This year, the prayer of the Oscar season has a name, and these are “sinners”.
With “Sinners”, the writer -director Ryan Coogler, one of the most seismic forces in Hollywood, passes in a genre neglected for a long time through the Academy, and once again, reshaping the game. A slow psychological horror film, “Sinners” is not only a pivot to coogulate – it is rather a proclamation.
For more than a decade, Coogler has been the calm revolutionary of Hollywood – symbolizing, for the black community, a figure similar to our own Christopher Nolan. From the chronicle of the last hours of Oscar Grant’s life in “Fruitvale Station”, to the revival of the franchise “Rocky” with “Creed”, to the rupture of barriers with the “Black Panther” cultural mastodon, Coogle merges a personal and political narration with a mass attraction like a few others.
Now comes “Sinners”, a success at the certified box office and a critical sweetheart that goes both to redefine the career of coogling and the outdated limits of the academy around the horror. And if there is justice, he will cut his name in the restricted list of black directors who are still nominated for the best director – an elite and shamefully small list who includes John Singleton, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele and Spike Lee.
Horror has always been the poor steps of the Academy, too strong, too bloody, too bizarre. “Psycho” (1960) and “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) were snubbed when they should have governed. Only the rare monsters, such as the best winner of the image “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) and the original Victor “Get Out” (2017) – have ever broken. But in a post-“substance” world, where body horror can earn five nominations, “sinners” is less like a bet and more like a moment.
© Warner Bros / Courtesy Everett C
Michael B. Jordan, the long -standing muse to coogulate, offers a double career round as a twin brothers smoking and stack, performances that feel so distinct, so alive, that it is difficult to believe that they share a body. Jordan, shamefully neglected for “Fruitvale Station” and “Black Panther”, now requires Oscar’s attention. Besides him, the newcomer Miles Caton tears through the screen while Sammie “Preacher Boy” Moore, evoking the granular charism which once catapulted Daniel Kaluuya in the dominant current.
Delroy Lindo, one of Hollywood’s latest actors, brings a thunderous soul to Slim, a performance that deserves its own set of flowers, especially after its flagrant snob for “Da 5 Bloods” (2020). Surround them are a crackling set of life: Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li and Hailee Steinfeld. This is the kind of casting that should force SAG Awards to free up space in its higher category, the whole type which validates the brand new casting Oscar of the Academy. And the director of cast Francine Maisler would be an ideal first winner.
Outings at the start of the year as “Dune: Part Two” (2023) and “Past Lives” (2022) remind us that the size is not seasonal, and “Sinners” could overcome a wave. The own “Black Panther” Oscar Triumph began in February, proof that the calendar is no longer king, as long as the quality can save it.
The exceptional ensemble of the craftsmen of Coogler – the production designer Hannah Beachler, the costume designer Ruth E. Carter, the composer Ludwig Görasson – meets here as a Holy Trinity. And for Carter and Görasson, a rare hop hop Oscars could be in their future.
Warner Bros.
Then, there is the glow of the cinematography of the fall Durald Arkapaw, each frame soaked in uneasiness and tragic beauty of the 1930s. Its luminous framing dazzles, as we see in “Teen Spirit” and nominated for Emmy for “Loki” on television, and she offers amazing work that could finally bring a woman to win the best cinematography at home. Only three women have never been nominated: Rachel Morrison (“Mudbound”), Ari Wegner (“The power of the dog”) and Mandy Walker (“Elvis”). The skeptics wonder if we will see a woman earning our living; After seeing “sinners”, I think the answer is yes.
What the “sinners” accomplish is deceptively radical. He treats horror not as a shock, but as a soul. He asks his audience not only to fear, but to feel. It is held at the intersection of survival and memory, a film as political as personal, as haunted as it is human. And all mixed with the spirit of vampire with red eyes that haunt the characters on the screen.
To coogulate, the Oscars are never the end of the game. They are, at best, a by-product to do the most difficult thing: to tell stories that challenge the world to appear more difficult, love more deeply and survive longer. “Pinners” does not ask for the voting of the Academy. It requires reflection. For some of us, this is one of the films this year should be judged.
Ryan Coogler never stopped. Why would he start now?
