We are almost at the date that is pretty much the peak of the award season: the Oscars! The annual ceremony will take place in Los Angeles on March 10, but, of course, before we get to know the winners, we need to meet our nominees.
When all the names were announced, on January 23, something caught everyone’s attention: Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were left out of the Best Actress and Best Director categories. This was a big surprise considering the massive cultural impact Barbie had on our society last year. Consequently, the internet burst with rage and tweets calling out the misogyny in this year’s award. However, was Barbie really snubbed on the Oscar nominations? Well, yes and no.
Before I say anything about this topic, I have to make something clear: I absolutely love Barbie. I have seen it twice so far, I cried during the “What Was I Made For?” montage and laughed extremely hard during the “depression Barbie” scene as I, too, compulsively, rewatch Pride and Prejudice.
And the same thing goes for Greta Gerwig. She’s probably one of my favorite directors because she always creates a phenomenal portrait of women, whether they are catholic school girls, sisters in the XIX century, or our beloved dolls. In fact, Little Women holds a pretty much permanent spot on my Letterbox four favorites.
But I also think that making this topic revolve only around Barbie leads us to ignore great things about this year’s Oscars and other problematic issues with the Academy itself. Let’s discuss it!
First of all, was Barbie left out of the nominations?
The fact that Margot and Greta didn’t make it to the main categories they could run for makes a bunch of people talk about Barbie as if it wasn’t recognized at all.
But actually, the movie had 8 nominations this year, being the fourth most nominated after Oppenheimer, with 13 nominations, Poor Things, with 11, and Killers Of The Flower Moon, with 10.
And there is another very important piece of information: Margot and Greta were nominated! Since the first produced the film, and the latter wrote its screenplay, they both can be Oscar winners this year.
Barbie’s acting nominations
Besides Margot Robbie not being on the Best Actress list, Barbie has two nominations in acting categories: Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera in the supporting roles. And this is where the discussion begins: why was Ken nominated and not Barbie? Doesn’t that reinforce the issue portrayed in the movie? Well, also yes and no.
Yes because if Ken had the opportunity to shine in this narrative, it is because his story is based on his sideline relationship with Barbie. Ryan Gosling delivers a funny performance, as he’s like a young boy fascinated by horses who is just finding out about the privileges he has for being a man.
He gets more attention for being overdramatic, while Margot is more subtle. She goes from the shiny little girl to the girl who is told she has to be quiet and behave. At the same time, America Ferrera has something the Academy loves: a monologue!
But I also said no because we have to keep something in mind: these categories are not chosen together. It’s not like Ryan and Margot had to fight against each other for the nominations. She was an actress while he was a supporting actor, meaning that they had to share an opportunity with actors from other movies and these nominations are unrelated.
And this leads us to another point. When we talk about lead performances, the actors have more space to deliver the majesty of their work. Consequently, the competitors are also very strong names who molded their film narratives.
Being a supporting actor means stealing part of the spotlight during the shorter screen time. Not everyone can fully do that, and, consequently, the main characters’ fight to establish their places is way harder.
Too many movies, too few nominees
Something that also didn’t help Barbie make it to the director and actress categories is the number of nominees in each award. Even though 10 features are running for Best Film, only 5 people are nominated in the acting and directing categories.
That pretty much means that it’s impossible to give the deserved recognition to all of the amazing people who did great work each year. And we also have to remember that the acting nominations can go to artists who weren’t on these ten competitors running for Best Film. That’s the case, for example, of Annette Bening (Nyad), who can win Best Actress.
Consequently, Margot Robbie wasn’t the only actress who didn’t make it to the final list. Greta Lee (Past Lives), Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), Natalie Portman (May December), and Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple) all had praised performances but weren’t nominated as leading actresses.
And this situation repeats itself if we have a look at the other acting categories as well. Charles Melton (May December), Penélope Cruz (Ferrari), Rachel McAdams (Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret), Andrew Scott (All Of Us Strangers), Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers Of The Flower Moon) and Milo Machado-Graner (Anatomy Of A Fall – if the Academy took child actors seriously) are just a few examples of great performances of 2023 that were also left out.
The lack of female directors
I talked a lot about Margot Robbie and the acting categories, but we also need to discuss another very important topic: Greta Gerwig and direction. To me, this is a bigger issue, and not specifically because of Greta, but because of the space that is given to women directors in general.
In 96 editions of the Oscars, only 8 women have been nominated. And out of this extremely low number, only 3 have won: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), in 2010, Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), in 2021, and Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), in 2022.
Greta, for example, was nominated for Lady Bird but was already left out for Little Women. However, she wasn’t the only one who didn’t make it to the Best Director this year: even though Celine Song’s sublime and sensible Past Lives is running for Best Movie, she didn’t get any recognition for her directing. Sofia Coppola didn’t even seem to be a possibility for Priscilla – in fact, throughout her acclaimed career, she was only nominated once, for Lost In Translation.
So, in 2024, Justine Triet is the only woman out of the 5 Best Director nominees, for her phenomenal Anatomy Of A Fall. I am not saying that Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Jonathan Glazer should not have been nominated – come on, look at who they are! – but it just seems that the Academy doesn’t care about giving more recognition to women directors at all, and not just about Greta.
This makes perfect sense when you find out that 75% of the voters who choose this category are men. Greta was not the only director left out, but she ended up being the one that created more repercussions since her film was the most popular.
