The 2022 Oscar nom­i­na­tions give cinephiles plen­ty of cause for optimism

For those with a true love of the cin­e­ma, the awards sea­son often pro­vokes some mea­sure of cyn­i­cism, as the pat­terns of gold-plat­ed recog­ni­tion tend to favor a spe­cif­ic mod­el of good­ness (inof­fen­sive, broad­ly appeal­ing, famil­iar) over more off-the-beat­en-path or oth­er­wise out­ré excel­lence. One might crin­kle their nose at the crowd-pleas­ing pab­u­lum that’s come to be deroga­to­ri­ly known as ​“awards bait,” but the good news is that its choke­hold on the Oscars seems to have loos­ened in the past few years.

2022’s batch of Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions, announced just this morn­ing, gave cinephiles more cause for opti­mism. The recent wins for such crit­i­cal dar­lings as Moon­light, Par­a­site, and Nomad­land sug­gest that the vot­ing bloc’s tastes have slight­ly matured as they’ve expand­ed the ranks of their mem­ber­ship to bol­ster diver­si­ty, and this year’s class of nom­i­nees con­tin­ues the encour­ag­ing trend.

The most unlike­ly suc­cess sto­ry of the year is already that of Dri­ve My Car, Ryusuke Ham­aguchi​’s three-hour, Chekhov-influ­enced adap­ta­tion of a Haru­ki Muraka­mi short sto­ry. Despite its high­brow pedi­gree, some key wins from small­er awards-giv­ing bod­ies (earn­ing Best Pic­ture hon­ors from crit­ics’ groups in both New York and Los Ange­les was a major coup) pushed the year-end list sta­ple to a quar­tet of nom­i­na­tions for Best Pic­ture, Direc­tor, Adapt­ed Screen­play, and Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film. That’s the same set of nods that Bong Joon-ho picked up for Par­a­site, and we all remem­ber how that played out for him.

The Dan­ish-lan­guage ani­mat­ed doc­u­men­tary Flee scored big with nom­i­na­tions in all three of the cat­e­gories implied in that descrip­tion. The Inter­na­tion­al race also includes Norway’s sub­mis­sion The Worst Per­son in the World, which also rode the wave of pub­lic­i­ty from its savvi­ly-delayed the­atri­cal run to a nod for Orig­i­nal Screen­play for direc­tor Joachim Tri­er and his co-writer Eskil Vogt.

In the act­ing races, the expect­ed reigned, for bet­ter and for worse. Impres­sion-style biopic act­ing filled out the Best Actress slots, with Jes­si­ca Chas­tain (as tel­e­van­ge­list Tam­my Faye), Kris­ten Stew­art (as an unrav­el­ing Princess Diana), and Nicole Kid­man (as the one and only Lucille Ball) all mak­ing the cut. The most eye­brow-rais­ing omis­sion was for anoth­er such per­for­mance — Lady Gaga as the very Ital­ian mur­der­ess Patrizia Reg­giani in the polar­iz­ing House of Guc­ci, which under-deliv­ered with one nom­i­na­tion only — clear­ing the way for orig­i­nal char­ac­ters from Pene­lope Cruz and Olivia Col­man.

The so-called ​“Oscar vil­lains” didn’t fare so well, with Aaron Sorkin and Being the Ricar­dos los­ing out on Best Pic­ture and Screen­play noms, while Don’t Look Up saw a full shutout in the act­ing cat­e­gories. Mean­while, well-reviewed selec­tions exceed­ed expec­ta­tions, as Licorice Piz­za got Paul Thomas Ander­son back in the Best Pic­ture and Direc­tor list­ings, and Pow­er of the Dog led the nom­i­na­tion count with a whop­ping twelve.

Per­haps most excit­ing of all is the pauci­ty of clear fron­trun­ners. Pow­er of the Dog might be on top by the num­bers, but Best Pic­ture is still anyone’s game. Best Actor is going to be a slugfest between art­house pick Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, accep­tance podi­um main­stay Den­zel Wash­ing­ton, and people’s pick Will Smith. Best Actress could con­ceiv­ably go to any of the five nominees.

We’ve got an extra-long wait ahead of us, with the tele­cast sched­uled for near­ly two months away on 27 March. But this is shap­ing up to be the most unpre­dictable, hec­tic, poten­tial­ly reward­ing Acad­e­my Awards pro­gram since, well, 2019.