After months of speculation, we finally know the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards. While there were several shocks and snubs that we’ll dive into, everything mostly went according to plan. The films expected to dominate dominated. The acting nominees echoed those seen at other awards ceremonies. History was made with several firsts we suspected would occur. And Nomadland strengthened its standing as the frontrunner for Best Picture.
That’s not to suggest these nominations were disappointing. Far from it. The Academy delivered one of the greatest Best Picture line-ups in years with no trace of divisive films that would set Film Twitter ablaze. The actors chosen represent one of the most diverse selections in history and hopefully suggest the Academy is finally adapting with the times. And they embraced independent films and streaming titles like never before. Okay, so they didn’t exactly have a choice this year, given most studio releases punted to 2021. Regardless, crack open the champagne for the most indie Oscars ever.
Let’s take a closer look at everything that went down with the good, the bad, and the ugly of the 2020 Oscar nominations.
THE GOOD
A plethora of history-making firsts. Chloé Zhao is the first woman of colour and the first woman of Asian descent nominated for Best Director. Zhao is also the first woman to receive four nominations in a single year and one of only seven people to achieve this honour. Frances McDormand is the first woman nominated for Best Picture and an acting category in the same year. Viola Davis is now the most-nominated Black actress in Oscars history. Steven Yeun is the first Asian-American nominated for Best Actor. Riz Ahmed is the first actor of Pakistani descent and the first Muslim nominated for Best Actor. Their nominations mark the first time two actors of Asian descent have been nominated for Best Actor in the same year. Youn Yuh-Jung is the first Korean nominee in any acting category. Emerald Fennell and Zhao are the sixth and seventh women nominated for Best Director and this year marks the first time two female filmmakers have been nominated in the same year. Judas and the Black Messiah is the first film nominated for Best Picture from an all-Black producing team. Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson are the first Black women nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. 76 nominations belong to 70 women this year, which is the most ever. And this is the first time in history the majority of the Best Actor nominees are non-white performers.
The critics Supporting favourites made it in. We know the critics awards can often mean absolutely nothing when it comes to the Oscars, but not this year. For much of the precursor season, Paul Raci, Youn Yuh-jung, and Maria Bakalova dominated the wins for Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress, respectively. In the past, we’ve seen numerous critics darlings score these same awards and still fail to nab an Oscar nomination (Ethan Hawke, Toni Collette, Lupita Nyong’o), so it was a huge thrill to see all three score the nods they deserved. It was particularly terrific to see Bakalova make it in, given the Academy’s penchant for ignoring comedic performances. It’s abundantly clear those wins and nominations from the critics made Bakalova a contender the Academy simply could not ignore.
An international filmmaker scores a Best Director nod for the third year in a row. All props have to go to AwardsWatch‘s Erik Anderson for being one of the few prognosticators bold enough to predict a Best Director nomination from nowhere for Another Round‘s Thomas Vinterberg. Without nominations from DGA, Critics Choice, or the Golden Globes, Vinterberg’s nomination was a huge surprise, but not without precedent. We saw a similar shock nod three years ago for Pawel Pawlikowski for Cold War and this is now the third consecutive year the director of an “international” film has made the Academy’s final five directing nominees. May this continue for many years to come.
Six nominations for Sound of Metal. For a film that debuted at TIFF almost 18 months ago to very little fanfare (though, my humble brag this season is ringing its praises from day one) to end up with the same total of nods as Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7 is simply stunning. The awards season trajectory of this film has been genuinely staggering and full credit to Amazon Studios for running a flawless campaign.
“Husavik (My Home Town)” is deservedly nominated for Best Original Song. I’ve been predicting it since October. And it actually happened. Enough said.
