It took long enough. While the latest leanings had “The Brutalist” pulling ahead, that’s now been proven to be a false flag. We now officially have in our hands the Oscar frontrunner for Best Picture, and it’s Sean Baker’s “Anora.”
On Saturday night, “Anora” picked up prizes from the Directors Guild and the Producers Guild. The Best Picture race is now practically over; when a film wins both of these precursor awards it lays down a hard-to-beat path for Oscar gold.
These wins for “Anora” come hot off the heels of it winning the top prize at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday. It doesn’t get much clearer than DGA and PGA, but that Critics Choice win is just further evidence of its power with voters.
There’s no more reliable Oscar precursor for Best Picture than the Producers Guild of America, known as the Darryl F. Zanuck Award. The PGA, which is around the same size as the Academy — both have around 10,000 members — and which shares the preferential voting system, has matched with the Oscar Best Picture winner 12 out of the last 15 years.
Before Saturday night’s “Anora” wins, you had many pundits believing that Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” would win Best Picture. In fact, every single one of the Gold Derby “experts” picked Corbet to win DGA last night and “The Brutalist” was the majority favourite to win PGA.
I never bought it. You had to believe that voters were willing to go with a 3.5 hour arthouse epic with a divisively radical second half. Not happening. It didn’t help that reports started popping up, via Variety, that Oscar voters were not even finishing ‘The Brutalist’ while screening it at home.
Oscar ballots go out on Tuesday, “Anora” is suddenly in the lead for Best Picture. Baker is the frontrunner for Best Director. Star Mikey Madison could very well win Best Actress — unless Demi Moore has something to say about that.
“Anora,” which premiered way back in May at Cannes, may overtake what THR called a six-way race that included “The Brutalist,” “A Complete Unknown,” “Conclave,” “Wicked.” This has been a strange awards season, but things are finally starting to take shape.