Celine Song (‘Past Lives’) would be the lucky 7th rookie director to win an Oscar

Celine Song could join a rare club of just filmmakers to win the Academy Award for Best Director with their first-ever movie. Usually, we predict experienced, veteran helmers to win the award or at filmmakers who have at least had a couple of smaller movies under their belt. But sometimes, a debut director comes along with a film that is so special, they earn their place in the history books. This has only happened six times in Oscars history.

Delbert Mann was the first to do it when he won for “Marty” in 1956, six years before Jerome Robbins won for his acclaimed debut “West Side Story” in 1962. Robert Wise, who had already helmed 27 movies before, co-directed the movie with Robbins, but it was Robbins’ debut. Actor Robert Redford then took a trip behind the camera and emerged victorious in 1981 for “Ordinary People.” Three years later, in 1984, James L. Brooks won for “Terms of Endearment.” Then, another actor — Kevin Costner — won Best Director for his debut in 1991 for “Dances with Wolves.” Sam Mendes is the most recent director to achieve this feat. He took home the Best Director gong for “American Beauty” in 2000.

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Celine Song and her debut film, “Past Lives,” however, could join this club. The A24 film, which was released on June 2 earlier this year, follows Greta Lee as Nora, a woman who becomes re-entangled with Teo Yoo‘s Hae Sung, her best friend and childhood crush whom she left behind in South Korea years earlier. The film is an intelligent, contemplative study of love and destiny while Song shows restraint and assuredness beyond her years in her directing. It’s truly impressive stuff with Song demonstrating a firm grasp on her material (she wrote the script herself) and a natural gift for visual filmmaking. The film possesses a visual language, which Song crafted with cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, that echoes and illuminates the relationships between the movie’s central trio. Film students will study this picture in the future, no doubt.

What is a doubt, however, is if Song will even land a nomination let alone a win. According to our Oscars odds chart for Best Director, our predicted five nominees in this category are Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”), Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”), and Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”). She did, however, secure a Critics Choice Award nomination for Best Director. Still, she is outside of our predicted five and has a lot of ground to make up to leapfrog the titanic names of Nolan and Scorsese. What helps, though, is the film’s critical reception. No other contender has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than the 97% garnered by “Past Lives.” It is the critics’ film of the year and that could propel it towards nominations. Plus, we are predicting that “Past Lives” will land bids for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay while Lee and Yeo are in the conversations for their leading roles respectively. If “Past Lives” hits home with voters, then Song could land a nomination. Nolan and Scorsese feel like locks but, truthfully, any one of Lanthimos, Gerwig, and Glazer could miss out in what is a very strong year. If Song does make the top five, she could then go on and win.

We predict that “Oppenheimer” will win Best Picture, Best Director for Nolan, Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound. That is eight predicted wins. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won seven last year but this type of clean sweep doesn’t actually happen often anymore. Best Picture winners “CODA” (2022), “Nomadland” (2021), “Green Book” (2019), “Moonlight” (2017), “12 Years a Slave” (2014), and “Argo” (2013) all won just three Oscars while “Parasite” (2020), “The Shape of Water” (2018), and “Birdman” won four, and “Spotlight” (2016) won two.

So, will “Oppenheimer” really win Picture, Director, and five or six other awards, or will we see a more typical split? Perhaps “Oppenheimer” will win Picture and Director will go to someone else, like Song? Equally, however, Nolan could win Director and the preferential ballot voting system could see a film like “Past Lives” or “The Holdovers” take home Best Picture.

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