Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2023

The Contenders:

Justine Triet: Anatomy of a Fall
Martin Scorsese: Killers of the Flower Moon
Christopher Nolan: Oppenheimer (winner)
Yorgos Lanthimos: Poor Things
Jonathan Glazer: The Zone of Interest

What’s Missing

There were a lot of solid movies in 2023, and some very good directorial performances. Movies like Dumb Money and The Iron Claw weren’t going to get a lot of award season play, but I like what Craig Gillespie and Sean Durkin did with them respectively. The same is true of Nicole Holofcener and You Hurt My Feelings, a film that was shockingly ignored come Oscar time. Horror rarely gets its due despite often deserving it, and Brandon Cronenberg should be in the conversation for Infinity Pool. You can say the same of action and comedy, which leaves out Nida Manzoor and Polite Society. The two biggest misses for me are Greta Gerwig for Barbie and Alexander Payne for The Holdovers. And, while there’s not a chance in hell it would ever be nominated, can we give a little bit of credit to Takashi Yamazaki for Godzilla Minus One?

Weeding through the Nominees

5. I realize that I tend to be alone in some of my opinions, but these posts are essentially nothing more than my opinions of the moment. That being the case, I’m fine with saying that I tend not to like the films of Yorgos Lanthimos that much. I don’t like the stories, I don’t tend to like the acting, and I don’t tend to like the way that he tells his story. No shock, then, that I’m putting Poor Things in fifth position. It’s the first one I would dump if I were coming up with my own list of nominees. I’m fine with people disagreeing with me on this. .

4. Putting the great Martin Scorsese in fourth place is akin to blasphemy, I know, and I do love the way the man directs and tells a story. So why is Killers of the Flower Moon in fourth place? Because at this point in his career, he’s facing the same problem that people like Stephen King face from his editors. The man is a legend, and so people are terrified to tell him to tone it down. There’s no reason this movie needed to be as long as it is. You can say that’s the fault of the editor, but it’s Scorsese’s name on the movie and the decision ultimately falls as his. No one is willing to tell him to trim the fat, and as a result, we get movies from him that are 25% (or more) longer than they need to be.

3. I like a lot of the work of Christopher Nolan, but I’m hardly a fanboy. Oppenheimer is a fine film, but there’s also a lot here that feels like it probably could have ended on the cutting room floor, and probably should have been. The story being told is an important one, but that doesn’t mean that everything needs to be a part of the film. It seems to me that Nolan won this because he was due for a win. I don’t disagree that he’s a top director and that an Oscar was certainly inevitable for him; I just don’t know if this is the movie I would have chosen. Still, this was the movie of the moment, and there was no stopping the Oppenheimer train.

2. Jonathan Glazer had to walk a very fine line for The Zone of Interest, and he did it extremely well. There’s a great deal of horror happening just off screen in this film, We, as the audience, always need to be aware of that and yet not overwhelmed by it. This is a tightrope that not a lot of people are going to be capable of walking. I wouldn’t have been terribly upset if Galzer had won this Oscar—in a much weaker year, it would have been a very worthy choice. As it is, it’s a nomination that I like a great deal. I’m curious to see what Glazer does next.

1. This leaves us with Justine Triet and Anatomy of a Fall as the choice from the nominations, and it’s a choice I will stand by. Like Glazer, Triet had to walk a tightrope with this film. We have to be kept engaged in the story, unsure of the ending, and we need to care about what is happening to Sandra without ever really finding her likable. And it all works—this film is completely engaging the entire time and never slows down despite being something of a slow burn. Limited to the five nominees, it’s my pick, but of course I’m not limited to the five nominees on this website.

My Choices

We live in a world where Kevin Costner has a Best Director Oscar and Greta Gerwig doesn’t, which is just additional evidence that we live in the worst, stupidest timeline.

Final Analysis