For months, the actor Karla Sofía Gascón had been reaping the rewards of leading a prestigious film. She plays the title character in Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican cartel boss who transitions into a woman and seeks to build a more virtuous life. The Spanish-language musical has faced waves of backlash since its release last year—but it has also found a devoted fan base among awards bodies.

Gascón was one of its anchors: She delivered an impassioned speech dedicated to the trans community at the Cannes Film Festival, where she shared the Best Actress prize with her castmates. When Emilia Pérez won the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy last month, Gascón movingly addressed the audience. She made history shortly thereafter, becoming the first openly trans performer to earn an Oscar nomination. A relative unknown in the United States, the Spanish actor personified a message of tolerance and acceptance; Emilia Pérez, despite all of the criticism surrounding it, looked to have elevated a star who matched the heroism of Emilia Pérez herself.

But her momentum soon came to a halt. A journalist discovered an array of Gascón’s tweets dating back to 2016 that contained racist language and crude jokes about a range of marginalized communities. In response, the actor stopped following the typical awards-season playbook: She posted defensive updates on Instagram, sent a long-winded statement without the assistance of a public-relations team to The Hollywood Reporter, and personally scheduled a lengthy, tearful interview on CNN en Español. Gascón became Hollywood’s persona non grata, just under a month before the Academy Awards ceremony.

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The actor’s trajectory represents one of the most dramatic implosions of an awards run in Oscars history. Twists and gaffes happening at the tail end of a race—for which this year’s voting round ended on Tuesday—are nothing new. (Gascón’s fellow Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres weathered her own controversy this season; a clip of her wearing blackface in a comedy sketch resurfaced last month. The I’m Still Here star responded by releasing a measured apology.) But the nature of Gascón’s fall is unusual. Rarely has a nominee’s curated image—that of a righteous up-and-comer, applauded by an industry eager to demonstrate its tolerance—so thoroughly differed from the one conjured by her personal online accounts. Her case is a fascinating look at how industry status can collide with the social-media era: In spite of the awards season’s purported aims to celebrate cinema, a performer’s off-screen narrative can matter just as much as their work.

Gascón’s diminished chances of winning a trophy arguably resulted not so much from the resurfacing of her bigoted tweets, but mainly from the way she diverged from established public-relations guidelines. Oscar campaigns tend to be carefully controlled endeavors, and Netflix, Emilia Pérez’s distributor in the United States, has one of the most experienced awards-strategy teams in Hollywood. The streamer had helped turn Gascón from an unknown in the U.S. into a contender—and on the same day that her old posts garnered attention, Netflix circulated her official apology. “As someone in a marginalized community,” read the standard-issue statement, “I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain.”

But soon afterward—and reportedly without clearing her plans with Netflix—Gascón went rogue. She sent The Hollywood Reporter an additional statement claiming that her tweets were misunderstood, at times even by herself. (“Sometimes I, myself, am not even aware of having written something negative,” she wrote.) She shared thoughts on Instagram about her words being taken out of context. And she scheduled the CNN en Español interview, during which she argued that she’d done nothing wrong. She also claimed that her co-stars—including Zoe Saldaña, the Supporting Actress Oscar front-runner—supported her “200 percent,” despite no public evidence that they shared her sentiments. “I have not committed any crime, nor have I harmed anyone,” she said. “I am not a racist, nor am I anything that all these people have taken it upon themselves to try to make others believe I am.”

The more Gascón tried to salvage her reputation by herself, the more those associated with the film pulled away from her. Shortly after Emilia Pérez nabbed 13 Oscar nominations—the most of any movie this year—Netflix began removing billboards in Los Angeles that singled her out; the company has reportedly restricted her access to the team’s travel funds, making it harder for her to attend more precursor award ceremonies. Gascón responded to comments from the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, about her “self-destructive approach” by pledging on Instagram to stay silent going forward. Earlier this month, Netflix’s chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, addressed the scandal, calling the controversy “a bummer.” (The company is also “reevaluating” its strategy for vetting actors’ social-media accounts, she said.)

