After months of predictions, analysis, and tea leaf reading, we finally know the nominees for the 96th Academy Awards. While it all mostly went to plan, as always, there were a few shock nominations and painful snubs, but, on the whole, the Academy has delivered fairly solid selections this year.
Let’s take a closer look at everything that went down with the good, the bad, and the ugly of the 2023 Oscar nominations.
THE GOOD
A plethora of history-making firsts. Lily Gladstone is the first Indigenous American ever nominated for an Academy Award for acting. Gladstone is only the second Indigenous American ever nominated for an Academy Award after following Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Best Original Song nomination in 1982. However, Saint-Marie’s Indigenous ancestry has been called into question and is currently under review. Colman Domingo is the first Afro-Latino man nominated for an acting Oscar. Domingo is only the second openly LGBTQ Best Actor nominee after Ian McKellen in 1998.
Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown’s nominations for American Fiction mark the first time a Black leading actor and a Black supporting actor have been nominated for the same film. Greta Gerwig is the first female to have directed three Best Picture nominees. Gerwig is also the first filmmaker of any gender whose first three solo directorial features were all nominated for Best Picture.
With Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, and Past Lives all up for Best Picture, this marks the first time three Best Picture nominees were directed by women. With Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest both nominated for Best Picture, this is the first time more than one international piece of cinema was nominated in the same year. When you add Past Lives to the mix, this is also the first time three films predominantly not in the English language are up for Best Picture in the same year.
At the age of 81, Martin Scorsese is now the oldest Best Director nominee in history, surpassing John Huston, who was nominated at 79 in 1985 for directing Prizzi’s Honor. Celine Song (Past Lives) is the first Asian woman to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay. America Ferrera (Barbie) is the first person of Honduran descent to be nominated for an Academy Award. Already the record holder, John Williams extended his title as the oldest Oscar nominee of all time at 91 years at 349 days. This is the first year where all Best Documentary Feature nominees are non-English language features.
Oppenheimer doesn’t miss a beat. With its field-leading tally of 13 nominations, Oppenheimer showed its strength as our frontrunner and didn’t drop a single nod it was intended to receive. If only it hadn’t been left off the Best Visual Effects shortlist, it might have equalled the record of 14 nods like All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land.
Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest soar. With nominations for both Best Picture and Best Director plus a handful of other nods, this pair of world cinema wonders made history. Thanks to France’s idiotic decision not to select the former as their submission for Best International Feature (a choice that clearly blew up in their face), it’s a damn shame we’re not going to see them face off for that prize. Congrats to The Zone of Interest on winning that one in a cakewalk. Justine Triet’s Best Director nomination deserves celebration, even if it seemingly came at the expense of two other female filmmakers who should be there too. With five big nominations, could Anatomy of a Fall be the real challenger to Oppenheimer for Best Picture?
At long last, Emily Blunt is an Oscar nominee. After three BAFTA nominations, five SAG nominations, seven Critics Choice Awards nominations, and seven Golden Globe nominations, we finally get to add “Academy Award nominee” before Blunt’s name. Thank you, Christopher Nolan.
That America Ferrera nomination. Look, I’m sure there are plenty who find this nomination absurd, especially in favour of actors like Penélope Cruz, Julianne Moore, Sandra Hüller, and Rachel McAdams. But you cannot deny Ferrera delivered one of the most talked about moments in cinema last year with that incredible monologue. It’s not the first time one great speech has landed an actress an Oscar nod (Viola Davis for Doubt and Beatrice Straight for Network come to mind) and Ferrera deserved similar recognition.
Godzilla Minus One gets in for Best Visual Effects. Enough said.
THE BAD
Killers of the Flower Moon absent in Best Adapted Screenplay. Once we learned Barbie would be forced to compete in the adapted category, we knew something had to fall out to make room. But few thought it would be Martin Scorsese and Eric Roth. The five they chose were all wonderful and it’s hard to say which you could remove to add Scorsese and Roth in. But the fact Killers is the only Best Picture nominee without a matching screenwriting nod is frustrating.
The Charles Melton snub. Despite a handful of big wins with the critics groups and nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, newcomer Melton couldn’t crack the Oscar five for Best Supporting Actor. Much like Best Adapted Screenplay, it’s impossible to say who you’d remove to make room for Melton. But the fact he held his own against both Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman and essentially stole the entire film should have been enough for an Oscar nod. They clearly just didn’t like May December.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse misses Best Original Score. No offence to American Fiction, but its score was not one of the elements you walk away remembering. And, sure, John Williams is a legend, but his work on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is mostly just rehashing elements of past Indy scores. To see both those scores make it in over Spidey is infuriating.
Past Lives only lands two nominations. It was wonderful to see the film make it into the Best Picture race and Celine Song’s gorgeous screenplay net a much-deserved nomination. But the fact this is where the nominations list ends for such a masterful film is baffling. Greta Lee should be there. So should Teo Yoo and John Magaro. Likewise with Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen’s score.
Only one female Best Director nominee. In a year of Greta Gerwig, Celine Song, and Justine Triet, the fact the Academy could only make room for one of these female filmmakers is maddening. Sure, we avoided going back to the all-male line-up of previous years, but Triet being the solo nominee feels like nothing more than placating to avoid bad headlines.
