Why Sentimental Value Will Win Best Picture
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Less than a week now until the Oscars, and no less than 10 films are ramping up their campaigns in a last-minute push for the top prize of them all, Best Picture!
It's been a marvelous year for movies, and this race has been a fascinating one. It's certainly not quite as wide-open as last year's felt, and in fact, early indications were that we might be headed for a runaway coronation (as we've had twice in recent years, with Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All At Once). But the wealth has begun to be spread a little more in recent awards shows, and two changes to this year-- a much later ceremony than usual and the requirement for all voters to screen all films before voting --both would seemingly favor the nominees with late-breaking momentum as opposed to the early ones.
What's more, I can't remember an Oscars with a more wide-open race in most of the acting categories; of the four, only one (Jessie Buckley for Best Actress) has been a constant winner, and even she doesn't feel like a guarantee, with the groundswell of support some of her fellow nominees have. Acting races can usually tip off a Best Picture race: Mikey Madison's "upset" over Demi Moore last year spelled a huge night for eventual Best Pic winner Anora. As such, with so much unknown in those categories, it's highly possible we get some chaos in the biggest of them all as well.
Those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can truly be counted out of the race. Spotlight's and Moonlight's back-to-back upsets in 2016 and 2017, Parasite's stunner in 2020, and CODA's late surge in 2022 all taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 10 nominees reason to believe on Sunday the 15th.
Yesterday, we previewed an International nominee for Best Picture, a critically-adored slow burner that's attempting to follow in Parasite's footsteps and become just the second ever foreign-language Best Picture winner. Today, we preview an International nominee for Best Picture, a critically-adored slow burner that's attempting to follow in Parasite's footsteps and become just the second ever foreign-language Best Picture winner. The more things change, etc.!
In fairness, that's about where the similarities stop between The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value, a joint British-German-Norweigan production that runs approximately 75% in Norweigan, 25% in English. The film, the latest from acclaimed director Joachim Trier, follows sisters Nora and Agnes as they navigate the death of their mother and the return into their lives of their estranged father, a famous movie director (played by the great Stellan Skarsgård). Though none of director, lead actor, nor co-stars Renate Reinsve, or Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas are exactly household names in America, they certainly are in Scandinavia, and are adored in the film industry as well. Thus, it's no great surprise to see each one of them, as well as American co-star Elle Fanning, all nominated for individual awards at these Oscars.
It's also no surprise that this movie was positively adored by nearly all who saw it: it's one of the most-acclaimed of the year, with a Metacritic score bested only by fellow International nominee secret Agent and betting favorite One Battle After Another. It also landed on the year-end Top 10 of just about every major publication and entertainment outlet, and sure enough, has been a force on the awards circuit thus far. It kicked awards season off with a bang, picking up Golden Globes for Best Non-English Language Motion Picture and Best Supporting Actor, for Skarsgård. From there it went on to land nominations not just in the Best Foreign Film equivalent, but the Best Picture field itself in each of the BAFTAs, the Critics' Choice, and the Producers' Guild Awards.
The film lost out at each of those ensuing shows, as all other movies did, to frontrunner One Battle After Another. But they are one of just two films, along with strong contender Sinners, to match One Battle's feat of landing in both the Best Picture and Best Director races, AND boast both at least one nominated actor and one nominated actress. And unlike Sinners, it's the only nominee that was able to match One Battle in claiming a whopping four nominated actors on the night. The lack of wins anywhere on the circut for each of Reinsve, Fanning and Lilleaas mean that an Oscar win for any of the women would be an enormous surprise, but in beloved veteran Skarsgård, they have a very real shot at taking home a wide open Best Supporting Actor race. How many times now have I discussed in this series the importance to a Best Picture contender of having a winning actor on the night? The only Best Picture winner this decade to not have a lead actor/actress win was CODA, which guess what? Was a simple, but roundly-adored family drama that still yielded a win for...Best Supporting Actor.
That 'simple family drama' is an important factor here, too. Given the tenor of so much of the Oscar discourse I've seen (read: been subjected to) suggests, to me, that there is a real appetite for a movie that’s more restrained than the gun blasts and bombast of a Sinners or One Battle After Another, but also not as interested in peddling the deeply cutting grief of a Hamnet or a Train Dreams. As The Guardian said in its writeup making the case for it to win this award, Trier's film is a "movie for adults" in an era that has seen movies pandering more to the streaming-inclined, short-attention-span younger demographics. An older, more traditionalist Academy body might feel that especially poignantly. Besides, as I've suggested numerous times in this series already: a universally-appreciated, more broadly-appeasing option is always going to be a real threat in a ranked choice voting system, especially when said option has been so well-represented on the awards circuit already.
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