[Read: The Oscars have left the mainstream moviegoer behind]

Gascón’s attempt to control her image is singular in its audacity. None of her fellow awards contenders this season has made such bold, unfiltered moves while trying to convince Academy voters that they’re worthy of a trophy. Even before her tweets resurfaced, the Emilia Pérez star had begun deviating from the film’s standard promotional press campaign by chiding Torres’s social-media strategy. Criticizing another nominee’s tactics is an inadvisable step for someone on the Oscar track; the act can come off as combative, and the Academy can penalize attacks against fellow contenders. “There are people working with Fernanda Torres tearing me and Emilia Pérez down,” she claimed in an interview. “That speaks more about their movie than mine.” Gascón later retracted the remarks and explained that she wasn’t targeting her competitor, but merely trying to admonish “toxicity and violent hate speech on social media.” And then, when her past social-media posts came up, she completely ignored the rules of how to face a blowback. She could have followed in Torres’s footsteps—the I’m Still Here actor had just demonstrated how effective sticking with a standard mea culpa can be—yet once again, Gascón diverged from the norm.

Not everyone follows the Oscars playbook, of course. But the other most unconventional campaign this year is notable because it’s so thoroughly unlike what Gascón is doing. Timothée Chalamet, who’s up for his performance as Bob Dylan in the musical biopic A Complete Unknown, certainly seems to be defying the rules of typical press tours, surprising his look-alikes at a contest in New York City and riding a Lime bike onto the red carpet at a premiere, among other antics. Chalamet’s efforts have worked in part because he is an established, controversy-free celebrity, a household name with movie-star appeal. If anything, his well-received run so far, even if he doesn’t win the Oscar, underlines what made Gascón’s Hail Mary fail: Chalamet’s calculated, personality-driven stunts evoke the youthful renegade appeal of the cultural icon he played, courting chatter but not criticism.

Meanwhile, Gascón’s defensive behavior, by turns rebellious and inflammatory, undid the storyline she and Netflix had cultivated for months: that the actor intimately understood why Emilia Pérez succeeded with so many awards-season voters, many of whom are Gascón’s peers. Gascón’s character in the film is supposed to epitomize the human capacity for good, and for overcoming flaws with grace. After the actor’s tweets resurfaced, she emphasized that “light will always triumph over darkness” in her Netflix-approved apology; the statement repositioned Gascón as remorseful about her past, just like Emilia had been. But if Gascón appeared to exemplify the film’s message early in its journey toward Oscar glory, she has come to embody a different narrative—that of a shocking, largely self-inflicted public collapse. It’s not the kind that tends to win someone an Oscar.

When Saturday Night Live announced that Timothée Chalamet would be both the host and musical guest on this week’s episode, the reaction was largely: huh?

What would Chalamet, a skilled actor not usually known as a musical artist, perform? Would he revive his high-school rap alias Lil Timmy Tim? Reprise his role as Willy Wonka? Or would he just sing Bob Dylan songs, considering he has been on a long promotional tour for his turn as the folk artist in the biopic A Complete Unknown? Would he come out strumming hits such as “Blowin’ in the Wind”?

He did sing Dylan songs last night—but notably, he did not feature the most popular stuff. Chalamet’s musical numbers were inspired interpretations of Dylan deep cuts, including “Three Angels” and “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.” His performances were weird, smart, and entertaining, and a way to show people that his dedication to Dylan has been serious.

Chalamet’s hosting stint was clearly strategic. Oscar nominations came out on Thursday, and his name was called as expected, making him, at 29, the youngest two-time nominee for the Best Actor category since James Dean. Chalamet highlighted the achievement in his monologue, explaining that he was in his SNL dressing room when he heard the news. “The entire creative team worked extremely hard bringing to life the brilliant artist Bob Dylan, a man whose music and career has become a guiding light to me,” he said, earnestly. No jokes could be found in that statement, which sounded like the kind of thing you’d say on the stage of the Dolby Theatre, holding a trophy.

