By Sandro Mairata
This Sunday, March 10, there will be a name more talked about than Oscar: Barbie. The jokes, the barbs, the memes will flow endlessly. In case the reader was on an island, the theme is like this: Barbie being a film that, from its feminism – although they call it white, wrong or right, that is not the point – questioned the patriarchy, it turned out that not even its main actress, Margot Robbie, nor its director, the award-winning Greta Gerwig, were nominated in their categories. The nominee was Ryan Gosling for his role as Kenneth Sean Carson, Ken.
Gosling immediately released a statement expressing his “disappointment” over the rejection of Robbie and Gerwig, who, on the other hand, received all kinds of words of support, including Hillary Clinton, who used the hashtag #HillaryBarbie to write: “Although it may bother winning at the box office, but not taking home the gold, their millions of fans love them.”
The Robbie-Gerwig theme is interesting because it highlights how this Oscar 2024 will be a vaudeville of appearances and contradictions that deserve to be explained. The first thing is to understand that the Academy has about 10,000 members, of which about 9,500 are eligible to vote in the Oscar. The system, in simple terms, is one vote for best film and one vote for the category to which the voter belongs: directors vote for directors, actors vote for actors, etc. Following this explanation, it was the voting directors and actors themselves who left out Robbie-Gerwig, their peers. Because?
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In principle, because although the Academy makes a big deal proclaiming its diversity, “those who vote are still mostly men,” explains Fabián Waintal, an Argentine journalist based in Los Angeles who has been covering the Oscar on site for about 35 years. “It is clear that the directors and actors did not want Margot Robbie or Greta Gerwig, those are the things about these votes. To understand the results you have to understand how to vote.”
In line with these trends, for Waintal, some awards would be clear: Robert Downey Jr. as best supporting actor and Christopher Nolan as best director for Oppenheimer. The same as Lily Gladstone for The Moon Killers. I interrupt you there because I don't agree; In fact, a few days before I posted on my networks “Don't waste our time and give the Oscar for best actress once and for all to Emma Stone for Poor Creatures” and Waintal commented: “Mmm…, you're not thinking like those who vote.” in academia”.
How do those who vote in the Academy think?
Francisco Lombardi, our best-known director, was invited as a voter by the Academy last year and this year he has exercised his vote for the first time: one for best film, another for best director (his category). “I am very sorry that Alexander Payne (director of Those Who Remain) or Leonardo DiCaprio (star in The Moon Killers) was not included; they were two that I really liked.”
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Lombardi reiterates what Waintal said: “The actors have made other options, the directors have made other options.” When talking about the Oscar and “the Academy,” the term “the Academy” seems to evoke an all-powerful hand—perhaps bribable or at least susceptible to machinations behind closed doors—that tilts the results at will. “It is not a vote of criticism, it is a vote of the majority,” says Lombardi, although he specifies that for a category such as best international film there is a committee that ensures stricter selections. The result has been a formidable batch of films for the second year in a row, with Hotspot (UK) competing with Italy's I Captain and Japan's Perfect Days along with Spain's popular Snow Society and Staff Room from Germany. The loudest complaint is the omission of the magnificent Autumn Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland) from the group.
Going back to what Waintal said, Gladstone would be a more than fixed winner due to the aforementioned thinking of the Academy. “People who vote for the Oscar don't just think about 'if I like it'; think of everything,” she states. “Gladstone already won it. She is an American Indian and in her role she is perfect: she speaks little, she speaks with her face, she speaks with her face, she doesn't need anything else. Emma Stone's performance is over the top; In the end her performance improves from the middle forward, and those who vote are film people. When the comparison comes, who are you going to give it to? Someone who is nominated for the first time, a native American who may not be nominated again, or Emma Stone who already has an Oscar in her house? That doesn't mean that she might win it, but they are three different things: what I want her to win, what people want her to win, and what she is going to win.
On the other hand, the distribution of nominations and the previous awards have a direct impact on the market: Oppenheimer has returned to the cinemas and Nolan also took the opportunity to re-release Tenet – which has its fans – and there is a shower of congratulations from the studios to their productions. It is also expected that the accumulation of nominations (13 for Oppenheimer, 11 for The Moon Killers) will not diminish interest in excellent productions such as Past Lives or Secrets of a Scandal that are already announced soon in local cinemas. A first example of the cruelty of the market is what happens with Anatomy of a Fall, Poor Creatures or Those Who Stay, excellent films relegated to a handful of screenings in our theaters.
I ask Lombardi what it feels like to vote for the Oscar for the first time (he tells me beforehand that he won't be going this year): “It doesn't feel anything special. I am a cinephile and I follow it even though I may sometimes disagree with the decisions; Maybe it will always make me curious because I love cinema in general.”
#Oscar #appearances #contradictions
