There is not much joy in celebrating when the favourite wins. There is not the same smug gratification or sense of superiority that comes with having your against-the-odds bet come to glorious, unlikely fruition. And yet seeing One Battle After Another, the frontrunner by all accounts, pick up Best Picture at the Oscars on Sunday felt so good. So right. For once, the Academy didn’t mess this up.
First, before any talk of industry politics or awards history, the film on face value: it is a powerhouse of an Oscar winner. The story of a washed up revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) on the run with his disbelieving daughter (Chase Infiniti), it reveals itself in parts like a magician’s endless string of handkerchiefs, subplots of wildly different tones knotted together by Paul Thomas Anderson’s cinematic sensibility – and the manic score of Jonny Greenwood.
