Best Director 2024 – The Masters and the Up and Comers

It’s always a great year for the Oscars when absolute masters of the craft are in play. The film industry and the Oscars especially have always seemed reluctant to reward the greats, preferring instead to award the instant successes, the Kings/Queens for a day who come and go and are rarely heard from again. When you hit a career-high at the beginning of your career, it’s harder to rise again to meet the mark.

Some directors who have already won Oscars, like Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, continue to push themselves to do great work regardless of whether or not a statue waits at the end of the ride. I would imagine that it does still drive some directors to push themselves to achieve the goal of winning one. But I think many of them now understand how dramatically the industry has changed over the past few years — Best Director doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

The winners now don’t usually win because they are great directors and made the year’s best film. That’s subjective and impossible to measure by a consensus vote. Instead, you get what makes the actors, who dominate the Academy, feel good. And usually, that’s an actor-driven, not director-driven, movie. They like movies like the last two Best Picture winners, Everything Everywhere All at Once and CODA, which revolve around actors acting, as opposed to what we think of that defines great directing (which explains why Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock never won Oscars). It is what it is.

A new element has been added into the mix of late: social justice, or “identity politics” or whatever you’d like to call it. Maybe you could simply say actors are wanting to be known as activists as well. The Oscars, like so much of Hollywood, have become overtly political, but especially so in the wake of the Trump presidency, becoming part of the #Resistance. That kept going through the various political movements like #OscarsSoWhite, #MeToo, Times Up, Black Lives Matter, etc. That activism continues to drive much of the Oscars, as we can all plainly see.

That said, we would be remiss to not notice the big names in this year’s race — the masters of the craft. Either they’re turning in career-best work or they are the best currently working (and only one of them has won a Best Director Oscar):

Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
David Fincher, The Killer
Michael Mann, Ferrari
Ridley Scott, Napoleon
Alexander Payne, The Holdovers

Do I think any of them have a chance to win this year? No, I do not. It has nothing to do with the films themselves or their talent. It has only to do with their category: all are cis-gendered, heteronormative white males. That means voting for them doesn’t give actors the same kind of high they get when they feel like they’re doing “some good” with their vote. It’s more likely to go to people whom they feel have moved the needle somehow politically. This makes them look good and it makes them feel good, especially at a time of a growing wealth gap. How does one absolve oneself of the sins of wealth and privilege at such a time as this? Well, that’s one easy way.

That doesn’t mean the people who win don’t deserve it. Sometimes you arrive at a perfect storm where all points lead back to, say, Parasite — that rare movie that had all of its elements in perfect harmony that took the viewer to unexpected and thrilling places. But it also allowed Oscar voters to escape a moment just before the storm of 2020 wherein all of their winners of the top categories would have been white.

The only reason any of this is worth talking about is just look at the names above. The kind of work they’ve done for decades by now is exceptional beyond all comprehension. The Oscars are meant to reward that kind of achievement, but they too often don’t, with the sole exception of Scorsese. They don’t build empires and emperors anymore so much as they work hard to make things seem more equitable and fair.

Going back to 1990 it’s easy to see how dramatically things have shifted in the Best Director race.

1990 — Kevin Costner, Dances With Wolves+
1991 — Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs+
1992 — Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven+
1993 — Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List+
1994 — Robert Zemeckis, Forrest Gump+
1995 — Mel Gibson, Braveheart+
1996 — Anthony Minghella, The English Patient+
1997 — James Cameron, Titanic+
1998 — Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan
1999 — Sam Mendes, American Beauty+
2000 — Steven Soderbergh, Traffic
2001 — Ron Howard, A Beautiful Mind+
2002 — Roman Polanski, The Pianist
2003 — Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King+
2004 — Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby+
2005 — Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
2006 — Martin Scorsese, The Departed+
2007 — Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men+
2008 — Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire+

Expanded ballot to ten Best Picture contenders, Obama presidency
2009 — Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker+
2010 — Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech+

Expanded ballot from 10 to a variable number between 5 and 10
2011 — Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist+
2012 — Ang Lee, Life of Pi
2013 — Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
2014 — Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)+
2015 — Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant

Trump presidency
2016 — Damien Chazelle, La La Land
2017 — Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water+
2018 — Alfonso Cuarón, Roma
2019 — Bong Joon Ho, Parasite+

Pandemic, Biden presidency
2020 — Chloe Zhao, Nomadland+

Back to ten nominees for Best Picture
2021 — Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
2022 — Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once+

The first thing you’ll notice is how common it was for Picture and Director to go together back when there were five best Picture nominees and not more than five. The second thing you might notice is how eclectic or multicultural or diverse the winners seem to be — though it’s worth pointing out that despite the recent run of diverse winners, no Black director has ever won. So there’s still that hurdle left.

