David Remnick: It's that time of year again. Awards season. We're talking about the past year in movies, of course, and longtime listeners will know that this is a very special thing for us on the show. I'm joined once again by Alexandra Schwartz, a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the co-host of--

Alexandra Schwartz: Critics at Large.

David Remnick: A podcast you should not miss. I never do. New Yorker film critic Richard Brody, also known as Mr. Front Row. This is an annual tradition at The New Yorker Radio Hour, The Brody Awards. Let's first talk about that other award show, the Oscars. A petty sideshow to be sure to the Brody's, but this year, there's a pretty wide sense that it's a strong year for movies, and the Oscar nominations seem to reflect that, at least up to a point, but the big scuttlebutt, and I want to hear from you guys on this, is the snubbing of Greta Gerwig for Best Director and Margot Robbie for Best Actress. What do we think happened there, Alex?

Alexandra Schwartz: I would imagine, Richard, you may have more insight into this than I do, that there was a sense that maybe this is a big commercial comedy. I think the direction of comedies traditionally has not been recognized to the same degree that a big meaty drama has at the Oscars. That may be what happened to Greta Gerwig. Then Margot Robbie, is Barbie Oscar material, Barbie herself. The irony of it is that this is what the film addresses. Everyone made a big stink about the fact that Ryan Gosling, his role as Ken, was nominated. That is exactly what would happen in the Barbieverse that the movie creates. It's hard to get away from a sense that everything we've been seeing around Barbie is just more promotion for Barbie. This almost seems too perfect in a weird way.

David Remnick: As an offense.

Alexandra Schwartz: Yes, as an offense.

David Remnick: As a new chapter in misogyny.

Alexandra Schwartz: Well, more than it just, again, plays into the Barbie machine to some degree. It validates the critiques that Barbie itself makes of the culture, and so there we have a new Barbie cycle.

David Remnick: Richard, isn't it also part and parcel of who votes for Oscars? Even after the reforms that have come through, and there's been some change, I think, in the people who vote for Oscars, isn't it still old white guy still at this point?

Richard Brody: Yes, it is, especially the directors branch. This is one of the fundamental problems that Oscar nominations face. It isn't the Academy at large that does the nominating. It's the individual branches, which I think is a terrible mistake because it essentially becomes a perpetuation of the contemporary standards of professionalism, rather than inspiration and affect.

David Remnick: Now, the Barbenheimer phenomenon have paid off not just at the box office, but the Oscars too. Barbie did get 8 nominations after all, and Oppenheimer got 13 of them. It's probably a favorite to win the big one, the Best Picture award. Richard, I think you said that Wikipedia entry on Oppenheimer was better than the movie.

Richard Brody: Oppenheimer is a fascinating person. The story that's told in Oppenheimer, it's not lacking in interest. Every detail is fascinating, but they seem dispersed, tossed onto the screen with no sense of the character driving them.

David Remnick: Richard, let's pause for one second. The Wikipedia entry was better than the movie?

Richard Brody: Literally, because the facts of his life are really fascinating and really complicated. He was a wild man.

David Remnick: No, no, I know, but this is the mean version of saying that American Prometheus-- I can get if you say American Prometheus, the big biography, is better than the film, but the wiki entry.

Richard Brody: Well, it goes in more directions. It presents a more complex character than the one who's in the movie. That's exactly the kind of movie that the Academy likes to reward, namely, a very serious, very earnest film about a grand historical subject. Barbie, by contrast, embarrasses the Academy. No matter how much money it makes, it embarrassing the Academy to be associated with a movie that some people, in my opinion, entirely wrongly assimilate to a feature-length TV commercial for a doll.

David Remnick: Wow. Was there a nominee that pleasantly surprised you, on the other hand, Richard, some nominee that was egrigiously irritating beyond Barbie?

Richard Brody: The pleasant surprise was that Wes Anderson, who was shut out for Asteroid City, was at least nominated for a live-action short film, namely The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, which I highly recommend, the Roald Dahl adaptation. There's a movie that gotten many nominations this year, including for best picture, that I find almost repugnant, namely, The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer, is very, very loose adaptation of a novel by Martin Amis.

