Oscars: This Year’s Best Director Race is Thoroughly Unpredictable

Never won a Directing Oscar: Kubrick, Hitchcock, Godard, Welles, Kurosawa, Lynch, PTA, Chaplin, Tarantino, Cronenberg, Malick, Fellini, Bergman, Varda, Leone, Fincher, Altman, Hawks, Lumet, Campion, Herzog, Scott, Gilliam, Preminger, Cassavetes, Lang— It’s all meaningless, folks.

And yet, it’s always fun to speculate way ahead of time when it comes to the Best Director category. Why? Because we want the best filmmakers to win so that they have more freedom to make more movies. It’s as simple as that.

Upon request, I’ve decided to update my Best Director contenders list. Clearly, things have changed since I first published in June.

I’ve painstakingly tried to decipher through many of the question marks for this year’s fall crop of contenders. The result, to keep a very close eye out on these ten filmmakers:

• Steven Spielberg (The Fablemans)

• Damien Chazelle (Babylon)

• Todd Field (TAR)

• Sarah Polley (Women Talking)

• Kwan/Scheinert (Everything Everywhere …)

• Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin)

Potential spoilers could turn out to be James Cameron (Avatar: The Way of Water), Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King), Rian Johnson (Glass Onion), Baz Luhrmann (Elvis) and Chinonye Chukwu (Till).

I’m actually leaning towards Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) potentially having a legitimate shot at a nomination. It wasn’t just Tom Cruise who made the blockbuster a success, but also Kosinski’s chops behind the camera.

For now, I’m sticking with these as the main contenders. Spielberg is the de facto frontrunner. And yet, something tells me he won’t win for “The Fabelmans.” Don’t get me wrong, the film will be highly celebrated with a slew of noms, and there’s the overall sense that Spielberg is due for another Oscar, but I don’t know if the Fabelmans/ Spielberg train can maintain the current momentum it has all the way to next year’s ceremony.

Maybe a bolder directorial statement could turn out to be the winner. There’s a lot of respect and admiration for what Todd Field created with “TÁR.” He’s also been away for close to two decades, his triumphant comeback is definitely a narrative that needs to paid attention to.

If “Babylon” turns out to be as great as we’re being led to believe, one can easily see Damien Chazelle winning his second Best Director trophy for the 1920s epic. Alas, the film needs to be seen first and there’s no guarantee it’ll get raves, people have already been complaining about the recently released “Babylon” trailer as underwhelming.

Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan are currently campaigning and absolutely killing it in interviews and at screening Q&As, but their filmmaking style might be too much to handle for older academy voters who might see “Everything Everywhere All At Once” as ADD-driven stylistic overkill.

Why Sarah Polley is even in contention is a mystery to me and I honestly have no time to dissect her overpraised film again in these pages. Her “Women Talking” has received good reviews, but there are definitely detractors of the film out there and I don’t believe she stands a chance at winning. A nomination is possible though.

As for the potential dark horse nominee, most likely a foreign filmmaker …

I would be ecstatic if Audrey Diwan (Happening) could muster up some Oscar buzz. Her film is now the most topical of the 2022 US release calendar.

Then there’s the “Cannes slot” which occurs every few years. This year, Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave) might sneak in there, although I’m very skeptical about his intricately webbed film going anywhere. More realistically, Palme d’Or winner Ruben Ostlund (Triangle Sadness) is gaining buzz — he could be the one.

Lukas Dhont (Close), might also have the best chance, after Ostlund, as he directed a film that completely adheres to the Academy’s film sensibilities.