Early Tuesday morning, Hollywood entered the final stretch of this year’s awards season with the 2022 Oscar nominations announcement. Leslie Jordan and Tracee Ellis Ross hosted the telecast revealing the nominees selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. As always, the nominees hold within them a batch of snubs, surprises, and codifying of awards season trends. Here are 10 major takeaways to consider before the 94th Academy Awards on March 27th.
The Power of the Dog is The Frontrunner
Jane Campion’s layered Western racked up 12 Oscar nominations Tuesday morning. Those nominations include Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch, his and hers Best Supporting for real-life married couple Jesse Plemmons and Kirsten Dunst, Best Picture, and Campion’s second shot at Best Director.
This makes Campion the first woman to ever be nominated for the award twice. Coming off strong showings in both guild and critical society nominations, The Power of the Dog whips into frontrunner territory with all those key nods. The only thing stacked against it is the Academy’s resistance to award Netflix fare the big prize.
Nonetheless, The Power of the Dog has enjoyed a stronger prerequisite run than comparable Roma (2018), The Irishman (2019), or Mank (2020). There’s still time, but Campion and co are running in the first position. All the more wonderful for that The Power of the Dog is in fact one of the year’s best films.
Drive My Car is Rightly Celebrated
Even after Parasite (2019) broke the mold by taking Best Picture gold, there were doubts about Drive My Car’s chances. A three-hour Japanese epic, it has enjoyed lavish critical acclaim, but many feared it skewed too meditative for Oscar nominations.
Instead, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s film scored four nominations. These include the coveted Best Picture and Best Director nods, signaling the film likely enjoys substantial voter support. Furthermore, it is exceedingly rare for a screenplay not in English to be nominated, but Hamaguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe beat the considerable odds.
Does this mean that Drive My Car officially slots into dark horse position for the big prizes? Hard to say, especially with a handful of other films securing far more nominations. Nonetheless, this level of support for a foreign-language film from a body prone to awarding English-language above all else is a testament to its raw cinematic power.
Stale Biopics Remain Academy Catnip
The Academy fawns over movie stars dressing up as historical figures. Bonus points if the figure in question also happens to be an entertainment icon. These Oscar nominations are less egregious than years past, but with Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem crashing the party for Being the Ricardos, and Jessica Chastain swooping in for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, the tradition remains alive and well.
This is not to say that biopic performances cannot be worthy. Andrew Garfield’s turn as Jonathan Larsen in Tick, Tick…BOOM and Kristin Stewart as Princess Diana in Spencer prove that.
Yet, the consistency with which the Academy overlooks far superior performances in favor of the likes of prosthetics and giant teeth reveals an infuriating trend. It is exciting that the acting categories offer more than a slew of these performances. Nonetheless, Being the Ricardos managing three nominations while The Green Knight gets none is maddening.
Cage, Dinklage, and Negga Snubbed
As a direct result of the Academy favoring those biopic performances, three of the year’s best turns lost out. Nicolas Cage, Peter Dinklage, and Ruth Negga all delivered career-best work in 2021 and received no Oscar attention.
Cage’s achingly raw role in Pig, Dinklage’s vibrant work in Cyrano, and Negga’s searing turn in Passing run circles around half the actual nominees. If, arguably, not the whole slew of recognized performances. There are a number of approaches for considering what went wrong. All three films containing these roles are smaller releases without the same flash as their competitors.
Pig and Cyrano come from studios with lesser awards acumen. Netflix put its focus on The Power of the Dog instead of Passing. On and on the list can go. Yet, any avenue of thought still arrives at the same end; their omission from the nominations is obscene.
The Academy (Mostly) Ignores Global Performances
On the topic of overlooked performances, the Oscar nominations signal another Academy trend; that of mostly ignoring international film performances. Penélope Cruz’s well-earned nod for Parallel Mothers aside, every other nominated performance comes from an American film. Belfast is an almost tricky case with its Northern Irish setting, but having been produced by Universal and Focus Features it is a true-blue Hollywood feature at heart.
