Why Belfast deserves to win Best Picture
The 2022 Oscars ceremony is coming up on March 27, and 10 new movies are up for the Best Picture title: Belfast, CODA, Don’t Look Up, Drive My Car, Dune, King Richard, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, The Power of the Dog, and West Side Story. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and any of them might end up winning big. In the leadup to the Oscars, we’re making a case for why each of them might deserve to take the big prize.
Belfast, directed by Kenneth Branagh.
In 1969 Belfast, adorable Buddy (Jude Hill) navigates the life of a fairly typical 9-year-old boy: He has a crush on a classmate, he steals some candy, he receives worldly wisdom from his adorable grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds), and he eavesdrops on his parents (Jamie Dornan and Caitríona Balfe) as they fight, adorably, about money. But escalating sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics is tearing the community apart, and threatening to cast a long shadow over the family’s future. The story is based on Branagh’s own childhood experiences.
Belfast is pure Oscars catnip; no wonder it’s considered one of the frontrunners. It’s a personal, sentimental memory piece from a beloved showman, an actor-director in the tradition of the titans of the London stage. (Over the past 30 years, Branagh has personally earned eight Oscar nominations in an incredible seven different categories.) It’s a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of socio-political upheaval, blending undemanding drama with humanist, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along hand-wringing. It’s a filmmaker’s origin story, featuring multiple scenes of a child’s face beaming rapturously up at a cinema screen. It has Judi Dench (who also has eight Oscar nominations, and one win). It’s in
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