The New York Times: "The Biggest Oscar Snubs and Surprises 2024"

With her billion-dollar blockbuster, Barbie, Greta Gerwig set a Hollywood record for the highest-grossing movie ever directed by a woman. Still, even that major milestone wasn’t enough to earn her a spot in the Oscars’ best director lineup. Although Barbie managed eight nominations, including best picture, Gerwig was snubbed by the directors branch that nominated her six years ago for Lady Bird. It was a mixed showing overall for the hit comedy, which missed some other hoped-for nominations for cinematography, editing and best actress for Margot Robbie. But it did at least pull off a dark-horse supporting actress nod for America Ferrera alongside an expected supporting-actor nomination for Ryan Gosling.

female filmmakers

For the first time in Oscar history, three of the best-picture nominees were directed by women: Barbie, Celine Song’s Past Lives and Justine Triet’s  Anatomy of a Fall. Still, that landmark moment could have been lost in the furor if the directors branch had put forth a lineup made up entirely of men, as many pundits feared it might. Although Gerwig and Song were both snubbed for best director, at least the category found room for Triet, who’d previously won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for her twisty legal drama.

Young actors 

The academy has never had a problem nominating young actresses. In fact, seven of the ten actresses recognized this year are forty or younger. That same interest in ingénues does not apply to the male categories, however. Despite worthy contenders in the mix like Charles Melton (May December) and Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers), all ten of the actors nominated were older than forty, further proof that the Oscars prefer their men more grizzled if they’re meant to be taken seriously.

Romance is in the air

Hey, was this Oscar-nomination morning or Valentine’s Day? At least six couples scored his-and-hers nominations, including Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan and his producer wife, Emma Thomas; Anatomy of a Fall director Justine Triet and her partner and co-writer, Arthur Harari; May December co-writers Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik; and Jared and Jerusha Hess, the directors of the animated short Ninety-Five Senses. Barbie was responsible for the other two pairs of lovebirds, with Gerwig and her husband, Noah Baumbach, nominated in the adapted-screenplay category and Margot Robbie and her husband, Tom Ackerley, earning nominations as the film’s producers.

DiCaprio gets snubbed

As the nominations were read, Killers of the Flower Moonwaxed and waned: Martin Scorsese’s period drama earned key nods for picture, director, actress (Lily Gladstone) and supporting actor (Robert De Niro), but missed an expected nomination for adapted screenplay and extended a continuing snub of lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio that began with the Screen Actors Guild. Still, the film did make Oscar history in several categories, as Gladstone became the first Native American nominated for best actress and Scorsese’s 10th directing nomination helped him pull ahead of Steven Spielberg as the most-nominated living director of all time.

Anderson in, Almodóvar out

Members of the short-film branch can often be hostile to directors they perceive as dilettantes, doling out snubs in recent years to big names such as Taylor Swift (for All Too Well: The Short Film) and Pedro Almodóvar (for his Tilda Swinton short The Human Voice) in favour of lesser-known filmmakers struggling to break through. This year, voters from other branches were allowed to volunteer their services to nominate films for best live-action short, and this expanded group allowed in Wes Anderson, whose miniature The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar bowed on Netflix in the fall. Almodóvar was not so lucky, snubbed once again for his Western Strange Way of Life, starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke.

A last dance for Barbie

Barbie might have scored one more nomination if it weren’t for a rule change introduced in 2008 that forbade any film from placing more than two nominees in the original-song category. Although three of the tunes from Barbie qualified for the original-song shortlist announced in December — Dua Lipa’s disco-infused Dance the Night, the Ryan Gosling-sungI’m Just Ken and Billie Eilish’s ballad What Was I Made For? — only the latter two made it in. At least Lipa can console herself with the tune’s recent Grammy nomination for song of the year.

Godzilla roars 29

The visual-effects category is typically dominated by megabudget Hollywood productions, but the hit Japanese import Godzilla Minus One made it into the race this year alongside big-studio fare such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One and Napoleon. Not bad for a foreign-language film with a budget rumoured to be under $15 million. When Godzilla roars, even the Academy has to listen. 

Published in The New York Times on January 24, 2024. Reprinted with permission.