Will Park Chan-wook (‘Decision to Leave’) finally get into Best Director at the Oscars?
Park Chan-wook has one of the most illustrious careers as a filmmaker in South Korea, with movies like “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden” winning multiple prestigious Korean film awards. He returns this awards season with the unique CJ Entertainment film “Decision to Leave,” a thriller turned tragic romance that one would say goes against his usual style of filmmaking. However, his command of direction remains impeccable, winning him the Best Director prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. It may come as a shock to many that he has never received an Oscar nomination; will this be the year he could break into the Best Director category?
“Decision to Leave” stars Park Hae-il as a skilled detective investigating the murder of a mountain climber and begins to have intense romantic feelings for his main suspect wife, played by Tang Wei. While the film does not have a lot of features expected from a Park Chan-wook movie, such as brutal violence or disturbing eroticism or a tale of revenge, it shares many of his themes about corrupt love and repression, and has been compared to the likes of films of Alfred Hitchcock. The movie deconstructs the relationship between the two characters and redefines what love is with unconsummated relationships and lack of fulfillment in a dense way that is filled with subtext and parallel themes and still manages to subvert expectations, another trademark of Park Chan-wook.
In the last four years, the Best Director category at the Oscars has included at least one filmmaker from an international movie. If the tradition still holds true this year, Park Chan-wook is a likely contender for the spot. In the four consecutive years when an international film director got into the category, their film won Best International Feature Film at the Oscars: Alfonso Cuaron for “Roma,” Bong Joon-ho for “Parasite,” Thomas Vinterberg for “Another Round” and Ryusuke Hamaguchi for “Drive My Car.”
With “RRR” not submitted by India and deemed ineligible, the category has never been more up in the air, beginning with “Argentina, 1985” winning the Golden Globe in a shocking upset. However, “Decision to Leave” is an extremely likely contender for the win, and Park can easily follow that trend. It currently sits in Gold Derby’s Top 2 with 4/1 odds combined, behind only Edward Berger‘s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” reflecting 2019 when Paweł Pawlikowski was nominated in director for “Cold War” alongside Cuaron.
“Decision to Leave’s” trajectory may also be influenced by BAFTA, where it has been included in the longlist for four categories: Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Film not in the English Language. Park Chan-wook has a great track record with the British voters, having won the latter category for “The Handmaiden” back in 2018 when the film was not submitted by South Korea for the Oscars, beating out many Oscar frontrunners including the eventual winner “The Salesman” by Asghar Farhadi. He has a great shot of making it into the director lineup with the new change in the voting system as 4/6 nominees are determined by a jury. All five aforementioned international film directors that were nominated for the Oscar also made this category so it would bode well for Park Chan-wook if he got nominated for the BAFTA.
But more so than anything, Park Chan-wook is beloved and respected by his peers in the U.S. and definitely has an overdue narrative having never been nominated for an Academy Award. It would certainly be more than deserving as “Decision to Leave” is a devastatingly beautiful film, seeped with his directing style and storytelling choices. Film critics overwhelmingly agree, with Caryn James (BBC.com) writing, “Park Chan-wook puts a ravishing spin on a timeless story of romantic obsession and a detective who falls for his suspect.” And Adam Graham (Detroit News) raves, “One of the smartest, most satisfying murder mysteries in years.”
PREDICT the 2023 Oscar nominees through January 24
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions