Two women. One is a style icon, a fast-rising star who put her weight behind a film to turn a bubblegum moment into a cultural touchstone. The other is a storyteller who transformed an iconic doll into an intelligent modern female empowerment story. Yet, both were ignored at this year’s Oscar nominations. The baffling omission of Greta Gerwig for ‘Best Director’ and Margot Robbie for ‘Best Actress’ lays bare the hypocrisy behind the Academy’s sanctimonious veneer of wokeness.
On the face of it, had Barbie not been a blockbuster, it might have received more love. Why? Well, the Academy has had a strange love-hate relationship with blockbusters. In 1975, when Jaws redefined the term, it got shunned. That year, Federico Fellini was named Best Director for Amarcord. Yes, but then you might throw Oppenheimer in this writer’s face.
Analyse that, you say? Ahem, that’s Chris Nolan — the man gods chose to save cinema. In other words, had Nolan not been there, Gerwig’s Barbie — the biggest hit of the year — might not have meant anything. Also, Oppenheimer is one of those films where you had to like it — like to love or like to hate it. It is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of production that, in all likelihood, gets Robert Downey Jr. his Oscar, long overdue, sorry Ryan ‘Ken’ Gosling and, undoubtedly, one for Nolan.
The Barbie snub is nothing new. The Academy is notorious for doing such things. Sometimes, only to spice up the race, for no one is as interested in the awards as they were once upon a time. Remember last year, someone had to punch someone to get the show some eyeballs. Margot Robbie in Barbie delivered a fun, self-aware performance and showed her fantastic range. A few years ago, watching her in The Wolf of Wall Street, one might not have imagined that Robbie could deliver a bravura performance in I, Tonya; she got an Oscar nod for it and then delivered a monster global hit like Barbie, which she also produced.
Robbie’s absence in the Best Actress category follows an Oscar tradition of nominating films while snubbing key lead actresses. Amy Adams failed to get nominated for Arrival; what explains Audrey Hepburn being ignored for My Fair Lady when it won Best Picture (Jack L Warner), Best Director (George Cukor) and Best Actor (Rex Harrison)? The same thing happened to Leonardo DiCaprio, who did not get nominated for Titanic despite its 14 nominations and 11 Oscar wins.
This theatre of absurdity has become as predictable as the show. The Barbie nominations raise the same question — do the Oscars truly recognise the most deserving nominees, especially lead actresses? And, more importantly, do they even notice the woman director? In its history, only seven women have been nominated for director, and only three have been winners — Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2009), Chloé Zhao for Nomadland (2020) and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog (2021). The other nominated women include Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties (1976), Campion for The Piano (1993), Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003), Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird (2017) and Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman (2020). Few global awards have enjoyed the kind of spotlight as the Oscars. None have been given so many chances to make it right.
(The writer is a film historian. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views)
Comments
0 comment