The pundits don’t really seem to be vibing these changes. I think for many it remains a little hard to grasp which director or film will capture the zeitgeist, so we often default to what we know: bravura director, masterpiece, etc. But that doesn’t really get us there, at least not this early out.

Here is what Erik Anderson currently has for Best Director:

1. Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures) (-)
2. Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) (-)
3. Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest (A24) (-)
4. Greta Gerwig – Barbie (Warner Bros) (-)
5. Alexander Payne – The Holdovers (Focus Features) (-)
6. Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall (NEON) (▲)
7. Bradley Cooper – Maestro (Netflix) (▼)
8. Blitz Bazawule – The Color Purple (Warner Bros) (-)
9. Todd Haynes – May December (Netflix) (▲)
10. Emerald Fennell – Saltburn (Amazon Studios)

Meanwhile at Gold Derby, pundits are split between Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer and Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon.

We can’t really write about the films themselves because most of us haven’t seen them. There seems to be a mix of lots of different types of films with lots of different types of protagonists. Erik is missing the one I think will be there and that’s the director of Past Lives, Celine Song (who is one of the lower-tiered directors on his list).

It’s possible we could be living through a dramatic shift in what people think of as great storytelling. We know that what people valued in the 1970s was very different from the 1980s. We know that movies like The Departed or The Hurt Locker probably couldn’t win now. We’re still riding the aspirational wave, which certainly has its place. I suspect Greta Gerwig and Barbie might be the absolute height of that — perhaps the ultimate movie for Hollywood, circa 2023.

The films we’re talking about today might not even land. Almost a year ago exactly, Erik had the following for Best Director:

1. Steven Spielberg – The Fabelmans (Universal Pictures)
2. Alejandro G. Iñárritu – Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Netflix) ↑
Martin Scorsese — Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films)
3. Sarah Polley – Women Talking (MGM/UAR) ↑
4. Sam Mendes – Empire of Light (Searchlight Pictures) ↑
5. Damien Chazelle – Babylon (Paramount Pictures) ↓

And these were my predictions around the same time:

Best Director
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Bardo
Damien Chazelle, Babylon
Sam Mendes, Empire of Light
Jim Cameron, Avatar: Way of Water
Alts: Maria Schrader, She Said; Todd Field, TÁR; The Daniels, Everything Everywhere All At Once

I had two of my alts in the mix but otherwise, as you can see, movies we imagine are very different from the actual movies. We’ll know soon enough. Telluride begins just one week from today, if you can believe it. Michael Patterson’s full predictions for titles to be shown there:

1) The Holdovers — Alexander Payne
2) Poor Things — Yorgos Lanthimos
3) Nyad — Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
4) The Zone of Interest — Jonathan Glazer
5) Anatomy of a Fall — Justine Triet
6) Saltburn — Emerald Fennell
7) Rustin — George C. Wolfe
8) The Royal Hotel — Kitty Green
9) Wildcat — Ethan Hawke
10) Fingernails — Christos Nikou
11) All of Us Strangers — Andrew Haigh
12) The Bikeriders — Jeff Nichols
13) Fallen Leaves — Aki Kaurismäki
14) Perfect Days — Wim Wenders
15) El Conde — Pablo Larrain
16) Janet Planet — Annie Baker
17) The Promised Land — Nikolaj Arcel
18) Orlando, My Political Biography — Paul B. Preciado
19) The Pigeon Tunnel — Errol Morris
20) Daddio — Christy Hall
21) Occupied City — Steve McQueen
22) They Shot the Piano Player — Javier Mariscal, Fernando Trueba
23) The Taste of Things — Anh Hung Tran
24) The Settlers — Felipe Gálvez Haberle
25) La Chimera — Alice Rohrwacher

I will admit that I am personally a fan of, what we used to call in the old days of the internet, “Gods Among Directors.” I like to be encouraging of those who show promise and keep my eye out for those who do well in a given year. But the truth is I find value in those who take the biggest risks and hold themselves to the highest of standards, both in terms of creative expression and in terms of keeping things clean and tight. My own list of films I’m most looking forward to will always be by the greatest of the great. I start there and work my way down the list.

That means, there isn’t going to be a Best Directing lineup this year that doesn’t have:

Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

That leaves three slots open. And I think the next two will be:

David Fincher, The Killer
Greta Gerwig, Barbie

That leaves one slot open. Those that are vying for the spot include:

Ridley Scott, Napoleon
Michael Mann, Ferrari
Alexander Payne, The Holdovers
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
Sofia Coppola, Priscilla
Celine Song, Past Lives
Emerald Fennell, Saltburn
Jonathan Glazer, Zone of Interest

We should also think about Denis Villeneuve and whether Dune: Part Two will be released this year or next. And of course, though no one is talking about it, George Clooney’s The Boys in the Boat could be a film worth paying attention to.

Obviously, this is just spitballing, all to be taken with a huge grain of salt. This is something to think about as we head into festival season and Oscar season proper.