THE UGLY
Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie. Let me start by saying the reason I’m putting this topic in the “ugly” category has nothing to do with the Academy’s decision not to nominate Gerwig for Best Director and Robbie for Best Actress. I’ll be the first to admit these snubs were disappointing. I would have adored seeing both artists acknowledged for their work. Gerwig directed a critical and commercial smash hit and failing to nominate her is equivalent to not nominating James Cameron for Titanic or Avatar. Robbie delivered a deeply nuanced and layered performance that could have been nothing more than frivolous fluff and it should have ended with her deservedly receiving her third acting Oscar nomination.
But the online reaction is what I truly think is “ugly” here. Are the lack of nominations for Gerwig and Robbie as egregious as Film Twitter and TikTok have declared it? Is it a case of the old white guys of the Academy rearing their ugly heads again? Was Barbie just too successful and some member of the Academy wanted to bring it down a peg or two? Or is it just a sad reality of the Academy Awards that not everything and everyone gets the nominations you think they deserve?
With only five Best Director spots and ten Best Picture nominees, multiple directors are always going to miss out. That’s just the simple math of it. Two years ago, Siân Heder directed a Best Picture winner (CODA) and didn’t score a Best Director nod. Last year, Sarah Polley directed a Best Picture nominee (Women Talking) and she too was absent from the Best Director line-up. Ironically, Polley was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay; something Gerwig has also achieved and a fact many have bizarrely overlooked. Much like Gerwig, Joseph Kosinski and Ryan Coogler directed Best Picture nominees (Top Gun: Maverick and Black Panther, respectively) that both earned over a billion dollars like Barbie and neither couldn’t land a Best Director nod.
Yet, no one reacted poorly when Heder, Polley, Kosinski, and Coogler were seemingly snubbed similarly to Gerwig. Admittedly, none of these four had received the same kind of precursor season Best Director nomination success of Gerwig, but it’s the unfortunate nature of the Oscars that not every director responsible for a Best Picture nominee will also be nominated for Best Director. Even Steven Spielberg couldn’t get one for Jaws and that was back when they only had five Best Picture nominees.
The worst part of this reaction to Gerwig missing out is that it completely diminishes the deserving Best Director nomination of another female filmmaker. Just because Justine Triet wasn’t your chosen female to make it into the race shouldn’t take away from the fact that Triet became only the 7th woman in history to receive this nomination. Yes, more than one female can and should be nominated every year. Yes, this year there was more than one that should have made it through. But overlooking Triet’s achievement because it seemingly came at the expense of the more beloved director is dirty business.
And where is this kind of vitriolic reaction to Celine Song not being nominated for Best Director for Past Lives? Just like Gerwig, Song directed a Best Picture nominee and has a screenwriting nomination. Sure, Past Lives didn’t achieve the same kind of box office success as Barbie, but it’s far more critically acclaimed (96% vs 88% on Rotten Tomatoes) and received more Best Picture wins with the critics groups (9 vs 3). Wouldn’t that suggest Song was more deserving of being recognised? Where is the backlash to her snub?
As for Robbie, of course, it was rough to see her nominated at BAFTA, SAG, the Golden Globes, and the Critics Choice Awards and ultimately miss an Oscar nomination. But this kind of unfortunate achievement isn’t rare. Viola Davis (The Woman King) experienced it just last year. And, of course, it stings that the true heart and soul of Barbie wasn’t acknowledged. But calling it an example of misogyny and the patriarchy at play simply doesn’t make sense when Robbie was overlooked in favour of another female actor. And a screen veteran in Annette Bening (Nyad) at that.
The running viral criticism of “of course they nominated Ken and not Barbie” is absurd when the two actors are in completely different categories. Ryan Gosling wasn’t nominated in place of Margot Robbie. Gosling deserved to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Trying to make him feel guilty for being nominated while Robbie missed out is foul. The fact is Gosling was lucky enough to have an easier run with a category that simply wasn’t as dreadfully overcrowded as Best Actress.
Robbie wasn’t the only deserving actress to miss out. Greta Lee should have been there for Past Lives. Same with Fantasia Barrino for The Color Purple. Or Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor for Origin and Cailee Spaeny for Priscilla. And even Natalie Portman for May December and Teyana Taylor for A Thousand and One. Increasingly, the Best Actress category is cursed with too many wonderful performances and only five nomination spots. Much like Davis and Danielle Deadwyler (Till) last year, Lady Gaga (House of Gucci) in 2021, and Amy Adams (Arrival) in 2016, Robbie is just the latest to fall victim to it.
Maybe too many Academy members thought Gerwig and Robbie were shoo-ins for nominations and didn’t need their vote. Maybe being such a presumptive nominee can be a terrible thing sometimes and complacency leads to such shocking decisions. Maybe their snubs actually will help Barbie‘s campaign in a similar way to how Ben Affleck’s Best Director snub in 2012 propelled Argo to the front of the pack and an eventual Best Picture win.
But one thing is certain; Gerwig and Robbie are still Oscar nominees for their achievements with Barbie. For Gerwig, it’s co-writing the film’s brilliant screenplay. For Robbie, it’s producing the film and being the driving force behind the entire production from day one. Those are still great achievements. They are still Oscar-nominated artists. That’s something not every other person who experienced a snub this week can say.
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