The Barbie filmmaker isn't the first to be snubbed for directing a crowdpleaser.
A woman directs a commercially successful and critically acclaimed film that is nominated for a slew of Academy Awards, but none for Best Director. Sound familiar? Back in 1992, this is what happened to Barbra Streisand, whose Oscar snub for directing The Prince of Tides prompted the ceremony’s host, Billy Crystal, to sing “Did this movie direct itself?” to the tune of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” in his opening monologue. He was stealing his own joke—he’d said the same thing two years prior about Bruce Beresford, who was overlooked for Best Director even though his film Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture.
There’s a chance that this year’s Oscar host, Jimmy Kimmel, will bring out that old chestnut with regard to Barbie, which netted eight nods, including Best Picture, but saw its director, Greta Gerwig, ignored in her category. Gerwig and her husband, Noah Baumbach, were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, but there was an immediate outcry when the nominations were unveiled, given Barbie’s colossal success (more than $1.4 billion in worldwide grosses) and the widespread perception that Gerwig’s authorial voice had managed to sparkle in a corporate-branded movie about a famous toy.
Read: Can anything stop Oppenheimer at the Oscars?
Margot Robbie, Barbie’s lead, was also snubbed in the Best Actress category—though she did get a Best Picture nomination as a producer of the film. The result has been some slightly awkward imagery for both the Academy and the supporting cast of Barbie: a situation in which hats are being tipped to the most popular film of 2023, but the two biggest creative forces behind it feel slighted. “There is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally celebrated film,” Ryan Gosling, nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Ken, said in a statement. “To say that I’m disappointed that they are not nominated in their respective categories would be an understatement.”
Read: Barbie is everything. Ken is everything else.
So why was Gerwig excluded from the Best Director slate? The Oscars have a long history of slight mismatches between the nominees for Best Picture (a category voted on by every member of the Academy) and Best Director (for which only members of the directing branch vote). The directing picks tend to line up with Best Picture but can lean a little artier, sometimes eschewing more commercial entertainment for foreign or indie breakthroughs. Barbie’s glossy association with a best-selling toy brand, along with its box-office success, may have persuaded some voters that Gerwig didn’t need a directing nod (to be clear, she does have one under her belt, for 2017’s Lady Bird).
At times, the directing branch wants to recognize breakthrough talent; at others, it’s just acknowledging movies that were likely runners-up in the Best Picture race. In the year Streisand was snubbed, the Best Director contenders included John Singleton (for Boyz n the Hood, and the first-ever Black directing nominee) and Ridley Scott (for Thelma & Louise); neither had his film nominated for Best Picture. In the year Beresford was snubbed, Woody Allen (Crimes and Misdemeanors) and Kenneth Branagh (Henry V) squeezed into the category. For the record, Gerwig was left out in favor of Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest), Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), and Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall), a French filmmaker whose inclusion was perhaps the most surprising.
In more recent years, the Oscars have tweaked Best Picture to include as many as 10 honorees, making it more unlikely that a Best Directing nominee wouldn’t come from a Best Picture candidate. One reason for this change was to avoid glaring snubs for populist films—yes, perhaps Barbie couldn’t pass muster with the directors, but it got into the biggest, most important category. Still, a bit of stigma remains for big movies that get blocked from Best Director, and it can often cause quite a stir, especially when a well-known actor-director is being rebuked. Bradley Cooper was snubbed in 2019 for directing A Star Is Born (he made the list for Best Picture, Actor, and Adapted Screenplay) and said he was “embarrassed” by it. More pivotally, Ben Affleck didn’t make the shortlist for Argo, a huge surprise that eventually propelled that film to a Best Picture win, perhaps an apology of sorts from the general voting body.
The same thing could happen for Gerwig. Barbie’s chance of winning Best Picture seems remote—Oppenheimer, another smash hit of 2023, has widely been tipped for that prize for months, and scored the most total nominations yesterday, with 13. But it could end up losing Best Adapted Screenplay to Barbie, given that that’s Gerwig’s one nomination this year, and that the film’s inventive plotting and self-aware quips were widely praised when it hit theaters last summer. Yes, Oppenheimer is a more traditional adaptation, cramming a doorstop of a biography into a zippy Hollywood script, but Barbie is a strong example of how to solve a common moviemaking dilemma of late: turning an impersonal branded property into something approaching a personal narrative.
The groundswell of support for the film is already beginning. The Los Angeles Times’ Mary McNamara wrote that the snubs “prove the movie’s point” by recognizing the Ken performance while overlooking the actor playing Barbie and the woman behind the camera. “How did voters justify giving ‘Barbie,’ with its very clear message that women have to dance backward in heels to get half the validation their male peers get, a best picture nom while ignoring the two women who made that picture possible?” McNamara asked. I’d argue that Gerwig and Robbie have not exactly been ignored—they are both nominees! But it’s still a question that will be asked over and over for the next six weeks as we race toward the big Oscar finish.
The Silver Lining of an Oscar Snub
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24.01.2024
The Barbie filmmaker isn't the first to be snubbed for directing a crowdpleaser.
A woman directs a commercially successful and critically acclaimed film that is nominated for a slew of Academy Awards, but none for Best Director. Sound familiar? Back in 1992, this is what happened to Barbra Streisand, whose Oscar snub for directing The Prince of Tides prompted the ceremony’s host, Billy Crystal, to sing “Did this movie direct itself?” to the tune of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” in his opening monologue. He was stealing his own joke—he’d said the same thing two years prior about Bruce Beresford, who was overlooked for Best Director even though his film Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture.
There’s a chance that this year’s Oscar host, Jimmy Kimmel, will bring out that old chestnut with regard to Barbie, which netted eight nods, including Best Picture, but saw its director, Greta Gerwig, ignored in her category. Gerwig and her husband, Noah Baumbach, were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, but there was an immediate outcry when the nominations were unveiled, given Barbie’s colossal success (more than $1.4 billion in worldwide grosses) and the widespread perception that Gerwig’s authorial voice had managed to sparkle in a corporate-branded movie about a famous toy.
Read: Can anything stop Oppenheimer at the Oscars?
Margot Robbie, Barbie’s lead, was also snubbed in the Best Actress category—though she did get a Best Picture nomination as a producer of the film. The result has been some slightly awkward imagery for both........
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