Many of the films that have begun to rack up statuettes and nominations on the sometimes gilded, sometimes barbed path to the Oscars (the Gothams traditionally start off the campaigning in New York) deal with the existential crises of men. There are real-life figures grappling with their place in history (Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role of Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar”), fictional figures contending with the weight of their cultural forebears (Owen Wilson as a dissatisfied screenwriter in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”) or classic archetypes facing an uncertain future (the silent screen actor at the advent of sound in “The Artist”). Guyish morality (and mortality) tales like “The Descendants,” Alexander Payne’s bittersweet family drama, and “50/50,” a comic bromance about a young man with cancer, have been rewarded with good notices from critics and precursor trophy givers, like the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Other Oscar watchers, like Sasha Stone at Awards Daily, have noted that there’s a preponderance of struggling (but hot) single fathers in this year’s crop of hopefuls: the “sexiest men alive” troika of George Clooney in “The Descendants,” who describes himself as the “backup parent” to two daughters; Brad Pitt in “Moneyball,” who tries to fit his child into his shuffling career as general manager of the Oakland A’s; and Matt Damon as the economically floundering but devoted dad in “We Bought a Zoo.” Even the nameless hipster-lust object played by Ryan Gosling in “Drive,” Nicolas Winding Refn’s stylish ode to Los Angeles noir, becomes a father figure to a neighbor’s little boy. In “The Artist,” which received top honors from the New York Film Critics Circle on Tuesday, the dapper French leading man Jean Dujardin doesn’t have a kid, but he does have a scene-stealing little dog. (For movie stars, even retro ones, that’s responsibility enough.)
“Take Shelter,” the writer-director Jeff Nichols’s haunting story of a blue-collar family man beset by visions of doom, offers a tight-lipped patriarch who is all the more unsettling for his familiarity. “It reminds me of a stepfather I had, Big Mike,” said Michael Shannon, the star of that film. (At some point Mr. Shannon, now a hulking 6 foot 4, was Little Mike.) That his character hides his crippling nightmares from his wife — played by Jessica Chastain, who, like Mr. Shannon, is earning all the right kudos for the performance — is not just a plot device. “I don’t think that’s an aberration, some sort of malignant behavior,” Mr. Shannon said. “I think it’s pretty common, actually, for people that are in relationships to withhold certain things from one another.”
Though “Take Shelter,” set against rust-belt economic turmoil, has the whiff of something topical, Mr. Shannon said it was a personal project for Mr. Nichols, with whom he has collaborated before. “Jeff wrote this movie because of the anxiety he was having about starting a family,” he said. (Mr. Nichols is being promoted for a best original screenplay Oscar.)
Movies typically have too long a development cycle to reflect the latest shifts in American culture, but there are exceptions like “Margin Call,” the talky financial thriller in which roomfuls of dudes (and one “dudette,” as J. C. Chandor, the writer and director of “Margin Call,” described one of the film’s stars, Demi Moore) choose how to navigate the imminent demise of their fictional investment bank. Mr. Chandor, the son of a stockbroker, based it loosely on the 2008 fall of Lehman Brothers and labored not to make Wall Street a bogeyman. Audiences leave debating the real-life economic repercussions.
“It’s been sort of sad, obviously, for the world and for the country, but the film I think has been taken more seriously,” Mr. Chandor said of his timing. He is making his feature debut with “Margin Call,” which earned the Robert Altman prize for directing, casting and ensemble (the actors include Zachary Quinto, Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons) from the Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Of course the idea that studios (and audiences) would shell out for a good-looking hero (or several) is nothing new; Hollywood has always been a sucker for a struggling — or stuttering — conqueror. But in the nearly three years that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has allowed up to 10 best picture nominees — the same span that I’ve been chronicling the daily red carpets and cocktail-party chatter of Oscar season in my role as the Carpetbagger — there have been at least a few movies in the trophy pool that centered on women: “Black Swan,” which won Ms. Portman an Oscar last year; “An Education,” which introduced Carey Mulligan to the world; “The Blind Side,” which demonstrated that mainstream movies could resonate equally with Oprah watchers and Academy voters; and “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” which had the blessing of Oprah herself, a producer.
This year’s answer to “The Blind Side” may be the “The Help,” Tate Taylor’s adaptation of the best-selling novel about women’s work and civil rights in 1960s Mississippi. With strong performances from Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Ms. Chastain, it is considered an Oscar shoo-in for an acting nomination, and maybe more.
This year the Academy revised its rules to allow anywhere from 5 to 10 best picture nominees, so it could still be a brofest — or not. At this stage guessing is part of the fun. Beside all the celebrity-stylist and gift-bag hoopla, the Oscar race is a conversation: about which films deserve canonization via little gold men, how they might get there and whether they will shape us when they do.
For Mr. Mills, the writer-director of “Beginners,” a little-seen and highly personal film poised to make a bigger ripple now, the impact of the early awards attention is to, unexpectedly, amplify everything he wanted to say. He based his movie very closely on his own relationship with his father.
“I started writing it five months after my dad passed away,” he said. “And I’m in this crazy grief world, which makes me really brave, and I’m willing to talk about anything that I can to the world, about humanity, which sounds pretentious. But I’m like: ‘Why not? What else are we here to talk about? ”
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