Predictions Friday: Jeff Nichols’ Loving Could Be a Major Oscar Player

The Oscar game is funny and silly at once. It isn’t so much about the films themselves. It’s about managing expectations of potential voters. You don’t want to peak too soon. You want to fly under the radar as long as possible – or as I like to think about it, pretend you’re Ripley rescuing Newt and are being careful not to awaken the alien. Why? Because the moment a film becomes a frontrunner it immediately becomes a target for attack. At best, opinions can begin deflate simply because first viewers have proclaimed it a frontrunner — so when more people see it, they may think, “Is that all it is?” I find this to be one of the worst things about the hunt for Best Picture of the Year because, just like American elections, it is so rarely about the best or most qualified. To quote the old saw, it’s not about Mr. Right, it’s about Mr. Right Now. Still, after screening Nichols’ Loving, I think it is probably safe to say that it will be among the year’s standouts.

Without jinxing the film by setting expectations too high, Nichols is probably going to garner attention from the Hollywood elite for two of his films released this year: Midnight Special and Loving. These are the two best films I’ve seen this year. They’re currently at the top of a shortlist of others that stand out. James Schamus’ provocative and deeply moving Indignation. Robert Eggers’ The Witch, one of the best horror films I’ve seen in a very long time, and Anna Rose Holmer’s dazzling The Fits. Granted, I’ve not yet seen either Nate Parker’s Sundance stunner, The Birth of a Nation, or Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, so my selection pool has been limited. Still, that Jeff Nichols hit it out of the park not once but twice in the same year is something I do believe the industry will notice. In a big way.

In his review of Midnight Special, Kenneth Turan said he was grateful that Nichols wasn’t yet directing big budget Hollywood films and that he was devoting his talent and energy to writing and directing films that matter to him. At the time, I felt somewhat resentful of that statement because it made me think about how few directors out there even have the luxury to make that choice. Yet, after seeing both Midnight Special and Loving, I have to agree that it’s extremely rare now to see a director so focused, original and brilliant at this scale of independent filmmaking. This is the same quality Ava DuVernay displayed with her first two moody, exceptional films I Will Follow and Middle of Nowhere. DuVernay similarly worked her way up to big budget films, and I suspect that sooner or later Nichols will do the same.

It’s a tad annoying that there is a filmmaker out there as young and talented as Jeff Nichols. Here is his short but remarkable filmography so far:

Shotgun Stories
Take Shelter
Mud
Midnight Special
Loving

He wrote and directed all of them. Michael Shannon starred in all except Mud (he has a supporting part in Loving). Now that I’ve seen two exceptional films from Nichols in the same year I have to agree with Turan: Nichols is exactly the kind of director Hollywood studios want to co-opt and put in charge of big-budget super hero movies. Not that that’s always a bad thing, but it’s not been fruitful for many. It can be a badge of success if they pull it off, no doubt, or it can just easily wreck a director’s reputation if they falter.

Nichols creates a fully-formed universe of characters with each film he makes. Even though Midnight Special is about a kid with supernatural powers and Loving is about a marriage that was illegal throughout the South in the ’60s, both films are grounded with Nichols’ ability to fill us with wonder and respect whenever everyday Americana brushes up against the extraordinary.

Nichols’ movies have not seemed to resonate, so far, with Academy voters perhaps because they do not hit the extreme emotional highs required to move thousands of voters in a consensus. Take Shelter and Mud were probably too subtle for them, and Midnight Special will likely be, as well. For some, even Loving could be considered too low key, too moody, too quiet and, yes, too subtle for Oscar recognition. I’m not so sure about that, though. It’s way too soon to know anything about anything but I can tell you this for a certainty: this movie takes its time getting to where its going but, when it finally does, it packs an emotional punch. Loving is about an interracial couple 50 years ago, but it’s also about the kind fear and ignorance that still exists today, a time when LGBT families have fought for their legal right to marry, to inherit property, to adopt and raise children. The same forces that tried to prevent black and white lovers from becoming life partners, are still with us, even in 2016. For a nation that is supposedly boasts freedom as its foundation, there has certainly always been an abundance of oppression and repeated efforts to enforce state control over basic human rights.

What I love about Nichols as a storyteller is his confidence in long, wordless sequences. His stories move forward sometimes on wordless exchanges between characters with no need to voice their feelings. He also has a knack for casting odd ducks in certain roles to throw the tone a bit, so that you occasionally feel like you are stepping into a 1950s newsreel. In Loving, he has chosen two brilliant actors for the leads, Ruth Negga as Mildred and Joel Edgerton as Richard. Both are required to show us who they are without much dialogue. That’s a brave choice for a filmmaker. We’re left to linger with them, to watch them do mundane tasks like laying bricks or folding laundry, all the while trying to imagine what must have been going on inside their heads and hearts as they went about the business of, simply, loving each other.