The Father and Judas and the Black Messiah “overperformed.” Many assumed Sony Pictures Classics had mishandled the Oscar campaign of The Father, given it was mostly absent from many of the precursor nominations, particularly the Critics Choice Awards and its failure at PGA. But those nods from the Golden Globes and BAFTA were clearly highlighting how SPC were getting the film seen by the right voting bodies including Academy members. It surged to nab six nods including slightly unexpected nominations in Best Film Editing, Production Design, and, of course, Best Picture. After Warner Bros. held Judas and Black Messiah back until late January, they took the risk of running their campaign too late to make a dent in the race. But it paid off and the film reaped six nominations including Best Picture and double Best Supporting Actor nominations. However…
THE BAD
If Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield are both considered supporting, who is the lead of Judas and the Black Messiah? In a stunning move literally no one was predicting, Stanfield scored a surprise nomination for Best Supporting Actor, which was all the more unexpected due to the fact Warner Bros. were campaigning Stanfield in lead. Given Best Actor was already terribly overcrowded, Stanfield’s performance had gone completely unacknowledged for the entirety of the precursor season. It’s not a bad thing Stanfield is now an Oscar nominee. His performance is terrific and it’s wonderful to see it be rewarded. But if the Academy considers both Kaluuya and Stanfield as supporting performances, who did they think was the lead? It’s nice to see voting members can ignore For Your Consideration category selections set by the studios, but it’s still entirely baffling nevertheless.
No love for Alan Kim or Yeri Han. With Minari growing in strength as a major overall contender in the final weeks before nomination voting, there was the hope the buzz would haul Kim and Han along for the ride. As an undying fan of Minari, I believe they both deserved to be there. Han was always a long-shot, given she hadn’t nabbed nominations anywhere else this season, but Kim was certainly a late-breaking chance. You’d have to think if his gorgeous acceptance speech at the Critics Choice Awards for Best Young Actor/Actress had arrived a week or so earlier, it may have been the last-minute campaign push he needed to secure a nomination. Perhaps Minari will win SAG ensemble and Kim and Han will receive their rewards there instead.
That screenplay nomination for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Look, I adored this sequel. A lot. It was the much-needed dose of hilarity we all needed at the tail-end of the dumpster fire that was 2020. But the film is almost exclusively constructed through improvisation, so calling it one of the best adapted screenplays of the year feels rather farcical, especially at the expense of screenplays like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, First Cow, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
What happened to One Night in Miami? Initially touted as a major contender across the board, Regina King’s directorial debut limped to just three nominations. It had the might of Amazon Studios behind it, but it appears as if they threw their weight behind Sound of Metal in the final stages. King’s snub in Best Director wasn’t a huge surprise, but its lack of a Best Picture nomination was truly surprising.
THE UGLY
Only one Black-led film nominated for Best Picture. For all the inroads the Academy made with diversity this year, it was hugely disappointing to see that couldn’t also extend to their Best Picture line-up. Judas and the Black Messiah stands as the only Black-led film up for the big prize, even with a litany of other potential contenders in Da 5 Bloods, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and One Night in Miami. And this has nothing to do with “diversity picks.” All three were amongst the best-reviewed films of the year and had nabbed major nominations elsewhere to suggest they were in strong contention for Best Picture nods. They deserved to be acknowledged. Black cinema had a spectacular year, so to only see one Black-led film up for Best Picture is truly painful.
No Best Director nomination for either King. Once Regina King failed to score a DGA nomination in their Feature Film category (she’s up for First-Time Feature), it seemed her chances at an Oscar nod were done. And when One Night in Miami underperformed, her snub seemed inevitable. But it was quite staggering Judas and the Black Messiah received six nominations including Best Picture, yet Shaka King couldn’t score a Best Director nomination. Did the film direct itself? The Best Director line-up is wonderfully diverse, but it’s disappointing a Black filmmaker wasn’t able to join their ranks this year.
Da 5 Bloods and Delroy Lindo. And now for the ugliest snub of this year’s Oscars; Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods was all but ignored by the Academy, bar one paltry nomination for Best Original Score for Terence Blanchard. Was it a case of the film debuting too early? June is hardly a typical release period for an awards contender, but it didn’t hurt the chances of Dunkirk in 2017. And we saw Da 5 Bloods acknowledged at numerous other awards ceremonies. If those voting bodies could remember it, there’s no reason the Academy couldn’t. We know Netflix heavily campaigned the film, so its failure is genuinely confounding. But the snub of Lindo is a genuine travesty. It was on the cards after he failed to receive nods from SAG, the HFPA, and BAFTA, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. Lindo delivered a scintillating turn for the ages that will long be remembered after the Oscars are done and dusted. It will be the kind of performance people will look back on and scratch their heads in confusion over its lack of an Oscar nomination.