Oscar nominations breakdown 2024
Oscar nominations breakdown 2024
Did Barbie get snubbed?
Oppenheimer leads the pack at the 96th Oscars with 13 nominations, followed by Poor Things (11), Killers of the Flower Moon (10) and Barbie (8) honouring the best movies from last year.
On Wednesday morning, actors Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid announced the nominees on behalf of the Academy.
Here are my takeaways from this year’s nominations.
10 nominees for Best Picture for third year in a row
The 10 nominees for Best Picture are:
American Fiction dir. Cord Jefferson
Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute) dir. Justine Triet
Barbie dir. Greta Gerwig
The Holdovers dir. Alexander Payne
Killers of the Flower Moon dir. Martin Scorsese
Maestro dir. Bradley Cooper
Oppenheimer dir. Christopher Nolan
Past Lives dir. Celine Song
Poor Things dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
The Zone of Interest dir. Jonathan Glazer
While there were no real surprises in the Best Picture nominee line up, making it official sets two new Academy records: most films directed by women at 3 (Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie and Past Lives) and most films in a language other than English (Anatomy of a Fall - French, Past Lives - Korean and The Zone of Interest - German).
Did Barbie get snubbed?
Let’s get into the big stuff: I went straight to sleep after watching the nomination announcement at 12:30am Australian time and by the time I woke up, the internet was ablaze with incredulity that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig had both been snubbed for Barbie. Even Hillary Clinton tweeted about it.
First of all, let’s look at the facts. Barbie received 8 nominations. Both Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig are nominated. While she did not get nominated for Best Director, for directing the movie, Greta Gerwig is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, for writing the movie. While she did not get nominated for Best Actress, for her role as Stereotypical Barbie, Margot Robbie is nominated for Best Picture, for producing Barbie.
So it’s not totally correct to say that Robbie and Gerwig were snubbed. The Oscars definitely has a problem with celebrating stories about women – Dan Kois wrote a great article about this for Slate during the 2021 season: ‘The Revolutionary Thing About Nomadland’s Win That Everyone’s Missing’.
Kois highlighted how Nomadland was only the 6th Best Picture winner in 93 years to feature a female protagonist. Since Nomadland, CODA became the 7th (and the first Best Picture winner about a teenage girl) and Everything Everywhere All at Once became the 8th (and the first Best Picture winner about a woman of colour).
That’s not even to mention how many great women-focused, women-directed stories miss the Oscars entirely, like Alice Wu’s The Half of It and Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu).
Robbie was only competing against other women in the Best Actress category, but I would have loved to see Gerwig snag her second Best Director nomination for Barbie. Still, the fact that all three of Gerwig’s solo directorial efforts (Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie) have been nominated for Best Picture is outstanding.
I’d also argue that Ryan Gosling had an easier run to get nominated for Best Supporting Actor – as the male lead of Barbie, he’s borderline committing category fraud depending on who you ask.
Justine Triet becomes the 8th women ever nominated for Best Director
Like I said, the Oscars definitely have a women problem and it’s rife in the Best Director category. Justine Triet makes history as only the 8th woman to be nominated for Best Director for Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute).
I was really hoping we’d see multiple women in the Best Director category this year – which has only happened once before, when Chloé Zhao was nominated (and won) for Nomadland and Emerald Fennell was nominated for Promising Young Woman – with Celine Song (Past Lives) and/or Greta Gerwig (Barbie) nominated too.
The Academy really loves a biopic performance
This is not news to anyone, but this year’s crop of Best Actor and Actress nominees really highlight how much the Academy values an actor portraying a historical figure. Three out of five nominees in each category are for performances of historical figures.
Lily Gladstone makes Oscars history
Killers of the Flower Moon actress Lily Gladstone continues to make history as the first Native American woman to be nominated for Best Actress. She is the fourth Indigenous actress following Yalitza Aparicio (Roma), Merle Oberon (Dark Angel) and Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider).
Best Original Song continues to create chaos
Let’s break down the Best Original Song nominees: it’s no surprise to see two songs from Barbie (‘What Was I Made For?’ and ‘I’m Just Ken’) or ‘It Never Went Away’ from American Symphony.
It was surprising to see ‘Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People’ from Killers of the Flower Moon and even more surprising to see ‘The Fire Inside’ from Flamin’ Hot because I didn’t even know that the Cheetos movie was a thing. It’s Diane Warren’s 15th nomination without a win yet.
Society of the Snow gets two nominations
Even though it wasn’t able to drum up enough Best Picture buzz, I was pleased to see Society of the Snow (La sociedad de la nieve) get two nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
The love for May December was short lived
It looked like Netflix had chosen the wrong film to back for Best Picture when May December burst into cinemas to great reviews, the movie walked away with only a single nomination for Best Original Screenplay (screenplay by Samy Burch; story by Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik).
Despite critical acclaim for their acting performances, none of May December’s three leads Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore and Charles Melton were nominated.
Killers of the Flower Moon’s wins and losses
It’s hard to tell how the Academy feels about Martin Scorsese’s epic Killers of the Flower Moon. It picked up competitive nominations for Best Director and Best Original Song but missed out on Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Original Screenplay for Martin Scorsese and Eric Roth.
DiCaprio has been notably absent from the campaign trail this awards season and when he has appeared, he seems much more focused on supporting Lily Gladstone rather than himself. So it might be that once he got his win for The Revenant, DiCaprio was one and done.
It’s looking increasingly likely that Killers of the Flower Moon will walk away empty handed unless Lily Gladstone wins for Best Actress.
The 96th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on 11 March 2024.