Watching a Nichols film, to me, is like lying down outside under an expanse of sky in the quiet of night. Whatever sounds you may hear on the periphery, you must use your imagination to draw conclusions. What you see in front of you is a whole universe of brightly lit stars, patterns, and magic. If you look close enough and hard enough you begin to see shapes. And out of those shapes come stories.

Loving sets the bar very high because Nichols has set the bar so high in his commitment to his universe of stories and characters. I suspect, and I take it from those I trust who’ve seen the films, that The Birth of a Nation and Manchester by the Sea have set the bar equally high. That gives us three strong contenders in the Best Picture race before Venice and Telluride.

Both Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton are likely looking at Oscar nominations. We have Kyle Chandler and Casey Affleck out of Manchester by the Sea and Nate Parker, at the very least, from The Birth of a Nation.

Beyond that, we’re just hurling spitballs into the wind, my friends. And with that, our current spitball predictions.

Best Picture Predicted Frontrunners
Loving
Birth of a Nation
Manchester by the Sea

Unseen:
La La Land
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Silence
Arrival
Sully
20th Century Women
Fences

Of note: if all three of these films, Fence, Birth of a Nation and Loving make it in, that will three films with African-American and Ethopian (Ruth Negga) actors in the leads. This would be both a blessing and a curse for them because they will each be singled out for praise by many of us, and resented by others all at once.

Contenders
Seen:
Loving
Indignation
Midnight Special

Unseen:
Allied
The Mercy
Passengers
The Founder
The Girl on the Train
Miss Sloane
American Pastoral

Director:
Martin Scorsese, Silence
Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Ang Lee, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Nate Parker, The Birth of a Nation
Jeff Nichols, Loving

Contenders:
Clint Eastwood, Sully
Denzel Washington, Fences
Morten Tyldum, Passengers
Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea
Tate Taylor, The Girl on the Train
John Madden, Miss Sloane
Mike Mills, 20th Century Women

Best Actor
Nate Parker, Birth of a Nation
Tom Hanks, Sully
Joe Alwyn, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime walk
Joel Edgerton, Loving
Michael Keaton, The Founder

Contenders:
Logan Lerman, Indignation
Brad Pitt, War Machine
Denzel Washington, Fences
Ewan McGregor, American Pastoral
Andrew Garfield, Silence
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Colin Firth, The Mercy
Brad Pitt, Allied
Michael Fassbender, Light Between Oceans

Best Actress
Viola Davis, Fences
Ruth Negga, Loving
Emily Blunt, The Girl on the Train
Jessica Chastain, Miss Sloane
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

Contenders:
Alicia Vikander, Light Between the Oceans
Amy Adams, Arrival
Annette Bening, 20th Century Women
Jennifer Lawrence, Passengers
Emma Stone, La La Land
Sally Field, Hello My Name is Doris
Marion Cotillard, Allied

Take note: We expect Best Actress to be especially competitive, at least so far. It usually isn’t THIS competitive and for our next column we’ll be looking at the newbies versus the veterans since that is likely to be an important topic. You have Annette Bening maybe coming up for a much deserved and long-overdue win, alongside Viola Davis who could be facing Meryl Streep again. You have Amy Adams, Emily Blunt and Jessica Chastain, all whom are also getting to the point where they’re due. This is potentially a very difficult year in the Best Actress category, even with the limited list of names here.

Original Screenplay:
Loving, Jeff Nichols
Manchester by the Sea, Kenneth Lonergan
La La Land, Damien Chazelle
The Birth of a Nation, Nate Parker
20th Century Women, Mike Mills

Adapted Screenplay:
Fences, Tony Kushner
Silence, Jay Cocks
Indignation, James Schamus
Billy Lynn, Jean-Christophe Castelli
Arrival, Eric Heisserer

Cinematography (just a guess)
Roger Deakins (who should win for) Hail, Caesar!
Rodrigo Prieto, Silence
John Toll, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Bradford Young, Arrival
Linus Sandgren, La La Land

Contenders
Adam Stone – Midnight Special, Loving
Elliot Davis – Birth of a Nation
Don Burgess – Allied

Costumes
Allied
Loving
The Birth of a Nation
Silence
Indignation

Production Design
Allied
Birth of a Nation
Loving
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Arrival

Those last tech categories really are just spitting in the wind because, sight unseen, who has any idea of how this will go. But if you go by Anne Thompson’s theory — how you build a Best Picture contender is “branch by branch” — you can see immediately how movies like Loving, The Birth of a Nation, and Silence may have the edge automatically over others. Those are the period films where costume, production design, and sometimes cinematography will stand out over contemporary stories like Manchester by the Sea, La La Land, etc.

We’re still about a month and a half away from nailing down a better list, but this is a rough sketch of how things might go.