Though “Oppenheimer” made an explosive showing when the Oscar nominations were announced on Tuesday morning, plenty of other would-be contenders failed to launch. As your Projectionist, here’s my analysis of the morning’s biggest surprises and omissions.
Greta Gerwig misses a directing nomination.
With her billion-dollar blockbuster, “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig set a Hollywood record for the highest-grossing movie ever directed by a woman. Still, even that major milestone wasn’t enough to earn her a spot in the Oscars’ best director lineup: Though “Barbie” managed eight nominations, including best picture, Gerwig was snubbed by the directors branch that nominated her six years ago for “Lady Bird.” It was a mixed showing overall for the hit comedy, which missed some other hoped-for nominations for cinematography, editing and best actress for Margot Robbie. But it did at least pull off a dark-horse supporting actress nod for America Ferrera alongside an expected supporting-actor nomination for Ryan Gosling.
An otherwise strong showing for female filmmakers.
For the first time in Oscar history, three of the best-picture nominees were directed by women: “Barbie,” Celine Song’s “Past Lives” and Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall.” Still, that landmark moment could have been lost in the furor if the directors branch had put forth a lineup made up entirely of men, as many pundits feared it might. Though Gerwig and Song were both snubbed for best director, at least the category found room for Triet, who’d previously won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for her twisty legal drama.
Young male actors still can’t break through.
The academy has never had a problem nominating young actresses: In fact, seven of the 10 actresses recognized this year are 40 or under. That same interest in ingénues does not apply to the male categories, however. Despite worthy contenders in the mix like Charles Melton (“May December”) and Dominic Sessa (“The Holdovers”), all 10 of the actors nominated were over 40, further proof that the Oscars prefer their men more grizzled if they’re meant to be taken seriously.
Nobody pulled a Riseborough.
Last year, the actress Andrea Riseborough employed a new kind of Oscar bid: Instead of waging a costly, monthslong awards campaign for her performance in the microbudget indie “To Leslie,” her team waited until the weeklong Oscar-voting window opened, then leveraged a group of famous friends that included Edward Norton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Paulson to tout the movie en masse on social media. It worked, earning Riseborough a surprise best actress nomination, and though she sought to pay it forward last week by throwing her muscle behind Ava DuVernay’s underseen “Origin,” the film was snubbed by the academy, while all 20 acting slots went to performers who had campaigned the old-fashioned way.