David Remnick: I have to say, I felt I'd seen that movie before. In fact, many times. That whole, the death campus out of frame, ordinary life is happening. It seemed to me not an entirely original way of going about things.

Richard Brody: It's done in a, I like to say, half-assed. It's done in a half-assed way. Jonathan Glazer wants it both ways. He wants to make sure that you know that he knows that there's really awful stuff going on. At the same time, he keeps his hands rigorously clean.

David Remnick: Let's go to an award show though that actually matters, The Brodys. We've been waiting for this for fully a year now, I think it's fair to say. Alex Schwartz is here with the official Brody envelopes. To be clear, these nominations and awards were not chosen by any voting body. It's all one person. It's Richard Brody, and no one, including me, knows who the winners will be until they are announced right here on the air. We're going to start with Best Actor. Alex, who was nominated.

Alexandra Schwartz: The nominees for the Brody Award for Best Actor are Jason Schwartzman for Asteroid City, Franz Rogowski for Passages, Adam Driver for Ferrari, Zac Efron for The Iron Claw, and Mike Faist for Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game. The winner is?

Richard Brody: The winner is Franz Rogowski for Passages.

David Remnick: Okay.

Richard Brody: Passages is the most international feature of the year. It's filmed in Paris by the American director Ira Sachs, starring the German actor Franz Rogowski as a German director, who is married to an English man played by Ben Whishaw, and, at the end of the shoot, has an affair with a woman he meets played by the French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos. What results is emotional turbulence of a very high order, but turbulence that does not spare the protagonist himself. He's as much buffeted by the storms of emotional chaos as the other characters.

David Remnick: Richard, I've got to figure that in the Oscars, that secondary other thing that the winner there is probably the biggest lock of the night, no?

Richard Brody: You mean Cillian Murphy?

David Remnick: Yes.

Richard Brody: Yes. I think it's likely. Biopics gratify the Academy's sense of dignity. A good actor, playing an important historical figure makes the world of movies seem like it's playing on the grand stage of political history.

David Remnick: Let's move on to Best Actress. Alex?

Alexandra Schwartz: The Brody nominees for Best Actress are Margot Robbie for Barbie, Teyana Taylor for A Thousand and One, Michelle Williams for Showing Up, Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon, and Charleen McClure in All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. Richard, the Brody goes to?

Richard Brody: This was the toughest choice that I faced. The winner is Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon. I was sorely tempted to select Margot Robbie for Barbie.

David Remnick: For reasons of justice or--

Richard Brody: Because it's an extraordinary performance. Because it's one of the most virtuosic comedic performances I've seen in quite a while. I find Lily Gladstone's performance in Killers of the Flower Moon to be different in kind from just about every other performance I've ever seen. As much as it's a movie that's filled with dialogue, and she handles her dialogue with great aplomb and gives it great dramatic weight, but the essence of the role is presence and silence. It's Martin Scorsese's unique conception of this story, his unique revision to David Grand's book, and she gives this remarkable conception an extraordinary dramatic power by doing as little as possible.

Alexandra Schwartz: Well, Richard, we already talked about Margot Robbie snub. Of course, Lily Gladstone is nominated for Best Actress. I wonder what you think her shot is.

Richard Brody: I think it's very good. Beside the representational fact that, indeed, no Native American actor has won an Oscar. It is an extraordinary performance, and I think that it's a performance that runs on sheer star power. If there's one thing that the academy is not immune to, it's star power.

Alexandra Schwartz: Yes. Richard, if in an ideal world where the Brody somehow melded with the Oscars themselves--

Richard Brody: That's not an ideal world. The ideal world is when Mr. Brody displaced the Oscars entirely.

Alexandra Schwartz: That's right. In a pragmatic world where we might be able to make some strides towards integrating the Brodys into the world of the Oscars, and you could make room for Margot Robbie in this category, who would you replace, because the Oscar nominees for Best Actress this year are Lily Gladstone? I know you would not replace her, of course. Annette Bening for Nyad, Carey Mulligan from Maestro, Emma Stone for Poor Things, and Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall, a movie that we disagree on.

