It’s 22 years since Chicago became the tenth film musical to win the Best Picture Oscar, although for 20 seconds La La Land was the 11th in 2016 until they realised the wrong envelope had been given to Warren Beatty to read out, but is 2025 when the drought will end?
Two musicals, Wicked and Emilia Pérez, made the final ten for Oscars night on 2 March after nominations for Hollywood’s big night were eventually announced last week. They had been twice delayed out of respect to the Los Angeles wildfire victims.
This is the first time since 1969 – Oliver! and Funny Girl – that two have made it to what was then the final five. And the Lionel Bart musical, currently in revival in the West End, of course won. Is it an omen?
Music of a different sort for sure but a third contender comes in the shape of A Complete Unknown (a line from ‘Like a Rolling Stone’), the story of Bob Dylan’s early days as a singer-songwriter-poet in Greenwich Village in the 1960s.
The wildly audacious Emilia Pérez, directed by Frenchman Jacques Audiard, set in Mexico and spoken in Spanish, is the most nominated movie of the year with 13 nominations – a record for a ‘foreign’ film. Wicked has ten and A Complete Unknown eight.
All three are likely to be eclipsed by The Brutalist, the longest film on the list at three hours 35 minutes but is it the best? It’s the story of a visionary architect fleeing Europe with his wife to build a new life in the USA. The bookies don’t often get it wrong and they have this one as even-money favourite, but Emilia Pérez is closing all the time and as short as 5/2 in places.
Wicked has gone right out to 25/1 after its director Jon M Chu failed to make the short list for Best Director. It is rare for a film to win the top award when its director can’t even make the top five.
The Brutalist’s Brady Corbet appears to have director honours sewn up. He’s the 1/5 hotpot for that gong with Audiard at 8/1 for the bold Emilia Pérez.
British actress-singer Cynthia Erivo is rightly up for Best Actress for her Elphaba in Wicked but at 14/1 not expected to trouble odds-on favourite Demi Moore, nominated for The Substance.
Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón, sensational as the trans-gangster in Emilia Pérez, is 12/1 in this category and would be the first transgender actress to win this top award.
Best chance for a musical winner has to be Zoe Saldana as the lawyer who organises the disappearance of drugs cartel boss Manitas and the transgender operation that turns the menacing lowlife into classy socialite Emilia. Saldana does her own singing and dancing too and her big number ‘El Mal’ is one of two from the movie up for Original Song.
Three of the main contenders for Best Supporting Actress, Saldana, pop star Ariana Grande as Glinda in Wicked and Monica Barbaro, who has the divine voice of Dylan’s girlfriend Joan Baez off to a T in A Complete Unknown, come from musicals. So it will a shock if one of them doesn’t win. From the betting it looks certain to be Saldana, the 1/7 favourite. Grande is second best at 5/1 and Barbaro at 16/1. I do hope A Complete Unknown wins something – it’s a cracking movie.
Adrien Brody, star of The Brutalist, bars the way to Timothée Chalamet’s Oscar-worthy take-off of Dylan, the rebel who accepted but didn’t turn up to receive his Nobel Prize for Literature. Like Barbaro, Chalamet took months learning Dylan’s almost impossible-to-imitate vocals and the way he played guitar and mouth organ. He’s a firm 2/1 second favourite behind 8/13 Brody. In the same movie, Edward Norton, brilliantly lifelike as folk music icon Pete Seeger, is 16/1 for Best Supporting Actor in a category totally dominated by Kieran Culkin’s turn as Benji Kaplan in A Real Pain.
The Best Picture nominees are Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance and Wicked.
Jeremy Chapman
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