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Source: The Hollywood Reporter
What will be named Best Picture at the upcoming Academy Awards? It’s a bit too early to tell at this point, though many have already drawn their attention to the films that seem to have a stronger chance than others. For some, Martin Scorsese’s epic western crime drama “Killers of the Flower Moon” is one of the filmmaker’s most impressive cinematic creations in years, and the Academy will honor it and his decades-long career with its highest honor. Other people feel that Yorgos Lanthimos’ science fantasy black comedy “Poor Things” will follow in the footsteps of “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, last year’s Best Picture winner, and be the next work of hyper-surreal cinema to claim the prize. Then, of course, there’s the enduring power of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, which could lead to either Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” or Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” being named the most impeccably crafted film of 2023 (if nothing else, both films are already two of the highest-grossing releases of the year, and each of them can point to the sheer number of Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations as evidence of how much they’ve struck a chord with voters). As far as anyone can tell, each of these films has the potential of triumphing over all others and being named Best Picture by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but that shouldn’t automatically mean that there are no other contenders lurking in the background and waiting for their moment to shine. In fact, the Toronto Film Critics Association has named a film that has yet to be mentioned as their pick for Best Picture, a film that has managed to garner much acclaim and recognition, but is not yet seen as a frontrunner at the upcoming awards ceremonies. That film: Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest”.
Spoken primarily in German and Polish, Glazer’s film, based on the novel of the same name by Martin Amis, stars Christian Friedel as Rudolf Hoss, a Nazi officer who lives with his wife Hedwig (played by Sandra Huller) as they try to maintain a comfortable status of living while residing right next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, which cites the film as having a 92% approval rating from critics, describes “The Zone of Interest” as that which “dispassionately [examines] the ordinary existence of people complicit in horrific crimes” and “forces us to take a cold look at the mundanity behind an unforgivable brutality”; in short; there doesn’t seem to be much about Glazer’s film that one would consider “pleasant”, but most would agree that its a powerful work of cinema regardless. It’s so powerful, in fact, that earlier this year, the Cannes Film Festival nominated the film for its Palme d’Or and ended up giving it the Grand Prix, its second most prestigious accolade. This alone should make “The Zone of Interest” a Best Picture nominee at the very least, and if it can achieve that, one shouldn’t overlook the possibility of it even winning the award.
Still, doing so will require “The Zone of Interest” to contend with some fairly stiff competition, some of which has been acknowledged in runner-up positions by the Toronto Film Critics Association. When it comes to Best Picture, for example, Andrew Haigh’s “All of Us Strangers” and the aforementioned “Killers of the Flower Moon” both place second and third among those voting for the award, whereas in the Best Director category, Glazer was also able to take this prize, but only after just barely beating out Scorsese and Justine Triet for “Anatomy of a Fall”. The mentioning of these films, all of which have already garnered much attention and been frequently regarded as major awards contenders, suggests that they will continue to hold their weight throughout the remainder of the awards season, meaning that if “The Zone of Interest” is to continue its way to the top, it will have to perform the difficult task to proving itself more worthy than any other feature film that competes alongside it.
Elsewhere within the Toronto Film Critics Association, two actors were honored with awards for Outstanding Lead Performance: Lily Gladstone for her portrayal of Mollie Kyle in “Killers of the Flower Moon”, and Sandra Huller for her portrayal of Sandra Voyter in “Anatomy of a Fall”. Both of these actors have already been widely praised for their performances in these films, so much so that each of them is being viewed as a major frontrunner for the Best Actress Oscar, a status that seems to have been reaffirmed with this recognition from Toronto film critics. Similar sentiments can be expressed about the winners of Outstanding Supporting Performance: Ryan Gosling, who plays Ken in “Barbie”, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who plays Mary Lamb in Alexander Payne’s comedy-drama “The Holdovers”. Could either of these individuals go on to repeat such success at the Academy Awards and any other remaining awards ceremonies? No one can say for sure at this moment, but these wins do further push the odds towards their favor.
Then there are many of the remaining categories for which members of the Toronto Film Critics Associated voted, some of which went in some fairly expected directions, while others turned out a bit more surprising. Scorsese and Eric Roth, for instance, were awarded with Best Adapted Screenplay for “Killers of the Flower Moon”, but it was Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s “Barbie” script that was named Best Original Screenplay (quite a feat for a film based on a popular line of children’s dolls). The award for Best Animated Feature, meanwhile, went to Pablo Berger’s science fiction tragicomedy “Robot Dreams”, while Aki Kurismaki’s “Fallen Leaves”, a romantic comedy-drama co-produced by Finland and Germany, was named Best International Feature. Do any of these films stand much of a chance, if any at all, at winning these exact same awards at the upcoming Oscars ceremonies? For some, such chances are stronger than others, though if history has proven anything, it’s that there is always plenty of room for surprises. How many surprises there can possibly be will largely boil down to what ends up being nominated for the Academy Awards (which won’t be revealed for another month), but for the time being, one can find relief in knowing that “The Zone of Interest” and other lesser-acknowledged films still have the opportunity to pull off an upset.
