“Barbie” was the largest hit of 2023, the highest-grossing film ever directed by a lady and a bona fide cultural sensation that turned film theaters pink and left a still-going path of suppose items within the wake of Greta Gerwig’s feminist fantasia.
However whereas “Barbie” acquired eight Academy Awards nominations on Tuesday, together with greatest image, it was simply bested by its unlikely double-feature associate on the field workplace, “Oppenheimer.” And when the Academy Awards handed over Gerwig for greatest director and Margot Robbie for greatest actress, many noticed among the similar patriarchy parodied in “Barbie” at work.
Even Ken was livid.
“There isn’t any Ken with out Barbie, and there’s no ‘Barbie’ film with out Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the 2 individuals most chargeable for this history-making, globally celebrated movie,” Ryan Gosling mentioned. “No recognition could be attainable for anybody on the movie with out their expertise, grit and genius. To say that I’m disenchanted that they don’t seem to be nominated of their respective classes could be an understatement.”
By Wednesday, the backlash had already handed into the political realm. Hillary Clinton, posting on X, the platform previously often called Twitter, wrote:
“Greta & Margot,
Whereas it could actually sting to win the field workplace however not take dwelling the gold, your hundreds of thousands of followers love you.
You’re each a lot greater than Kenough.
#HillaryBarbie”
Clinton’s put up despatched the web in a frenzy that, from afar, seemed one thing just like the beachfront warfare that breaks out in “Barbie.” The firestorm on the heels of nominations ensures that the runup to the March 10 Oscars — which had began to really feel like an easy march to coronation for “Oppenheimer” and a handful of frontrunners — can have loads of drama.
Jimmy Kimmel, who will host these awards, has already weighed in. On Tuesday night time’s “Jimmy Kimmel Reside,” he quipped that Gosling being nominated for Ken whereas Robbie and Gerwig had been snubbed “was form of the plot of the ‘Barbie’ film.”
If the summer time phenomenon of Barbenheimer was outlined by a wierd counter-programming synergy that lifted each movies up, the identical twin impact didn’t fairly switch to the Academy Award nominations. The disparity was hanging, partially, not simply due to the sturdy assist for “Barbie,” however as a result of the Academy of Movement Footage Arts and Sciences has an extended historical past of overlooking girls behind the digital camera and female-led movies.
Gerwig, herself, has already been in the midst of that historical past. When she was nominated for greatest director in 2018 for “Girl Hen,” she was simply the fifth lady nominated within the class. On the time, solely Kathryn Bigelow had beforehand received greatest director. Since then, each Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Jane Campion (“The Energy of the Canine”) have.
On the similar time, Gerwig has been uniquely celebrated by the academy. Her first three movies as a solo director — “Girl Hen,”“Little Girls” and “Barbie” — have all been nominated for greatest image. On Tuesday, Gerwig and her husband, Noah Baumbach, with whom she co-wrote the movie, had been nominated for greatest tailored screenplay. (In one other twist that didn’t delight “Barbie” followers, the academy deemed the script could be categorized as tailored.) Robbie, as a producer, shared in the most effective image nomination.
Neither Gerwig nor Robbie has commented publicly but on both the nominations the film acquired or those they didn’t. Representatives for Gerwig and Robbie didn’t reply Wednesday to queries.
In the meantime, debates raged concerning the nature of the “Barbie” snubs. Mary McNamara, the cultural columnist for The Los Angeles Occasions, wrote: “Did too many individuals (significantly girls) get pleasure from ‘Barbie’ for it to be thought-about ‘vital’ sufficient for academy voters? Did Robbie’s Barbie not undergo sufficient? Did Gerwig merely make it look too easy? Was it simply too pink?”
Sexism may need performed a job. But Justine Triet, the filmmaker of the Palme d’Or-winning French courtroom drama “Anatomy of the Fall,” was among the many nominees for greatest director, together with Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Curiosity”) and Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Issues”). That left two Administrators Guilds nominees — Gerwig and Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”) — on the skin.
One doubtless issue: the more and more worldwide composition of the movie academy. Partly to broaden the variety of Oscar voters, the academy is unfold world wide greater than ever; ballots had been filed from a report 93 nations this yr. Doubtlessly, that will have favored Europe-based filmmakers like Triet, Lanthimos and Glazer.
The academy might additionally level to a different report: For the primary time, three motion pictures directed by girls had been nominated for greatest image: Gerwig’s “Barbie,” Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and Celine Music’s “Previous Lives.”
Nonetheless, the tip consequence — with the inventive brains and star of the yr’s most-talked about film neglected — simply felt unsuitable to many.
“Greta Gerwig: Made a critically acclaimed, culturally profound, feminist film about Barbie and the patriarchy that made a billion {dollars} on the field workplace,” activist Shannon Watts tweeted. “Oscar nomination goes to … Ken.”
Typically, a obtrusive snub can boomerang a flagging awards marketing campaign. After Ben Affleck went unnominated for steering 2012’s “Argo,” voters rallied round his film, finally handing Affleck the Oscar for greatest image. Whether or not the identical impact might comply with “Barbie” might be one of many greatest questions main up the Academy Awards.
On Wednesday, Billie Jean King, who fought for and received equal pay for ladies in tennis, posted that she was “actually upset” concerning the snubs.
“The film is completely good,” wrote King, “and Greta Gerwig is a genius.”
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Comply with AP Movie Author Jake Coyle at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
