In the Oscars Homestretch, What Are the Ads Really Saying?

thewrap.com:

“The Power of the Dog”Message: We’re No. 1.Who needs a new message when the old one is working? Jane Campion’s Western has been near the top of Oscar-watchers’ rankings all season, and it’s the one film without any significant missteps to slow its momentum. (We don’t really count Campion’s ill-considered but certainly not ill-intended comments to the Williams sisters at the Critics Choice Awards as a misstep that could affect voting.)So to counter the idea that “Power of the Dog” might be too divisive to win, Netflix is relying on all those other awards it has already won to make a pretty persuasive case (although it occasionally detours into a more elegant, allusive and haunting image of a candle, a shrine to the film’s unseen Bronco Henry character, and a man’s forearm). “Belfast”Message: It’s not just about Belfast.The advertisements for Kenneth Branagh’s film haven’t changed substantially, but in recent weeks Branagh himself has been emphasizing not the film’s roots in his childhood memories of Belfast in 1969, but the universality of a story about violence between neighbors.On “Real Time With Bill Maher” last Friday, he drew ties between the conflict that erupted in his hometown in 1969, pitting Protestants against Catholics, and the civil rights movement of that same decade in the United States.

And in a taped message at the Producers Guild Awards the following night, he finished his speech with a line that could cover everything from divisions in the U.S.