A Few Best Picture Nominee Comments

I used to try and see as many “Oscar movies” as I could in a given awards season, focusing on my personal top ten categories (best picture, the four acting categories, the two writing categories, best director, best score, and best cinematography) but casting a wider net whenever I could get my hands on less major films.  These days, that’s just plain not practical – I don’t have the time for something as ambitious as that, and less of the time I do have is spent among the plentiful cinemas of the Cities.  So, I mainly shoot for the best picture nominees on the grounds that they make up a good chunk of the nominated films in my favorite categories anyway, and only seek out additional pictures under special circumstances.

My efforts this year have been decent but not exemplary.  Of the eight potential best pictures, I’ve seen six (Whiplash and Birdman still elude me, and I’m not likely to get them in before the ceremony on Sunday.)  I do, however, have a complete nomination list (obviously,) and I’ve noticed something surprising in the overlap between the best picture and acting nominees.

So, there are eight movies up for best picture, yes?  American Sniper, Birdman, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, Selma, The Theory of Everything, and Whiplash.  Meanwhile, there are five actors and five actresses nominated for the lead acting categories.  For our five men, four of them are in best-picture-nominated films; Steve Carell, in Foxcatcher, is the only odd man out.  Of the five women, though, only one – Felicity Jones in The Theory of Everything – is in a best picture nominee.  The other four women aren’t in movies that received the top nod.  In fact, with the exceptions of The Theory of Everything and Reese Witherspoon’s Wild (which also features a best supporting actress nomination for Laura Dern,) these movies are up for leading actress and nothing else.

What does this mean?  It means the main Oscar race is between a lot of men’s (and boys’) stories.  Of the eight best pictures of the year, only one has a female leading role with enough weight behind it for the actress to snag a nomination.  There are other actresses, supporting actresses, nominated for these movies – Emma Stone is the male lead’s daughter in Birdman, Patricia Arquette is the male lead’s mother in Boyhood, and Keira Knightley is the male lead’s friend and colleague in The Imitation Game.  (Of course, Felicity Jones also plays second-fiddle as the wife of the male lead in her film, but The Theory of Everything gives us more of Jane’s story than these other movies give for their characters.  Well, Boyhood and The Imitation Game, at least – I can’t speak for Birdman.)  Furthermore, it’s not as if the supporting actresses in these three films were nominated while the lead actresses were not.  In Boyhood, The Imitation Game, and, from what I can tell, Birdman, the nominated actress is the top-billed woman in the movie.  It’s not just that the lead actresses don’t have award-worthy characters or performances – it’s that the movies don’t have leading actresses.  I don’t know about Whiplash, but I’d put American Sniper, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Selma in the same category – in all three, the most prominent female is the wife/girlfriend of the male lead, and while American Sniper’s Taya and Selma’s Coretta get a bit of focus, they’re far overshadowed by their husbands’ stories.  To find films with lead actresses at all, let alone films that tell women’s stories, you have to seek out pictures with only one or two nominations.  I don’t know if this speaks to a problem with Oscar voters or the main thrust of Hollywood at large, but if someone pinpoints the culprits, can we stick them in a room with Katniss Everdeen and let her do what she does best?