Jane Campion wins at the Oscars for The Power of the Dog. The race for Best Director has been as tight as it has been hotly debated. Conversations from filmgoers and the Academy themselves have questioned who may covet one of the most prestigious awards of the year. The handful of nominees come from a variety of backgrounds, personal visions, and artistic perspectives. A strong artist leaves a bit of themselves behind in their work and has the power to impact an audience through their unique style of direction.
Steven Spielberg's West Side Story serves as the legendary director's musical debut as he re-imagines the rumbles between the Jets and the Sharks through a more culturally aware point-of-view. It was built off of the foundation left behind by the original screen adaptation of the musical and tailored it for a more sleek, modern spin on the classic. Critics were quick to praise Spielberg's unexpected sampling of a genre new to the filmmaker.
Kenneth Branagh's Belfast teased an autobiographical look at the director's upbringing in Northern Ireland, where it painted the conflict between Northern and Southern Ireland through a more grounded perspective. His self-insert into memories of the '60s paired well with the concept of coming-of-age in an uncertain time. Its mature, slow-burn narrative doused in black-and-white draws in an audience who remembers the riots for themselves and allows them to share that experience with Branagh.
Licorice Pizza cozies up to a coming-of-age story of its own, sun-soaked in San Fernando Valley, California. Despite the concerns around the relationship between protagonists at the core of the film or the caricature of Asian-Americans, Paul Thomas Anderson's lighter film has earned his eligibility for Best Director. If Ryusuke Hamaguchi claims the title of Best Director for himself following the praise of Drive My Car, he will be the first Japanese director to do so, thus making Academy Award History.
Above all, Power of the Dog has declared Jane Campion Best Director. Campion had been predicted to win, and it seems the predictions were right.
Jane Campion Was Expected to Win Best Director
Campion embracing her victory doesn't come as a surprise from any perspective. Her lead in the race was highly anticipated far before the nominees for the 94th Academy Awards were announced. Power of the Dog was determined to earn its awards and fall on the ballots of media critics around the world. Campion's win at the BAFTAs crowned her as the third woman to take home the award in the history of the ceremony's prominence.
She will now stand as the third woman to take home the Oscar for Best Director. Her win will continue to create Academy Award history as she is the first woman who has been nominated twice for Best Director, following her nomination for The Piano in 1993. Because the brooding, unsmiling Western racked up its Oscar win, this would mark the first Academy Award victory for a Netflix Original. Power of the Dog has successfully caused a stir throughout Hollywood after generating conversations around toxic masculinity and the social stigma surrounding the LGBTQIA+ community.
Based on the novel of the same name previously published by Thomas Savage in 1967, Power of the Dog is available to stream on Netflix.