Let’s flash back to this time last year, when most pundits expected that The Brutalist would win Adrien Brody his second Oscar, and even a late push from Timothée Chalamet, who beat Brody at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, couldn’t stop that prediction from coming true five months later.
This year, good luck finding such certitude in the best actor race. Still, if there is a consensus at the moment, it’s around Leonardo DiCaprio. Fourteen of the 16 Prestige Junkie pundits expect him to land a nomination for One Battle After Another (tied with Michael B. Jordan for the most mentions of any actor). Better still, eight pundits (including yours truly) expect the former winner for The Revenant to take home his second Oscar.
Perhaps that’s recency bias, but as someone who is predicting him to become a two-time winner next year, I can see the vision: DiCaprio’s in top form as a frazzled former left-wing radical in Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, which has become the movie of the year so far. While he’s done the seriocomic thing before in his Oscar-nominated performances from The Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and he’s played fathers in multiple movies, he’s never been a dad. However, in One Battle, his character exists almost solely to protect his daughter, and his selfless sacrifices throughout the movie allow DiCaprio to reveal new facets of his persona to the audience. DiCaprio’s not the only father figure (shout out to Taylor) in the race — fatherhood is a key aspect of the characters played by George Clooney, Joel Edgerton and Will Arnett, among others — but he might be the most heroic. The guy wants to save his daughter so badly that he even puts up with an annoying customer service rep. That’s love.
Subscribe to Prestige Junkie to get Pundit updates straight to your inbox and Prestige Junkie After Party for even more of the ins and outs of awards season.