Richard Brody: Anyone but Emma Stone. I find Emma Stone's performance in Poor Things striking for her handling of language. I don't find it a very satisfying drama, but Tony McNamara's script, which essentially recreates English from the perspective of an adult needing to relearn it from zero gives Emma Stone a remarkable chance to shine with that dialogue.

Alexandra Schwartz: Well, it's time for the big one. The best director of the Oscars is largely being seen as Christopher Nolan's race to lose. He's up for Oppenheimer versus Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon, Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things, Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest, and the Lone Woman represented this year, Justine Triet for Anotony of a Fall, but who are your nominees for the Best Director Brody, Richard?

Richard Brody: My nominees are Greta Gerwig for Barbie, Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon, Kelly Reichardt for Showing Up, Raven Jackson for All Dirt Road's Taste of Salt, and Wes Anderson for Asteroid City.

Alexandra Schwartz: The Brody goes to?

Richard Brody: It goes to Wes Anderson, although I have to say this was tough too because Martin Scorsese's direction of Killers of the Flower Moon is pretty remarkable. Just to keep a three-and-a-half-hour-long film engaging. I find that that time passes very rapidly, is a mark of an artistry of a different sort altogether from that of the other directors this year. What Anderson achieves moment by moment in Asteroid City is almost unparalleled in the history of cinema. There's a level of dramatic specificity of wit, of substance, of emotional power invested in remarkably small details that perhaps it's rivaled by Carl Theodor Dreyer or Murnau or Jacques Tati, but by very few other directors in the history of cinema.

David Remnick: Richard, I say this with real affection, and I'm a fan of Wes Anderson's. Do you think anybody as odd and off to the side in the view of most viewers will ever win a Best Director Oscar?

Richard Brody: The directors who won last year were Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert for Everything Everywhere All at Once. That's a very weird movie, too. It's a sentimentally weird movie, but it's a weird movie. I don't think that the Oscars necessarily shy away from weird. I think they shy away from intellect.

David Remnick: The Academy, yet again, nominated a full slate of 10 movies this year for Best Picture, and some we've already talked about, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, is also The Zone of Interest, American Fiction, Maestro, The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall, Poor Things, and Past Lives. Richard, do you want to take any parting shots at any of those movies before we give out the last birdie?

Richard Brody: I was happy to see Past Lives get nominated, let's say, from an industry perspective. It's a low-budget independent film. It's not one of my favorite films of the year, far from it, in fact, but I was nonetheless happy to see that the Academy pays attention to movies that are produced at that relatively low budget level.

David Remnick: Now, Alex, who were the Brody nominees for Best Picture?

Alexandra Schwartz: The moment is finally here. The nominees are Barbie, Showing Up, Killers of the Flower Moon, A Thousand and One, Earth Mama, Passages, Ferrari, Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, and Asteroid City. The Brody goes to?

Richard Brody: It goes to Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, based on David Grant's book.

David Remnick: That's right, our colleague, David Grant, Mazel Tov to David Grant. Finally, he has a little bit of success in his literary life. He gets a Brody, or by association. Richard, you gave the Best Director Award to Wes Anderson. Usually, the Best Director and the Best Picture come in one package in the Oscars. Why not here?

Richard Brody: In this particular case, a great deal depends on the writing. Although Scorsese's direction is as incisive and as imaginative as usual, I think a particular weight of this film is borne by the script. David's book is largely an investigative story centered on the Bureau of Investigation Agent, the forerunner of the FBI, who attempted to discover who was killing members of the Osage Nation.

That was the story that Scorsese, apparently, he told me he was originally intending to film with Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of the agent, and that somewhere along the line, the decision was made that, in fact, it would be not a story of the investigation but the story of one of a crucial perpetrator played by Leonardo DiCaprio, but above all, his relationship with the Osage woman, played by Lily Gladstone, whom he was intending to kill. In effect, Martin Scorsese turned David Grant's book into a version of Eyes Wide Shut, into a movie about the-

David Remnick: God forbid.

Richard Brody: -almost metaphysical mysteries of marriage.

David Remnick: Well, it's been a big night for Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson and many others. Alex Schwartz, Richard Brody, it's always a pleasure. You can find Richard Brody's column on film, The Front Row. Thank you so much.

Alexandra Schwartz: Thank you.

Richard Brody: David, Alex, thank you.

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