[Read: The Oscars have left the mainstream moviegoer behind]

But as Chalamet would quickly remind viewers: Although his work has been praised quite a bit for someone who has yet to hit 30, he also hasn’t won all that many awards. “I just keep losing,” he said. “And each time, it gets harder to pretend it doesn’t sting.” That prompted a montage of Chalamet at various awards shows hearing the likes of Gary Oldman and Mahershala Ali get their name called instead of him, his angular face barely masking disappointment by the end. He told the SNL audience that he would use this hosting opportunity to give the acceptance speech he’d been carrying around and handed an envelope to a person seated in the audience to announce his name. However, that was a set up for another joke: The winner inside the envelope was not Chalamet but the cast member Kenan Thompson. Still the monologue had a sincere tone overall; Chalamet, rather than seeming like a sore loser, cannily presented himself as an underdog.

In the episode’s sketches, Chalamet was an enthusiastic participant (as he has been the past two times he’s hosted), throwing himself into characters including an overly enthusiastic bungee-fitness instructor, a nurse who does CPR by farting on faces, and a dog at a park meeting other pups. Though these were proficient moments of comedy, the two musical sets were where he really showed off.

He didn’t play the famous songs that appear in A Complete Unknown, which tracks Dylan’s emergence in the 1960s folk scene. Instead, Chalamet pulled out what he called his “personal favorites”—and revealed choices that appeal to Dylan fanatics rather than casual listeners.

He first sang a medley of “Outlaw Blues,” off the 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home, and “Three Angels,” from 1970’s New Morning, each rendition receiving its own elaborate, deliberate production that proved this was no half-hearted effort. He wore big, bug-eyed sunglasses during the more upbeat “Outlaw Blues,” rocking and dancing across the stage as lights flashed to the tune. For the latter song he sat down next to the electro-pop artist James Blake, who backed him up with vocals and keys, and slowed down, reciting the song as if it were a poem. During the second musical break, Chalamet, perched on a stool, demonstrated his acoustic-guitar-strumming technique on “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” a Dylan song sometimes associated with its Elvis Presley cover.

When an actor portrays a renowned musician in a movie, it’s not a given that they have actual musical talent. Chalamet’s promotional tour for A Complete Unknown emphasized the fact that he performed all its songs himself; even that, however, could be written off as pure mimicry. Simply imitating Dylan did not seem to be Chalamet’s aim on SNL, however. The actor presented his own interpretations of Dylan’s music, melding the Nobel Prize winner’s artistry with Chalamet’s own streetwear-influenced style and more contemporary musical tastes—as evidenced by the presence of Blake’s signature wail.

[Read: Bob Dylan’s carnival act]

For anyone who was questioning Chalamet’s commitment to playing Dylan—including potential Oscar voters—the night was proof that the actor’s engagement with the musician went beyond the pure confines of the cinematic role. And for those who thought that Chalamet doing double duty on SNL might be a joke, the thoughtful way in which he approached his job as musical guest may have quieted any doubt. Not only did he pay respect to Dylan; he made clear that he can put on a show that’s all his own.

In the years since it began a committed effort to diversify and expand its membership, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has weathered strikes, the pandemic shutdown of theaters, and constant hand-wringing about declining TV ratings and potential cultural irrelevance. But one trend has remained consistent for the Academy Awards, the voting body’s annual big event: The Academy has been getting more and more international. This year’s nominations, announced today (six days later than planned, after a delay in recognition of the horrific Los Angeles fires), confirmed the extent to which Oscar voters’ tastes have shifted. The French-produced, Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez received the most nominations of the day, accompanied by several other movies that premiered—and were big hits—at European film festivals.

