Who will triumph at this year’s Oscars?

Robbie Collin looks at the runners and riders for Sunday’s Academy Awards, and asks whether ‘Parasite’ will make cinematic history

Predicting the Oscars is like packing the car for a picnic. You can spend hours shrewdly tucking in everything you think you could possibly need, but if the weather turns, you can suddenly find yourself stuck with a bootful of uselessness. For a few weeks now, the forecast for the 92nd Academy Awards has been consistent: a sweep for Sam Mendes’s widely admired First World War film 1917, as foreshadowed by its seven wins at the Baftas last Sunday evening. Yet yesterday morning, I felt a twinge in my critic’s equivalent of grandmother’s knee – a strange, rheumatoid pang presaging a change in the wind.

Here, I think, is why. It’s hardly news that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is in a period of flux, after the #Oscarssowhite backlash of 2015 and 2016 prompted a shake-up of its predominantly middle-aged, male, Caucasian membership. But as the Academy’s internal demographics continue to shift, its choices have seemed to become more politically loaded. Take the awarding of Best Picture last year to Green Book,a piece of handsome, nostalgic, defiantly un-pc comfort food. After Moonlight and The Shape of Water in 2017 and 2018, it felt as if the old guard had decided to reassert themselves. And that may persuade members to be more adventurous on Sunday night – particularly since voting closed on Tuesday, just 48 hours after this year’s leading heritage pick was so amply rewarded at the Baftas.

This is, of course, pure guesswork. The Academy’s preferential voting system benefits widely liked films over passionately but only partially adored ones – and 1917’s success at the Baftas, Golden Globes and Directors’ and Producers’ Guilds suggests it is extremely widely liked.

But for every member who’s determined for the Academy to recast itself as outward-looking and forward-thinking – as well as those who know a masterpiece when they see it – there happens to be an ideal option waiting on the ballot.

Best Picture

Will win: Parasite Should win: Parasite Might win: 1917 In its 92-year history, the Academy has never presented the top award to a film made in any language other than English. Bong Joon-ho’s fiendish satirical thriller – easily the equal of this year’s very best home-grown nominees – gives them the perfect opportunity to finally do so. Will they seize it? Here’s hoping.

Best Director

Will win: Sam Mendes, 1917

Should win: Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Might win: Bong Joon-ho, Parasite Wherever Best Picture goes, expect Mendes to be honoured here, 20 years after first winning the same award for American Beauty.

Best Actor

Will win: Joaquin Phoenix, Joker Should win: Adam Driver, Marriage Story

Might win: Adam Driver, Marriage Story

Now a four-time nominee, Phoenix is long overdue – and fittingly, his performance in Joker feels like something of a greatest hits reel, spliced together from the roles for which he should have

been recognised.

Best Actress

Will win: Renée Zellweger, Judy Should win: Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story

Might win: Charlize Theron, Bombshell

A comeback artist plays a comeback artist – by turns adored and derided, yet soldiering on regardless. How can Hollywood resist?

In the frame: Little Women, 1917, Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Renée Zellweger, below,

in Judy

Best Supporting Actor

Will win: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Should win: Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Might win: Al Pacino, The Irishman As with Phoenix, it’s hard to believe Pitt doesn’t have one of these for acting already, though he was called to the stage as a producer for 12 Years a Slave’s Best Picture win in 2015.

Yet he’s never deserved it more than for his work in Quentin Tarantino’s film, which was one of the great movie-star performances of recent years.

Best Supporting Actress

Will win: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Should win: Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Might win: Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit

All four of this year’s acting frontrunners have felt like favourites for a while – but Dern, who was first nominated in 1992, has felt like a shoo-in since the lights went up on Marriage Story’s Venice premiere last August. Her acidic Los Angeles divorce lawyer is the kind of smart comic turn that’s almost impossible not to fall for, in or out of awards season.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Will win: Jojo Rabbit

Should win: Little Women

Might win: Little Women

Taika Waititi’s Nazi Germany-set comedy has proven far less divisive around the industry than among film critics, and its core gimmick – the injection of whimsy and wackiness into a formerly sober Holocaust narrative – can be rewarded here.

Best Original Screenplay

Will win: Parasite

Should win: Marriage Story

Might win: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

If Parasite has the breadth of support required to clinch Best Picture, a handful of second-tier prizes should precede the big one. This is an obvious contender, since the Rubik’s cube ingenuity of its writing can’t be denied.