Sean Baker’s “Anora” was #1 on the Gold Derby consensus charts since September, but its five-month reign has officially come to an end, and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” has taken the top spot.
It’s no secret that we currently don’t have an Oscar frontrunner in the Best Picture category, but are we actually willing to put down all of our chips and bet on “The Brutalist”? I’m not. You need to have enough voters willing to reserve four hours of their time to watch the damn thing, and the first half of the film is clearly the stronger part of the story.
Now, I’m not saying “Anora” should be seen as the frontrunner, far from it, and I’m currently of the mindset that “Conclave” and “Emilia Perez” have all of the momentum going for them, but “The Brutalist” winning Best Picture would, quite frankly, surprise me.
If “The Brutalist” were to win Best Picture then, at 215 minutes, it would be the lengthiest film to win the top prize at the Oscars since 1962’s “Lawrence of Arabia” (228 minutes). In fact, only one other Best Picture winner was longer than ‘Lawrence’ and that was 1939’s “Gone With the Wind” (238 minutes).
The good news for ‘Brutalist’ is that Adrien Brody is indeed the Best Actor frontrunner, and unless Timothee Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”) pulls off the upset, he’s on track to win his second lead acting statuette. Corbet might also win Best Director, and part of it would be due to the absolute unadorned ambition he brought to making his under-$10M immigrant epic.
As it stands, and despite there being no frontrunner, it does look as though Best Picture is down to four films: “The Brutalist,” “Anora,” “Conclave,” and “Emilia Perez.”
