a bad showing for Cannes considering most of the goodies are held for fall and studios and distributors feel taking one of those to the South of France in the spring is a little too risky. BlacKkKlansman was at Cannes because Lee wanted an early August release to coincide with the first anniversary of Charlottesville. Focus couldn’t travel the fall fest circuit, so Cannes made sense and the film was remembered by voters.
The same thing applies to the highest-profile Oscar contenders coming out of Cannes this year. Paramount used the fest to blast off Elton John biopic musical Rocketman in advance of its May 31 domestic opening, and got immediate awards buzz for lead actor Taron Egerton as a bonus. Sony brought in Cannes fave and former Palme d’Or winner Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to hype its mid-summer launch July 26, and great reviews have helped put it instantly in the Oscar season game. Had the release dates for either of these films been in the fall I doubt we would have seen either one of them here, although Tarantino seemed hell-bent on celebrating the 25th anniversary on the exact day of the Cannes debut of his 1994 Palme d’Or winner Pulp Fiction here. You might recall that film went on to seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Director, and won for its Original Screenplay.
The race for the Best Actor Oscar is the one category that has really heated up here and gives us a good blueprint of at least four potential nominees. So let’s start with three of them from the highest-profile Academy Award-friendly offerings Cannes gave us this year.
First up obviously is Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which came in as the most anticipated film in this year’s Cannes competition and did nothing to harm its eventual Oscar chances or commercial box office outlook. Sony tells me it is committed to a big Oscar campaign, and why not? An impressive three of the eight films Tarantino has written and directed went on to Best Picture nominations (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained) and there is no reason to believe at this point that his most personal yet can’t follow that trajectory, along with writing and directing nods for QT, no matter what happens here. Both Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio scored great reviews and are two of those four potential Best Actor nominees coming off Cannes. That is, if Sony doesn’t attempt to split them up and perhaps campaign DiCaprio in lead and Pitt in support (DiCaprio plays a fading TV star and Pitt is his stuntman and driver), but that isn’t where the thinking seems to be at this early point. I asked Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman that very question at the film’s premiere afterparty on Tuesday night. “I think they are both leads, but we will see what the critics in the world say. I personally think they are deserving, but then I am biased. Very,” he laughed.
Pitt delivers a career-best performance if you ask me. He has never won for acting despite three previous nominations. He does have an Oscar as a producer on 12 Years a Slave. DiCaprio won Best Actor for The Revenant, his last film before this one, after four previous nominations. His role as a struggling actor could really resonate with his colleagues in the acting branch who are the ones voting and no doubt will identify. Other possible nominations include Margot Robbie, lovely in support as Sharon Tate, and especially crafts categories.
Rocketman had a very successful Cannes launch, especially with Elton John’s appearance and wholehearted support of the warts-and-all approach of the film and his endorsement of Egerton, who not only wowed the Cannes crowd on screen by doing his own singing so well, but also even joined John on the title song at the beachside afterparty. Of course all comparisons are to recent $900 million smash Bohemian Rhapsody, which won a leading four Oscars including Best Actor for Rami Malek, who brilliantly played Freddie Mercury. But unlike Egerton, he did not do his own singing. The thinking is how can the Academy deny a nomination to Egerton who went the extra mile and embodied Elton John, musically and dramatically? Whether the film itself can join the Best Picture race remains to be seen after it opens and how well it does. Bohemian was a November release, so had the advantage of prime Oscar real estate theatrically that the summer musical Rocketman doesn’t. Golden Globe nominations however are assured.
So now we have a potential Best Actor race already with Pitt, DiCaprio and Egerton. The fourth most assuredly is a likely first ever Oscar nomination for Antonio Banderas giving the performance of his career as the director (an alter ego of Pedro Almodovar) in the very personal Almodovar masterpiece Pain and Glory, which Sony Pictures Classics will open stateside in October. It is already buzzed to deliver big rewards from Cannes, but that won’t matter either way. Almodovar is an Oscar favorite, having already won a couple, and this film, in many ways autobiographical, is his masterpiece. It should gather Oscar support not only in the International Film category, but also for Banderas, possibly past winner Penelope Cruz as his mother, and Almodovar himself for writing and directing. Banderas had a heart attack a couple of years ago, but during a press lunch in Cannes told me Almodovar told him to use that acting-wise in his highly emotional and moving performance. He did. That kind of story can go a long way in an Oscar campaign.
– Courtesy: Deadline
