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Considerations
Covering the annual film industry awards races, with sharp commentary on the pictures, the players, the money and the spectacle. by Tyler Coates
The Apprentice and Other Post-Election Campaigns
Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here.
I really didn’t want to write a newsletter about how a Trump victory might disrupt an already chaotic Oscar season, but here we are. When I had multiple publicists reaching out about their films on Thursday morning, proving our post-election malaise was limited to a single day, I realized that the show must go on—and the show, I fear, might become a lot dumber.
I can’t help but think back to the 2017 Oscars, in which none of the films were at all reactions or comments to Trumpism’s rise—but that didn’t stop people from forming parasocial relationships with the leading contenders for the top prize. That year’s battle was between La La Land and Moonlight; the former, a film its critics reduced to “white people talking about jazz,” was somehow seen as a cultural avatar of Trump himself. Moonlight, on the other hand… represented Hillary Clinton? Either way, it was nonsense, and the 89th annual Academy Awards devolved into madness in its final moments, when La La Land was accidentally called the best picture winner before people on-stage realized the mistake and handed the trophy to Moonlight’s creative team, thus rectifying all our cultural maladies for a week or so.
It’s too early to predict how Nov. 5, 2024 will affect the outcome on March 2, 2025. But allow me to speculate how folks might spin this highly volatile political atmosphere into campaign narratives surrounding the movies in the Oscar race (stakes that are no doubt extremely comparable).
Let’s begin with an obvious one: Briarcliff Entertainment’s The Apprentice, which has likely generated more headlines than actual viewings. It’s a good film with a pair of great and unnerving performances from Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as the young real estate mogul’s mentor Roy Cohn. But who is the movie for, exactly? Not Trump fans—it’s far too critical of the president-elect, and what Trump-haters would willingly sit through this? I can see Stan getting a stray Golden Globe nomination (with 12 open slots for leading actors across drama and musical/comedy, you have to fill them somehow), but I think he’s more likely to gain notice for A24’s A Different Man, which is just as unsettling but, thankfully, fiction.
Combining dystopian fantasy and contemporaneous unrest, Alex Garland’s Civil War from A24, depicts—with its own extremely vague and fuzzy politics—a near-future America torn into competing violent factions under authoritarian leadership. Of course, Civil War is not really about America as much as it is about its protagonist, a seasoned photojournalist played by Kirsten Dunst. Its April release date works against it in this current crowded field of fall premieres, and, like The Apprentice, I doubt many will be clamoring for it in the next few months.
A24 also has the more optimistic Sing Sing, Greg Kwedar’s drama about a real-life arts-focused rehabilitation program at the eponymous New York prison. I’ll admit I haven’t seen this yet—there has been a woeful lack of FYC screenings in Los Angeles—but it is earning buzz for its leading performance from Colman Domingo, who just earned his first Oscar nom for last year’s Rustin, and an acclaimed supporting turn from Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, who plays a fictionalized version of himself. (Maclin also shares a story credit with John “Divine G” Whitfield, whom Domingo portrays.) I can’t think of a better underdog story, and I’ll share an anecdote from my friend Esther Zuckerman, who moderated a Q&A with the cast after a packed screening in New York: people both in the audience and on stage were in tears. If A24 can harness that powerful reaction with Academy voters, it could be a true sleeper hit turned best picture-winner.
Netflix’s biggest contender is Jacques Audiard’s crime drama musical Emilia Pérez, which won best actress at Cannes for stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz and could set up Gascón for a history-making feat as the first trans woman to receive an Oscar nom for best actress. While I loved Gascón and Saldaña’s performances, I was cold on the film overall, and I’m very curious how the larger public will react to its melodramatic plot, which sees Gascón playing a cartel kingpin who evades the authorities by undergoing gender affirmation surgery. I haven’t seen many trans critics’ takes on the film, although two (The Cut’s Harron Walker called it “patronizing, at times insulting”; Little White Lies’ Juan Barquin bemoaned its “transphobic tropes and gender essentialism”) were fiercely negative. Considering the anti-trans messaging during the election and ongoing conversations about trans stories told by cis filmmakers, I think Emila Pérez might ignite a firestorm of bad-faith discourse on all sides — particularly because I don’t think the film has a strong grasp on what it says about gender, if it says anything definitive at all.
Following the Moonlight route of the first post-Trump Oscars, I could see Amazon MGM’s Nickel Boys and Netflix’s The Piano Lesson—two dramas helmed by Black directors that grapple with the legacy and inherited trauma of slavery in America—gaining a timely politicized boost. If you think that’s a cynical reach, keep in mind that I heard someone surmise the same for Searchlight’s Nightbitch, as if Kamala Harris’s loss would be a boon for a divisive dark comedy about a beleaguered, put-upon woman who is either turning into a dog or simply losing her mind because of the pressures of a patriarchal society. I won’t be surprised if a publicist pushes that connection. In fact, I’ll admire the effort.
Then there are the blockbusters, whose casts and creatives will dodge any political connections during interviews while focusing on more optimistic talking points about cinema’s ability to bring us all together, or whatever. Surely there is nothing comparable between our current time and the settings of Arrakis in Warner Bros.’ Dune: Part Two or Oz in Universal’s Wicked. What could we learn about America in 2024 from ancient Rome? I dunno! Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal seem very hot, and that’s enough for me. I already see Ridley Scott’s latest following in the footsteps of its predecessor, which won Best Picture months after George W. Bush was voted into office. Maybe we’re headed in that direction once again?
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