The 2021 Oscar nominations are here.
They’re still happening?
It is possible that the Oscars will get their pandemic timing right. Last February, fears of contagion were reserved for the paranoid, and the ceremony unfolded at full capacity. Next month, we hope, vaccines will have reached millions more Americans, a downsized in-person event will proceed (in two locations, the Academy confirmed this morning, and two months delayed), and ABC’s cameras might capture reactions and speeches indistinguishable from the 2020 crop. Alas, the past twelve months have been unrecognizable in Hollywood, with most major releases scrapped and film-watching limited to TV screens. The Motion Picture Academy was forced to extend eligibility for the 2021 show to films without theatrical runs, and, inevitably, the nominees are dominated by streamers. Netflix scored 35 nominations, up from 24 in 2020, an increase of 46 percent in a year when domestic box office plunged eighty percent.
Netflix’s dominance is not overpowering, considering their Covid-era advantages, and unlikely to net a Best Picture win, given the momentum of Nomadland. When considering the summer purchase of The Trial of the Chicago 7, previously a Paramount picture and now a six-time nominee, it appears the studio’s in-house machinery, responsible for producing and advertising big winners, might yet require improvement.
Most fascinating about the nominations is how they reflect the Academy’s desire to pretend that they liked 2020’s films as much as any other year’s. Instead of using the awards to spotlight low-budget productions, as some had hoped, the Academy has rewarded a rather expensive-looking slate, which mirrors recent diversity and breadth of scope, from sturdy politics to coming-of-age—films launched, for the most part, at brand-name festivals. A whopping three Best Picture nominees (Promising Young Woman, Minari, and The Father) premiered at pre-pandemic Sundance, whose January dates tend to scare off awards campaigners fearful of burnout. (Last year, Sundance did not factor at all on the Best Picture shortlist.) Perhaps, however, Oscars voters longed for that rollout which all potential contenders follow: far-flung screenings by ski slopes or Venetian canals, then jury prizes, on to New York and Los Angeles and the world. This is cinematic egalitarianism, as viewed by its own operatives, romanticized because it sometimes works. Sundance of 2020 was the only starting point untouched by the virus.
Judas and the Black Messiah, the Shaka King film about Fred Hampton’s murder, debuted, oddly, at a virtual Sundance a year later, in the midst of America’s highest daily case counts. Afterward it turned up on HBO Max, as part of Warner Brothers’ day-and-date theatrical/streaming program, which will do more to derail exhibition than Netflix’s success, as the Academy has probably realized. With re-openings on the horizon, Warners still has to time to change course. Sound of Metal, an unexpected hard hitter at the nominations announcement, is so old that “novel coronavirus” had never been uttered at the time of its Toronto premiere. Amazon, which distributed the film, had in the Before Times played by industry rules, giving its releases standard theatrical runs before they streamed. Sound of Metal was still granted a two-week engagement last December (did anybody go?), similarly to The Father, Minari, Promising Young Woman, and Nomadland, only the latter of which is streamer-affiliated. The titles are instead marked for premium VOD, and The Father isn’t even out yet.
This year’s nominees are unsurprisingly notable for their historic nature—to think of the many firsts still to come!—but most impressive is Chloé Zhao, the first woman of color nominated for Best Director, and the only woman nominated four times for a single film, Nomadland, which she edited, produced, and wrote. Riz Ahmed, star of Sound of Metal, is the first Muslim Best Actor nominee, and Emerald Fennell’s nod for Promising Young Woman gives 2021 the first directing category with more than one female nominee. Judas and the Black Messiah, up for Best Picture, boasts the first all-Black producing team. In these respects, the nominations prove distinct, though one wonders about the cover Covid has granted the Academy. There will never be as little to choose from as there was in 2020.
Oscar nominations typically exhilarate, for their confirmation or denial of hunches and desires, factions built for months and sustained through precursor results and varying grosses. The underdogs and sure things—the would-be sure things—hold out until they don’t, and pundits feel their pain and their perspiration. This seasonal aura has of course been muted with the current race, and it is hard to say which films have bucked expectations, or demonstrated the strongest stamina. Needless to say, we have no Parasite.
There are still kinks to the nominations. I smiled when I saw Thomas Vinterberg nominated for Another Round, though his inclusion is hardly a surprise, given that the “fifth” directing slot often goes to stylish international auteurs, like Paweł Pawlikowski. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom should not have been nominated for Best Picture and, thankfully, was not. What happened to One Night in Miami…? Regina King’s film was breathless where 2021’s other historical features plodded, and its exposition was a premise—a stepping stone to revelations—rather than a tiresome requirement.
Steven Yeun broke through for Minari, as did Lakeith Steinfeld for Judas; the Academy might be tagging Steinfeld’s towering prospects as much as his performance in the film. (Notably, despite campaigning as a lead, he is now up against costar and presumed frontrunner Daniel Kaluuya, which could complicate the Supporting Actor race.) Glenn Close received Razzie and Oscar nominations for the same supporting role in Hillbilly Elegy, and Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which I guess Netflix did not care about pushing, was shut out entirely. The collapsed Sound nominees went unnoticed, while the Original Song nominees pled their case for the elimination of the category.
It doesn’t seem fun to project Best Picture, but I guess that will be Nomadland, one of the best nominated films—Zhao will surely win Director—one which, like the competition, bears too intangible a presence to generate anticipation for its awards fate. The (often good) 2021 nominees will unfortunately be remembered in part for the contexts in which they were viewed, and while many of us will print Vanity Fair ballots last minute on Oscar night, no doubt skipping the shorts, we’re already more than desperate to move on.
Fergus Campbell is a Culture writer and junior at Columbia College in New York.
