Is This Finally Saoirse Ronan’s Year?

Saoirse Ronan has grown up on the Oscars stage. The Irish actress earned her first Academy Award nomination at the age of 13 for Atonement. Since then she’s received three more, an enviable record for an actor who just turned 30 this year. While you mightn’t call her overdue, exactly, she’s certainly paid her dues. Given the Academy’s established affinity for her, it feels like only a matter of time before we see Ronan stride triumphantly to the Oscars stage.

All it takes is the right film and the right year, and as luck would have it, this fall brings two different Ronan projects in the awards conversation. In Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, Ronan stars as an alcoholic piecing her life back together on the remote Orkney Islands, while in Steve McQueen’s Blitz, she has a supporting role as a mother missing her lost son in World War II London. If we’re talking Oscar, which one is the better bet?

Let’s start with The Outrun, which opened in limited release last Friday. It’s a passion project for Ronan, who produced the film alongside husband Jack Lowden, and she’s been campaigning hard for it, working the late-night circuit and stepping up her step-and-repeat game. Reviews for the addiction drama have been positive if measured, but awards-wise, this intimate, interior film will only go as far as Ronan’s performance takes it. She’s in every scene, and frequently the only person in the frame. It’s a display more of presence than of range, though the subject matter does allow her space to throw off her usual gentility and go a little wild. (Speaking of, 2014’s Wild would not be a bad comp for this movie.)

Even by the standards of this up-in-the-air year, estimations of Ronan’s Best Actress chances are all over the map. This week, Next Best Picture’s Matt Neglia told me he thinks she is going to win; on GoldDerby, pundits like Joyce Eng and Anne Thompson have her missing out on a nomination entirely. If she gets in for The Outrun, Ronan will almost certainly be her movie’s sole nominee. Still, that’s not always a dealbreaker, especially in Best Actress. Just ask Julianne Moore, who won her long-awaited trophy in 2015 for Still Alice. Both that film and The Outrun were released by Sony Pictures Classics, a distributor with a history of helping little films punch above their weight in the awards race. (Though SPC also has Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, whose leads Moore and Tilda Swinton are both competing with Ronan for spots in Best Actress.)

The Outrun is one of the smaller films in this year’s race. Steve McQueen’s Blitz, which just debuted at the London Film Festival, is one of the biggest. It’s a World War II picaresque following one boy’s journey through a bomb-strewn hellscape to return home to his mum, played by Ronan. Though it’s a more down-the-middle effort than McQueen fans probably expected, Blitz’s pedigree, subject matter, and lavish production value should make it a contender all across the ballot.

In her first major maternal role, Ronan is sequestered in her own story line for much of the film, and early consensus among those I’ve spoken to is that her segments are a little less gripping. However, McQueen gives her plenty of awards-friendly notes to play. After the film’s New York Film Festival premiere on Thursday, one critic compared her part to prognosticator Allan Lichtman’s “13 Keys to the White House.” Call it the 13 Keys to an Oscar Nom: She’s got a musical number, a scene in which she witnesses racism, and multiple scenes of anguish over being separated from her son.

Supporting Actress is wide open this year, and with Blitz looking like a solid contender, there’s plenty of room for Ronan to sidle in. However, that race feels like it has a locked-in top two in Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldana and The Piano Lesson’s Danielle Deadwyler, both of whom are essentially co-leads of their films. Assuming Saldana, the current front-runner, stays in Supporting (Gregory Ellwood thinks voters could bump her up to lead), a true supporting player like Ronan will have a lot of ground to make up.

Best Actress, by contrast, is a harder category, but it’s also a more unsettled category, since the two apparent favorites, Anora’s Mikey Madison and Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón, are newcomers who each carry major question marks. The Academy has been trending away from career wins lately, but they still do happen. (See: Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye.) Could there be an opening here for a known quantity with an appealing narrative? There’s plenty left to be determined, but for now, here’s how I see it: If you’re betting Ronan to get nominated, go with Blitz; if you’re betting on the win, put your money on The Outrun.

Oscar Futures: It’s Blitz!

Every week between now and January 17, when the nominations for the Academy Awards are announced, Vulture will consult its crystal ball to determine the changing fortunes in this year’s Oscars race. In our “Oscar Futures” column, we’ll let you in on insider gossip, parse brand-new developments, and track industry buzz to figure out who’s up, who’s down, and who’s currently leading the race for a coveted Oscar nomination.