After months of predictions, analysis, and tea leaf reading, we finally know the nominees for the 94th Academy Awards. As always, there were a few shock nominations and painful snubs, but, on the whole, the Academy has delivered fairly solid selections this year.
Thankfully, there are plenty of great decisions to celebrate (or maybe I’m just getting older and prefer to focus on the positives of awards season than the crushing negatives). Let’s take a closer look at everything that went down with the good, the bad, and the ugly of the 2021 Oscar nominations.
THE GOOD
A plethora of history-making firsts. Jane Campion is the first female filmmaker to receive more than one nomination for Best Director. This is also the first time there have been consecutive years with a female directing nominee. Drive My Car is the first Japanese film nominated for Best Picture. Kristen Stewart and Ariana DeBose’s nominations mark the first time two openly LGBTQ+ actors have been nominated in the acting categories in the same year. DeBose is also the first Afro-Latina to receive an acting nomination. Troy Kotsur is the first deaf male actor to receive an acting nomination and only the second in history; the first being his CODA co-star, Marlee Matlin. Germaine Franco is the first female of Hispanic descent to be nominated for Best Original Score.
Steven Spielberg is the first director to receive Best Director nominations in six different decades. With his eighth nomination, Spielberg now ties with Billy Wilder for the third-highest tally of Best Director nods. Flee is the first film in history to receive nominations for Best International Feature Film, Best Animated Feature, and Best Documentary Feature. With nominations for Best Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay, Kenneth Branagh becomes the first person to receive nominations in seven different categories over the course of their career.
The Power of the Dog overperforms. We knew Jane Campion’s masterpiece would collect an impressive tally of nominations, but to see it collect 12 nods was quite staggering. While the film expectedly earned nominations in categories like Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, and acting noms for Benedict Cumberbatch, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Kirsten Dunst, it nabbed relatively surprising nominations for Best Production, Best Sound, and Best Supporting Actor for Jesse Plemons. It’s rare the film with the most nominations wins Best Picture, but this incredible show of strength makes The Power of the Dog the undeniable frontrunner now.
Drive My Car makes history. Never let anyone tell you the critics awards don’t matter. With a small distributor running their campaign, many presumed the Best Picture mountain was too great for Drive My Car to climb. But you can’t deny those Best Picture wins from major critics associations like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Toronto, and the National Society of Film Critics put the film firmly on the radar of Academy members. It created a wave of buzz reminiscent of Parasite in 2019 and helped Drive My Car to become the first Japanese film in history to nab a Best Picture nomination plus additional nods for writing and directing.
Flee nabs all three nominations. There had never been an Oscar contender quite like Flee. With eligibility for Best International Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Animated Feature, there were many who feared Flee was stretching too far and couldn’t possibly score nominations for all three. But Neon ran a terrific Oscar campaign and the film deservedly landed 3/3. It would have been great to see it go even further and become the first documentary nominated for Best Picture, but seeing it achieve so much in one year was wonderful regardless.
Kristen Stewart resurrects her dead campaign. After those shocking snubs from SAG and BAFTA and that loss to Nicole Kidman at the Golden Globes, most of us rightly assumed Stewart’s bid for a Best Actress nomination was toast. But Neon never gave up hope and continued to push the hell out of her performance to the last minute. It clearly worked and Stewart’s campaign now comes roaring back to life. And rightly so. Whether she can follow the same path to victory of the similarly SAG/BAFTA snubbed Regina King in 2018 remains to be seen.
Penélope Cruz nabs a Best Actress nod. Given the staggering year of world cinema delights, it was unconscionable the 20 acting nominees would be entirely from English-language films. While the Academy could have gone further (Renate Reinsve, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Agathe Rousselle, Anders Danielsen Lie, to name a few), seeing Cruz deservedly score a Best Actress nomination was truly thrilling. Given Cruz hadn’t landed a nod from any of the major televised awards this season, it’s even more impressive.
