The recently-announced Oscars nominations suggest it’s going to be a slim-pickings year for musicals lovers. The Color Purple, with its $100 million budget, doesn’t even make the Best Picture list and Danielle Brooks, the film’s only other contender in the main categories who reprises her Broadway role of Sofia, is a big outsider for Supporting Actress honours.
Not that you would ever guess The Color Purple was a musical from the trailer doing the rounds but as it’s the movie version of the 2015 Broadway stage smash, it has to be a musical, doesn’t it? But only just.
It’s Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the sassy school cook in a lovely film The Holdovers, who is a shoo-in for the Supporting Actress gong if the bookmakers know their stuff. And they usually do. She is the hottest of hot favourites at odds of 1/20. Which means you have to put 20 on to win one.
As its main character is the legendary Leonard Bernstein, Maestro will pique the interest of lovers of musicals. It does make the Best Picture list and its two leads, Bradley Cooper, as Bernstein, and Carey Mulligan, as aspiring actress Felicia Montealegre, who marries him while fully aware of his struggles with his sexuality, are named for Best Actor and Actress. But it’s no musical, it’s the story of an unconventional marriage, and at 66/1 a no-hoper too.
When Oscars night comes around on 10 March, all roads lead to Oppenheimer, about the American physical theorist often referred to as “the father of the atomic bomb”.Directed by London-born Christopher Nolan and with an Irishman, Cillian Murphy, in the title role, it’s the most nominated film at the Oscars and its British equivalent, the BAFTAs – they come first, on 18 February, and are a solid guide to what’s going to happen at the Academy Awards three weeks later.
With Oppenheimer 1/10 for best movie, Nolan an even hotter favourite at 1/33 for top director and Robert Downey Jr 1/10 for Best Supporting Actor – he plays atomic energy commission expert Lewis Strauss – those three categories seem already done and dusted.
That leaves only Best Actor and Actress to be at all competitive. Oppenheimer’s Murphy is in pole position for the Actor award but is facing a sustained challenge from sentimental choice Paul Giamatti, a much-loved character actor who has never won an Oscar but is remarkable as the schoolmaster who draws the short straw in The Holdovers. Maestro’s Cooper, uncannily reminiscent of Bernstein courtesy of the false nose department, is the third-most likely winner according to the betting.
In the Best Actress category, Emma Stone has been much praised for her interpretation of the brought-back-to-life Bella Baxter in the weird Poor Things, a movie not doing anywhere near as well at the box office as expected. It’s a Marmite movie, some rave over it, others, like Clive Davis, eminent theatre (and former film) critic of The Times, gave up on it and walked out.
The mixed reception is working to the advantage of Lily Gladstone, star of Martin Scorsese’s seemingly endless Killers of the Flower Moon (just three hours 26 minutes and available now on Apple+ if you’ve got a day to spare). So this one is going to be close. British actress Carey Mulligan who is marvellous in Maestro deserves to come into that conversation but has been dismissed at 20/1 by the bookies. I hope they are wrong – she’s terrific.
BAFTA has been kinder to The Color Purple. Not only is Danielle Brooks up for Supporting Actress but Fantasia Barrino – known just as Fantasia in her singing career – is nominated for Best Actress. She would be a shock winner in a contest that appears to rest between Stone and Sandra Huller, a sublime German actress in the compelling French court drama Anatomy of a Fall. Don’t rule out a surprise winner here – either Huller or Mulligan.
Murphy is a hotter favourite for the BAFTAs than the Oscars (1/5 instead of 2/5) which means that Giamatti and Cooper are bigger outsiders. But the big winners on either side of the Atlantic are likely to be almost identical.
Upsets do happen though. Brokeback Mountain was 1/7 in 2006 but 14/1 outsider Crash got the Oscar, a result regarded in some quarters as the biggest mistake in Academy Award history. Surely not – that unwanted accolade should go to last year’s winner, the insane Everything Everywhere All At Once. Where did they find that one from?
Jeremy Chapman
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