The Academy nominated 10 films for Best Picture, leaving room for some of the biggest blockbusters of last year. The musical Wicked (10 nominations) and the sci-fi sequel Dune: Part Two (five nominations) were two of 2024’s highest-grossing films, racking up hundreds of millions more in box-office grosses than most of the other Oscar contenders. But if you want to gauge the true awards favorites, looking at the Best Director category, where only five hopefuls get picked, is usually more useful. Each of this year’s directors is a first-time nominee in the category, and four worked on features that mainstream moviegoers might consider unorthodox: Alongside the filmmaker Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, there’s the indie darling Sean Baker’s Anora, a raunchy dramedy about a sex worker; the actor turned filmmaker Brady Corbet’s 215-minute historical drama, The Brutalist; and the relative newcomer Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, one of the few horror films in the Academy Awards’ history to resonate with voters. The writer-director James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown—a musical biopic that’s seen as conventionally attractive Oscar fare—stands out as the anomaly of the group. That Mangold’s film was also the only one to skip the international-festival circuit further suggests a turning tide for the Academy’s preferences.

[Read: A film impossible to have mild feelings about]

But Emilia Peréz, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival last year, is a unique case among those five front-runners—it’s a Netflix-branded movie. The streamer has spent years striving for the Best Picture title, only to narrowly miss out again and again. Netflix made what seemed to be likely bets over the past half decade with Roma, The Irishman, Mank, The Power of the Dog, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Maestro, and over and over again, Netflix’s most prestigious work has gotten a ton of nominations but walked away without the biggest trophy. (In the cases of Roma and The Power of the Dog, the company at least left with the consolation of Best Director.) That track record is partly because of Netflix’s tendency toward backing fairly artsy, auteur-driven movies; the hope apparently has been that a director such as Martin Scorsese and David Fincher would be enough to draw viewers and votes. But the paltry Oscar showing thus far is likely also because, as a streaming-first studio that remains fairly hostile to cinematic releases, Netflix has a more polarizing status in Hollywood than most of its peers.

Could Emilia Pérez be the contender to break that streak? If so, it’ll be a slightly confounding win that could spark another thousand think pieces about the Academy’s continued drift from popular opinion. It’s a non-Hollywood film with very little English dialogue, a gonzo musical about a Mexican cartel leader (played by Karla Sofía Gascón) who fakes her death, transitions into a woman, and then tries to build a more authentic life. Emilia Pérez won major accolades at Cannes, but its post-festival reception has been more muted; it has weathered waves of backlash from multiple sides since its November debut on Netflix. The company has pushed all of its resources into the movie anyway, clearly seeing the potential for nabbing the big prize in a diffuse field; it’s already triumphed at the Golden Globes. But Netflix has come close and missed before, so it’s perhaps too early to be bullish on Emilia Pérez’s chances.

Netflix’s biggest challenger appears to be the distributor A24. The independent company acquired The Brutalist after its successful debut at the Venice Film Festival. The movie is a large-scale American epic made for a comparatively small budget, a supersize film (with an intermission) about topics that have resonated with Oscar voters for decades: tortured male geniuses, the long shadow of World War II and the Holocaust, the struggle of art against commerce. It’s an excellent film, as well as the kind of big movie that has won Best Picture many times. A24 mounted a slow Christmas rollout as a way to build buzz with not just critics but audiences too, including putting the movie on IMAX screens. The plan has worked thus far, and the breadth of awards-season attention, including Oscar nominations for all three main cast members—Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce—might be enough to take the movie all the way. But simmering backlash to The Brutalist’s knottier second act—and, to a lesser extent, some scuttlebutt regarding the use of AI—could do it in; that the feature peaks about halfway through has become something of a prevailing opinion.

[Read: Watch—and rewatch—this 215-minute film]

The other big favorites will probably have to settle for slightly less notable trophies. Anora won the Cannes equivalent of Best Picture and has received a slew of other awards nominations, but after getting passed over at the Golden Globes, it somehow feels like an outside shot in every category (except maybe Original Screenplay for Baker). Wicked was an audience sensation that got warm reviews (if not outright raves), but it seems competitive only for the design trophies. Conclave, a robust grown-up drama about the Vatican choosing a new pope, missed a predicted slot in Best Director, suggesting a broad sense of “liked but didn’t love” among voters. Dune: Part Two will be treated as its predecessor was: a technical achievement, first and foremost.

