Oscar nominations try to please everyone

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Academy Awards every year, has announced nominations in all twenty-three categories. The most – eleven in total – was won by the science fiction Everything, Everywhere, At Once, which, in addition to a clever script, great acting performances and distinctive visuals, also offers an extension to a societal issue, in this case the life of Asian immigrants in the USA. The unique combination of an art spectacle and an action blockbuster has thus surpassed current Hollywood stars James Cameron and Steven Spielberg in the number of nominations, and Michelle Yeoh, who played the title character in the film, is the first woman of Asian origin to be nominated in the Best Actress category. It is a great and well-deserved success.

The Oscars are a political affair coming from a closed, elitist environment. For the past few years, they have been facing intense public pressure for greater diversity, so they are trying to respond to it. But they do it in a way that they trip on their own feet. The ten titles nominated in the Best Picture category for 2022 may seem diverse at first glance, but upon closer examination, it is clear that the Academy awards more and more each year what it thinks the public wants it to award.

This is also evidenced by the unusually high number of nominated blockbusters this year – in addition to Everything, Everywhere, Suddenly, Top Gun: Maverick is also fighting for the most prestigious statuette – a nostalgic “fan service” betting on the cult status of the original film and the testosterone packed into the uniforms, the spectacular biopic Elvis or Cameron’s Avatar, which is visually captivating, but at the same time it only dusts off what has already been seen and offers almost nothing in terms of story. There is no justification for its placement in the Best Picture category. It’s the same with Netflix’s megaproject, the historical feature film Quiet on the Western Front: a technologically precise but content-emptied adaptation of the famous anti-war novel, which, however, does not transfer anything powerful from the original to the screen. But thematically, it fits with current world events.

With seven nominations, the contemporary Fabelmans feature prominently in the competition, in which 76-year-old Steven Spielberg recalls his own childhood and pays a moving tribute to the film medium. So far, the most personal effort of the most commercially successful director of all time seems almost inconspicuous next to the above films (which is also paradoxical considering that it is Spielberg who is considered the father of the modern blockbuster), yet it is possible that it will eventually lick the cream. The Fabelmans have already won Hollywood’s darling a Golden Globe for Best Director and Best Drama, and they’re not bad at all.

On the other side of the spectrum are two films that do not match the rest of the nominees in terms of production size, but again deal with topics that resonate in society, and at least one of them was a success with the audience. It’s Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sorrow, a satire on the lifestyles of the rich and privileged that took home the Golden Flame at Cannes and, while full of great moments, falters somewhat in the second half.

The second is the drama Women Talking by director Sarah Polley, about women in an isolated religious community who face repeated sexual violence and decide to stand up. In the end, it seems that only the films Víla z Inisherin and Tár suddenly got the nominations next to Everything, everywhere. While the former stands out for its brilliant script, the latter offers a complex portrait of a complicated personality whose portrayal is the performance of a lifetime for Cate Blanchett.

One of the most intense criticisms the Academy receives is the regular absence of female creators in the main category. The fact is that there are many capable screenwriters and directors, but they do not receive as much attention and opportunities in Hollywood as they deserve. Jane Campion’s Best Director win last year, as only the third woman in the competition’s history, was as much an achievement as it was a bittersweet exception. When the Academy is already riding the wave of fulfilling expectations and trying to calm the agitated voices of the public, this year it seems like a completely wasted opportunity not to nominate Sarah Polley, who did a great job directing Women Talking. In the same vein, Charlotte Wells would also deserve an award, whose impressive debut Aftersun wowed critics and earned Paul Mescal at least a nomination in the acting category.

For the same reason, the absence of films by dark-skinned filmmakers or those that thematize the problems of African Americans is worth noting. Before the nominations were announced, there was talk of a chance for, for example, Danielle Deadwyler, who famously played the mother of a 14-year-old black boy brutally murdered by two men in the 1950s in Chinonye Chukwu’s Justice for Emmett Till. In the end, the actress did not get it. Likewise, the Academy completely shelved Warriors, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical drama about the Dahomean Amazons, one of the few historically documented female armies that operated in 19th-century Africa.

Incidentally, they were one of the inspirations for the Dora Milaje sections of the Black Panther universe. The first part received seven Oscar nominations years ago, including the main one, the current second one with the subtitle Long Live Wakanda has five, but it is not competing for the title of best film. Although this is a Marvel commercial product through and through, in the context of the portrayal of dark-skinned female characters in the American mainstream, this is an important achievement. The film offers several strong black heroines, and if, unlike the above-mentioned Warrior, it has already passed through the sieve, a bigger award would make sense according to the Oscar pattern – especially in the case when a moving screen saver with blue aliens can compete for the title of Best Film.

The Oscars stand astride a ferocious drive to become a more open, grassroots competition and an inability to leave their privileged box. The result is the impression of a convulsively grinning colossus who doesn’t really want to appreciate the creators standing outside his closed circle, but simply has to, so he chooses just enough of them each time so that no one protests too much.

But if they continue in the spirit of these “nominations to order”, the Academy Awards will lose all relevance in terms of the quality of the awarded pictures; it’s not very big even now. At the same time, they could become more inclusive so easily and in a much more casual way: it would be enough to pay attention to good but less conspicuous acts – such as Aftersun, for example.

More up-and-coming or overlooked filmmakers would then very likely naturally start to fall into the mix, which in Hollywood really includes mainly women or non-white people. A win would then open up many new opportunities for them to show their talent within the dream factory, because that’s exactly how the Oscars work. And we are home.