People love to argue about the Oscars, even when they’re not sure exactly what they’re arguing about. And awards season this year hasn’t exactly handed them a tidy narrative to work from – the biopics, like The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Spencer, are a little too self-aware to play as strictly conventional. The A-list-packed satire Don’t Look Up, and the lushly traditional musical West Side Story, fell by the wayside early on in the race.
Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast was the most obvious Oscar bait of the pack, but while Jane Campion’s meticulously directed western, The Power of the Dog, was an early frontrunner, it was Siân Heder’s Coda that ultimately walked away with Best Picture. Some saw this coming: the film had landed several crucial wins during the run-up to Oscars, including the Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild. Coda, an honest and sincere drama about a hearing child in a deaf family, was something of an underdog when it first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021. The film received rapturous reviews and a healthy dollop of publicity, and walked away from Sundance with a record-breaking $25m acquisition deal with Apple TV+.