Two smaller-scale nominees that snuck into Best Picture, I’m Still Here and Nickel Boys, benefited from passionate reviews and well-run campaigns by their respective distributors, Sony Pictures Classics and Amazon MGM Studios. Another competitor, The Substance, sustained its festival buzz with a solid box-office run; pundits’ worries that its lurid material might be too polarizing for staid awards voters have now been swept away, and the lead actor, Demi Moore—who won a Golden Globe for her performance earlier this month—looks like the top candidate for the Best Actress trophy. Meanwhile, two films that debuted and played well at North American film festivals—and which critics assumed were in Best Picture contention—ended up just missing out: A Real Pain, which was still nominated for Best Supporting Actor (the recent Golden Globe winner Kieran Culkin is a favorite) and Original Screenplay, and Sing Sing (which got three other nominations, including Best Actor for its star, Colman Domingo).

[Read: The 10 best movies of 2024]

The one movie that defies many of the trends among this year’s Oscar crop—particularly its lean toward a more international, film-festival-friendly lineup of nominees—is A Complete Unknown, as old-fashioned an Oscar picture as they come. It’s an American-produced biopic from a reliable, well-liked filmmaker (James Mangold) featuring a major star (Timothée Chalamet) playing a national icon (Bob Dylan); it’s largely traditional but with a slightly arty twist. Critics and theatergoers alike have praised the movie, and Chalamet in particular has enjoyed a great year: Between a buzzy press tour and his starring turn in fellow Best Picture nom Dune: Part Two, he appears to be well positioned to earn Best Actor. But in the end, Chalamet might be too “normie” for the big trophy. That reading stands in stark contrast to the Oscars of even 10 or so years ago, when the Academy favored movies such as Argo and Spotlight, mature Hollywood dramas that told well-known true stories in effective ways. This year’s ceremony, to be hosted by Conan O’Brien on March 2, will demonstrate just how much that consensus has shifted.

*Lead image credit: Illustration by Allison Zaucha / The Atlantic. Sources: Sony Pictures Classics; A24; Page 114 / Why Not Productions / Pathé Films / France 2 Cinéma; Bettmann / Getty.

During the years-long height of the British superstar Robbie Williams’s fame, I’d often wonder why he struggled to cross over to true global recognition. Williams, for those who are unfamiliar, started out as a member of the wildly beloved English boy band Take That in the early 1990s. After leaving the group in 1995, right when its success was cresting, Williams transformed himself from potential pop-culture footnote into icon. A slew of blockbuster albums made him a household name across the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia—but not in the United States, where his early-2000s attempts to gain traction made little progress. Perhaps the country had too many of its own idols—or perhaps, as the new musical biopic Better Man argues, Williams was too gleefully self-deprecating to sincerely make the sales pitch.

The director Michael Gracey adheres to the biopic genre’s basic contours. Better Man follows Williams’s hardscrabble youth, his rise to fame, and the ups and downs that came with notoriety, all punctuated by interpretations of some of his most famous tracks. This synopsis suggests that the film is a programmatic, musician-approved project, almost as if it’s designed to be an entry point for a new generation of fans. Except, get this: Williams is represented as a CGI chimpanzee. Like, a walking, talking, human-size chimp, portrayed and voiced by a combination of a motion-capture actor (Jonnie Davies), a musician (Adam Tucker), and Williams himself.

Why is he a primate? Better Man doesn’t ever explain—though in its trailer, Williams mentions feeling “less evolved” than everyone else—and none of the characters ever remarks on it. Instead, the meaning of the conceit is left in the hands of the audience. This decision is a baffling swerve for a celebrity biopic, one that will probably keep it from becoming an out-and-out sensation. But Better Man deserves to be treated as more than a strange curio: Despite the seemingly run-of-the-mill premise and the contrivance of the protagonist, it properly delves into its subject’s erratic persona, using the musical segments to advance the story instead of as mandatory breaks in the action. The result is one of the most thoughtfully constructed movies about a musician I’ve seen in years.