CODA welcomes Apple to the Oscars game. As the newest player in awards season, Apple TV+ were searching for their bigger success this year after their first nominations last year for Wolfwalkers and Greyhound. They found it with the gorgeous Sundance charmer CODA. After purchasing the film for a record-breaking $25 million, they crafted a terrific Oscar campaign and managed to nab the studio’s first Best Picture nomination. Adding to that were richly deserved nominations for Troy Kotsur and Sian Heder’s screenplay plus three nominations for The Tragedy of Macbeth. Welcome to the circus, Apple.
That screenplay nomination for The Worst Person in the World. I didn’t dare dream it possible, but it actually happened. One of the year’s finest screenplays rightfully landed a nomination. With a screenwriting nod for Drive My Car, it’s wonderful to see world cinema represented in both screenplay categories.
Summer of Soul broke the documentary frontrunner curse. After years of the early frontrunner for Best Documentary Feature shockingly failing to receive an Oscar nomination, Summer of Soul defied that bizarre tradition and rightfully landed a nod. It faces a tough battle with Flee for the win, but at least it’s still in the race.
Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons are Oscar nominees. Enough said.
After 33 years in the industry, Kirsten Dunst is finally an Oscar nominee. Also, enough said.
THE BAD
Judi Dench steals Catriona Balfe spot. Since Belfast debuted back at Telluride, a supporting actress nomination for Balfe seemed all but assured, especially after she captured nods from BAFTA, SAG, the Golden Globes, and Critics Choice. But it’s clearly never wise to underestimate a Dame and the Academy picked Dench and became the second oldest female acting nominee in history (Gloria Stuart pips her by 160 days). Look, Dench is lovely in Belfast, but Balfe knocks it out of the park. It’s clear the Academy merely went with the veteran over the newcomer and this is a lazy case of name-checking.
West Side Story misses a screenplay nod. There were many predicting West Side Story would woefully underperform and possibly limp away with two or three nominations. It didn’t happen and the film rallied to seven nods. Despite many predicting a snub (including yours truly), even Steven Spielberg got it in for Best Director. But to see Tony Kushner’s sublime screenplay overlooked was unfathomable. Kushner reinvents the narrative, reworks entire characters, and freshens the dialogue to create something new from a property that’s been around for more than six decades. His screenplay is a huge part of why a reimagining of West Side Story actually works.
Javier Bardem’s Best Actor nomination. Sorry, but no. Not in the year of Peter Dinklage, Nicolas Cage, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Simon Rex, and Joaquin Phoenix. Hell, even Leonardo DiCaprio would have been a better choice.
Free Guy nominated for Best Visual Effects. Enough said.
THE UGLY
Denis Villeneuve’s Best Director snub. To see Dune capture 10 nominations was wonderful. To see the man responsible for bringing it all together fail to be included in that tally is infuriating. Many of us suspected one of the five DGA nominees was dropping out to make way for Ryusuke Hamaguchi, but no one thought it would be Villeneuve. And, to be honest, I can’t even explain how it happened. Maybe they’d prefer to wait until the sequel to honour his achievements. But you could say the same of Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings and he was still nominated for the first film. What Villeneuve delivered with Dune on a directorial scale was nothing short of remarkable. His snub is utterly baffling.
The lack of love for indie darlings. Perhaps it wasn’t a huge surprise to see critically-adored indie films like Mass, C’mon C’mon, Pig, Red Rocket, Titane, Nine Days, The Green Knight, Petite Maman, and Shiva Baby all walk away with zero nominations, but it still hurts. With the exception of Drive My Car, the Academy overwhelmingly favoured high profile contenders this year. Maybe that says a lot about the overall power of Oscar campaigns. However, A24 and Neon were handling several of these films and they know how to play this game. It’s possible they simply had too many contenders this year and couldn’t give them all the proper push they deserve. The failure of something like Mass exposes Bleecker Street’s lack of Oscar campaign experience. With that cast and that screenplay, the film should have been a major contender.