Bafflement and concessions on Oscar morning
Two of my three favorite films from last year were about what happens when the scaffolding of intention and composition is made tangibly visible to the viewer. Asteroid City matched the Oscar nomination count of The French Dispatch this morning (zero); the Academy’s concession to Wes Anderson—a live action short nomination—seemed to be an acknowledgment only that he exists. May December, from Todd Haynes, managed a screenplay nod, which baffles me, because if you concede the delicacies of action and dialogue offered up to Julianne and Charles and Natalie, how could you ignore what the actors did with them? Gay writers across New York held onto the conviction even as the lights dimmed on May December—precursor after precursor excluded the aforementioned trio—that somehow the Academy, that sacred body, would see through to the film’s glowing camp and queasiness, even though the Academy has never much liked those attributes.
Saltburn, which I hoped might sneak into some acting categories, or screenplay, was similarly slimy, and also baroque (never forget the house tour, the dead relis, all the sunbathing), and the third of my favorite 2023 films. Three features in one, too, also a class-commentary fake-out whose class jokes were earth-shaking, testifying finally to desire, it seemed, on definitional terms: that’s just what a movie is. But Fennell’s film was shut out. The keywords in this morning’s announcement are bafflement and concession—not new, and my obsession with the ceremony hasn’t abated, mostly because the Oscars are a competition, and I’m a very competitive person, and a nomination is a real career game-changer, and there are so many permutations of fighting hard and still losing, or doing the opposite, that this microcultural pulse check amounts to a half-myopic, half-bang-on roundup of huge talent and honed narratives.
The bafflement hinges on Barbie, which boasted the strangest trajectory during the announcement. A shoo-in start with Ryan Gosling, and then America Ferrera, who busted Moore, Rosamund Pike and Penelope Cruz out of the category, on the back of that polarizing monologue that pundits have acknowledged was destined to live on as a telecast scene snippet. But then! Margot Robbie misses on Best Actress, which does not compute, I mean I know the category was stacked but everything in this film lives and breathes through her presence.
Gerwig is a less surprising snub because of the Academy’s snobbery, and Barbie’s below-the-line power is actually a bit thin: two nominations for Original Song (a quota was imposed in 2008, meaning injustice for Dua), and production and costume design slam dunks (although Poor Things could run away with the latter). But hardly a soul would have guessed a supporting actress nomination for Barbie at the expense of Director and Lead.
Apart from Nyad, Rustin and The Color Purple (surely the most colossal dead-end in recent awards-season memory), Best Picture strongmen led the acting categories, which struck me as a burgeoning trend? Or is this Emmy-ology creeping in from its deviant winter pedestal? Sterling K. Brown is there, the weak link in the otherwise sublime American Fiction (the Best Picture nominee), and the Oppenheimer heathens and Sandra Huller, admittedly the Robbie of Anatomy of a Fall.
Anatomy and Oppenheimer are bad films, one an inert stagebound text strung together with bizarre zooms and indulgence and nowhere on its mind, the other an inert literary text strung together with nonsensical edits built to look like transcendent meaning!! which is just bursting from the tyranny of a linear framework. Emily Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer will go down as proof that Nolan thinks female depth is contained in a whisky flask. And Triet supplants Gerwig as director?! Maybe it wasn’t a replacement, maybe Jonathan Glazer took Gerwig’s spot, but Gerwig stuffed a world full of visually resplendent ideas! All Triet did was stick us in a French courtroom and stupid chalet!
Speaking of Glazer, I get the sense that 1) the Academy still doesn’t quite know what to do with him, but they can scream Holocaust to cover their incomprehension about The Zone of Interest, and 2) Glazer has still only made four films. Four. What if he dies before the next? Or the next is Birth II? Zone’s count is nevertheless staggering, when for a while it was viewed as a bubble contender. The International Feature nomination is padding.
Lastly, I’m surprised by the inescapable aura of Poor Things, given how hesitantly The Favourite was digested—Poor Things currently ranks in the IMdB 250, land of testy Nolan-ites! The film’s nominations performance virtually guarantees a win for Emma Stone. Lily Gladstone’s recognition is unfortunately mostly about narrative building, coddled by self-abnegating support from DiCaprio (who, as predicted, drew a blank), which doesn’t change the fact that she is not an agent in the film—nor does she have to be, as Killers is about white male degradation arguably more than it’s about the struggle for Osage self-determination—and she barely qualifies, screen-time-wise, as a lead. Killers also missed in Screenplay, a shock, which means slowing momentum.
If only Barbie could surmount the capital-I importance that Oppenheimer wields over its competitors—perhaps not over American Fiction, but that film isn’t surging like it needs to. Cillian Murphy may well lose to Paul Giamatti, but, as is often the case, the race for the biggest category isn’t shaping up to be very interesting. That Parasite victory came kind of close to matching the magic of Envelopegate, but let’s be honest: it’s all downhill from there. At least we can squint at Emma Stone on stage and time-warp ourselves back to February 2017. Or Emma Stone could mosey back to the podium with...the Poor Things cast and crew in...an upset? As Scorsese once said, watch this space.
Fergus Campbell is a writer and filmmaker, and the producer of Sankyo Stream, a web series.