[Read: Bob Dylan broke rules. A Complete Unknown follows them.]

A core part of Williams’s appeal has always been his cheekiness, as the Brits would put it. Yes, he’s a handsome fella who sings catchy hits. But even though his stock-in-trade is sincere love ballads and toe-tapping anthems about having fun, Williams exudes the sense that he’s never taking any of the glitz around him too seriously. His narration throughout Better Man poses a possible reason for his devil-may-care attitude: It’s a cover for what he refers to as the clinical depression that has dogged him over the course of his career, especially at its peak. What better way to underline that than by removing his image from the film entirely?

The appealing presentation of chimp-Williams is helped by the fact that Gracey started his career as a visual-effects artist—he knows his way around computer-generated characters. His prior directorial effort was The Greatest Showman, a more conventional movie musical that tried to package the complex and problematic life of P. T. Barnum as a family-friendly inspirational tale. It made little sense, but it became something of a box-office phenomenon on the backs of Hugh Jackman’s bravado and Gracey’s steady hand behind the camera.

Better Man has not only similarly earwormy tunes but also a far richer subject than Barnum. Williams is a showman too, but he’s a rawer, more relatable one; he’s always worn his personal deficiencies on his sleeve, even on the biggest stage. Gracey’s attentive care with Williams’s discography is especially striking. Williams’s career could easily have been shot as a straightforward jukebox musical, running down the track listing of his greatest-hits CDs while sprinkling in some run-of-the-mill backstory material. Instead, Gracey rearranges the chronology, finding numbers that thematically match the events of his protagonist’s life. Williams performs the power ballad “Feel,” the lead single from his fifth solo album, to illustrate his tough childhood. The director re-creates the singer’s famed 2001 live rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” for Better Man’s grand finale; instead of just plucking another of the singer’s own numbers, he chooses to evoke one of Williams’s biggest inspirations.

[Read: The missing piece of the Bob Marley biopic]

The film’s most jaw-dropping set piece is also perhaps its most timeline-flouting. After covering his difficult adolescence in the downtrodden industrial town of Stoke-on-Trent, Better Man turns to Williams’s early years in the music industry. Gracey captures the explosion of Take That’s crossover appeal—they climbed the ladder from small gay clubs to national arenas—in a scene where the band performs “Rock DJ,” Williams’s solo chart-topper from 2000. It unfolds as an unbroken, CGI-assisted camera move, with Williams and his bandmates—who, in real life, had nothing to do with the song—dancing through the streets of Central London, surrounded by a growing throng of fans. An artificial long take can sometimes come across as gimmicky, but it works tremendously well here, thanks in part to the creative choreography. Movie-musical directors must make certain decisions when mounting their big numbers: Should they throw everything into a wide shot, capturing the scale of the dance routines but making the world around them feel static? Or is it better to cut into the action constantly, highlighting the individual players but losing that sense of magnitude? The one-shot technique helpfully circumvents those questions.

Gracey makes an effort to innovate in several other ways, navigating around the musical genre’s visual conventions and limitations. A later scene, for example, renders the anthemic “Let Me Entertain You” as a dreamlike battle between Williams and his mouthiest chimp-demons. High points like these helped keep Better Man in my good graces even as the second half dips into excessively maudlin territory, as Williams wrestles with the strictures of fame. Still, some viewers might find the audacity of a hero that’s a CGI chimp impossible to overcome—especially those who know little about the real person (including what he actually looks like). Early box-office returns seem to indicate U.S. theatergoers’ disinterest, if not outright bafflement. But Williams has always thrived on the audience’s sympathy as much as their admiration, and Better Man finds a wonderfully goofy way to represent that with its charming, if unevolved, simian star.