That’s why I think the situation is not about her specifically, as a lot of people are pointing out, but about women in general. If we make it about her, we ignore other amazing women-created narratives in cinema that also didn’t get recognition throughout all of the Oscars’ history.
The Best Actress category
Margot Robbie indeed delivered a great performance for Barbie, but she wasn’t the only actress who stood out this year. If we are really going to call the Academy out for snubbing her, then we should take a look at the other nominees first.
Of course, each movie and role is completely different from the other, and everyone has a particular taste that would make them like some actresses better. This is a very subjective task, but I think we cannot give an opinion solely based on one film we have watched and not evaluate the full scenario.
That’s why I went on and watched all of the 5 movies with nominees in the Best Actress category. As much as I love Margot, it’s undeniable that these women delivered amazing performances as well. So I won’t say that some actresses deserve the spot rather than the other, just that we should value all of the works.
1. Lily Gladstone (Killers Of The Flower Moon)
Even before we know who will take the Oscar home, Lily Gladstone is already making history: she is the first ever native-American woman to be nominated for Best Actress. Gladstone goes by both she/they, as in Blackfeet – her indigenous heritage – language, there are no gender pronouns. “So, yeah, my pronoun use is partly a way of decolonizing gender for myself”, they told People.
Lily is one of the favorites to win the award for her brilliant role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon, in which she plays Mollie Burkhart, a member of the Osage nation. After the discovery of oil on their land in the 1920s, the Osages became rich – and this led them to start being murdered one by one. The horrors of this situation are so stuck in Gladstone’s eyes that we can feel the Osage’s angst in her subtle, yet powerful, performance.
For her acting in this film, Lily Gladstone has already won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award. In her acceptance speech for the first one, she made a meaningful statement on the importance of her win for representativity.
2. Emma Stone (Poor Things)
Emma Stone can win her second Oscar for her leading role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things – the first one came in 2017, with La La Land, as the aspiring actress Mia Dolan. This time, her character is a bit… How can I say it? Weirder.
The plot of the film follows Stone’s Bella Baxter, a woman who, after committing suicide, is brought back to life by a crazy scientist who replaces her brain with a baby one. As intriguing and chaotic as it seems, Poor Things is an extremely interesting film.
Through almost 2 and a half hours of story, we follow Bella’s trajectory of growth and self-discovery, in intellectual, social, and sexual ways. It’s impossible not to get mesmerized by the physical effort Emma put into this role, for which she has already won a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice Award, and a BAFTA.
3. Sandra Hüller (Anatomy Of A Fall)
The German actress Sandra Hüller was not a well-known name before this year’s Oscar, but she is definitely getting a deserving spotlight right now. Not only for her impeccable role in Anatomy Of A Fall but because she also stars in another Best Film nominee: The Zone Of Interest.
In Anatomy Of A Fall, Sandra Hüller’s character – who’s also called Sandra – is accused of murdering her husband, who fell out of the window of their house in the French Alps. The only witness of the possible crime or suicide is their blind son, and this leads us to a trial that will investigate whether the couple’s private relationship could or should be used to explain what happened.
“Sandra’s just actually acting like a man and if that were the case no one would say anything about it”, Hüller told BBC. In fact, her cautionary performance brilliantly explores the way our society deals with guilt, and how can that theme be a not-so-clear thing when we talk about characters so complex.
4. Carey Mulligan (Maestro)
Maestro may not be a movie that pleased everybody – myself included – this year, but it’s undeniable that one of the best things about it is Carey Mulligan‘s representation of Felicia Montealegre, Maestro Leonard Bernstein’s wife.
While Bradley Cooper‘s character is utterly expansive, perhaps trying a bit too hard to show Bernstein’s brilliance, Mulligan was able to captivate the viewer with her take on Felicia’s introspectiveness. She doesn’t have to say a lot when she can show all the issues that are surrounding the couple’s relationship.
Even though many things about her personality and career were left out due to the focus on Bernstein’s protagonism, Felicia’s persistent love for him gives Carey Mulligan a deserved spotlight. And, of course, she was able to strongly captivate the public during the saddest part of the narrative.
5. Annette Bening (Nyad)
At last, but not least, Annette Bening is running – or swimming, sorry for that joke – up for Best Actress with her portrait of athlete Diana Nyad, who, at the age of 64, swam for 177 kilometers from Cuba to Florida.
To achieve consistency for Nyad, Bening had a routine of swimming 8 hours a day to learn the behavior of a professional swimmer. This was able to add more likelihood to the character, in addition to her portrait of perseverance towards this challenge.
Nyad is the lesser known film with a nominee for Best Actress, but besides it not having the grandeur of the other productions, Annette Bening was able to gain her spot in her fourth Oscar nomination.
So, was Barbie actually snubbed?
Barbie not being nominated in these two main categories should not, in any way, minimize the impact this movie had on our society. It brought up so many important discussions about feminism, girlhood, femininity, and pretty much everything that involves what it means to be a woman.
Therefore, the Oscar nominations and possible wins or losses won’t be able to take that away. But even though we love Barbie that much, it doesn’t mean that it is the only good movie of the year or that it’s the only one that makes a good portrait of womanhood – and we have to consider that.
Of course, we can prefer Margot Robbie’s acting or Greta Gerwig’s direction rather than some other artists, but we shouldn’t merely say that before watching the other films as well. Take a chance on that, you might be able to find your new favorite story!
The article above was edited by Fernanda Miki Tsukase.
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