The resulting nominee’s list calls to mind Bong-Joon Ho’s comment about the Academy Awards being “very local.” An organization that aspires to reward the best in filmmaking from any year has to reckon with the fact that their default nominee, beyond being white, most often has to speak English to make it on their radar. Any performance from Drive My Car or the wholly ignored Titane and Benedetta could stand up to the nominees.
Apple Has a Big Day
With CODA and The Tragedy of Macbeth, Apple has officially joined the ranks of serious awards studios. This is not the first year for an Apple TV+ release to break into the Oscar nominations. However, CODA is the first Best Picture nomination for the tech giant.
CODA’s nomination is a boon for the company, which spent $25 million to acquire it at Sundance in 2021. That purchase set a festival record, and with a long tradition of splashy Sundance titles ending with Oscar heartbreak, this is a nice surprise for a sweet film. In addition, the Joel Coen-directed Macbeth adaptation scored two major below-the-line nods and a ninth career nomination for Denzel Washington.
Yes, Apple’s haul pales in comparison to competitors Netflix and Amazon Prime, but it is a major step forward. Hopefully, this will result in the multi-national corporation putting more money into filmmaker passion projects and worthy indies.
Dune is a Real Contender, but Without Villeneuve
Dune has 10 Oscar nominations, second only to The Power of the Dog. With a mix of key nods such as Best Picture, and craft love for editing, cinematography, sound, and many more, chances are Dune walks away from the big night with a collective armful of gold.
Yet, those nominations exclude the film’s visionary director Denis Villeneuve. Of course, any major blockbuster is the result of hundreds upon hundreds of contributors so artistic success is impossible to pin on one person. Even so, Dune, from its pacing to its vibrant visual palette, is distinctly a Villeneuve picture.
It is puzzling to see so much love for the film and yet none for the person who directed it. There is plenty of talent in the Best Director pool this year, but no one can argue in good faith that Kenneth Branagh deserved a slot more than Villeneuve.
Disney Dominates Animation…
With nominations for Encanto, Luca, and Raya and the Last Dragon, Walt Disney and its subsidiary Pixar have cleaned up in the Best Animated Feature category. It’s truly hard to imagine another category where one studio could so definitely dominate, but this one is the mouse’s house.
No doubt powered by the breakout success of its soundtrack, Encanto enters the race as the strongest of Disney’s contenders. This is not to besmirch Luca or Raya, but neither of those features connected with audiences to the same extent as the Lin-Manuel Miranda-scored fairy tale. Even so, Oscar voters harbor warm feelings for the whole Disney slate.
The shame here is that it means more nuanced work such as BELLE and Cryptozoo fell to the Disney offensive. Thankfully though, the obscenely charming The Mitchells vs. The Machines secured a spot, as well as an exceptional and groundbreaking animated documentary.
…but Flee Breaks Through
That animated documentary is of course Flee, from Danish director Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Rasmussen employs animation to tell his friend Amin’s story while preserving his and his family’s anonymity. It is, in short, a brilliant decision.
Recreating interviews and memories alike through animation means that Rasmussen and the animators can wholly depict Amin’s tale of fleeing war-torn Afghanistan without ever worrying about revealing information that could put them in danger. They even changed all the names and hired actors to read lines so voices were unidentifiable.
Flee boasts some of the most gorgeous animation in recent memory. Flickering between realism and the impressionism of far-off memories, it is a marvel to behold. Such a wedding of narrative and formal innovation is rare to encounter, and though it’s sadly likely Flee will fall to a Disney title, its inclusion will hopefully bring it to a wider audience.
The Race has Only Just Begun
Less a major takeaway than a broad observation, the Oscar nominations signal the starting gun for the final push of awards season. Yes, there has already been a slew of carefully managed magazine profiles and photo ops to get nominees this far, but the sprint has now begun. With nominations secured, studios and publicists alike double down on the work of convincing voters their movie is the one.
It’s easy to get caught up in the prognosticating and gesticulating of campaigning. Though, for all the silliness of awards shows, they do represent a key component in funneling attention to worthy projects. Come March 27th any number of things could happen. Until then, the only thing to do is watch, and remember that no matter the final tally, the real goal is to shout from the rooftops for the best cinema.
