It’s a year for creatively ambitious Hollywood movies backed by substantial budgets at the Academy Awards, with Sinners, One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme and Frankenstein heavily nominated early this morning.
And it is also a year for ambitious non-English-language challengers from other parts of the world with The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value featuring among the contenders.
With the nominations dominated by stories about central characters challenging power in different forms, Australia has first-time nominations for Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein) and, for best original song, Nick Cave (Train Dreams).
Production designer Fiona Crombie, who has been nominated previously for The Favourite, is back for Hamnet.
In raw numbers, Sinners leads the way with a record 16 nominations – boosted by the inclusion of a new Oscar for best casting. Next is One Battle with 13 nominations and Frankenstein, Marty Supreme and Sentimental Value all with nine.
Joining them with best picture nominations are Hamnet, Bugonia, F1, The Secret Agent and Train Dreams.
The good
Byrne’s best actress nomination is one of the feel-good stories of the nominations.
While If I Had Legs I’d Kick You was weirdly in the musical or comedy category when she won at the Golden Globes, Byrne was exceptional as a stressed-out American therapist in a tense drama with a horror edge.
Over two decades working in the US, she has shone in Bridesmaids and multiple Insidious, X-Men and Neighbours movies, and, on TV, in Damages, Mrs America and Physical.
“I can’t believe it,” Byrne told The Hollywood Reporter. “I feel like I’ve snuck into the back of the bus. I can’t believe we got in this extraordinary group of women …
“I love the Oscars. [When I was a] little girl from Sydney, Australia, I used to watch [the show]. The pageantry of it is so fun and theatrical.”
Elordi continues his striking Hollywood rise with a best supporting actor nomination at 28 – two years younger than boy wonder Timothée Chalamet, who is one of the favourites to win best actor for Marty Supreme.
He brought heart and deep feeling to the Creature, who emerges from a demented lab and discovers the curse of eternal life, in Frankenstein. Even in the early stages, when his character was chained up and knew only the single word “Victor”, Elordi made him compelling to watch.
Nick Cave’s Train Dreams – Bryce Dessner co-wrote the music – was a haunting closer to the poetic drama Train Dreams. It will be an outsider at the Oscars given it is up against Golden from the pop culture phenomenon that is KPop Demon Hunters.
Without discounting the merits of One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme and Hamnet, Sinners deserves to lead the nominations. At a time when cinema fans regularly lament the lack of original films, writer-director Ryan Coogler delivered one that ambitiously fused genres, spoke about race and class in America and took creative risks.
The bad
Joel Edgerton has been close to an Oscar nomination before, for playing an FBI agent in Black Mass a decade ago. This year he absolutely deserved to be recognised for his heartbreaking performance as an early 20th century itinerant logger and railroad labourer in Train Dreams.
There is so much emotion – suppressed and occasionally overflowing – in a quiet character who experiences horror, loneliness and grief but endures to finally feel like he understands life in his last years.
Train Dreams is up for best picture, adapted screenplay, cinematography and original song; the Australian actor who made it so moving has sadly missed out.
While there are two non-English-language films up for best picture, Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent, the Academy overlooked the best one. Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident is a tense and twisting thriller, darkly comic, about the abuse of power in Iran that won the Palme d’Or, the major prize, at Cannes.
Panahi, who had already been jailed for “creating propaganda against the system” and supporting anti-government protesters, made it in secret to avoid government censorship, and his courage and craft should have been rewarded with a best director nomination as well.
And how unlucky were Chase Infiniti, the breakout star as the daughter of a revolutionary in One Battle, and Paul Mescal, who played Shakespeare in Hamnet? Their categories, best actress and actor, were so competitive this time around that they missed out.
Way back in 2002, when Will Smith was nominated for best actor for Ali, he told me the Academy had historically overlooked deserving African-American actors and gave Delroy Lindo from Malcolm X, Get Shorty and Cider House Rules as evidence.
At 73, Lindo has finally received a nomination. He is up for best supporting actor for playing a legendary blues musician in Sinners.
The ugly
Voters decided that sequels were ugly. There are no nominations for Wicked: For Good, not even for Ariana Grande’s performance as Glinda, and Avatar: Fire and Ice is only up for best visual effects, which it might well win, and costume design.
While Frankenstein and Sinners deserved to be up for best make-up and hairstyling, alongside the little-seen Kokuho and The Ugly Stepsister, I was never sure what to make of Dwayne Johnson’s transformation into a tormented UFC fighter in The Smashing Machine.
His performance was impressive, but the character’s look felt awkward and forced. Still, he did not look like Dwayne Johnson, which I guess was the triumph.
The Oscars take place on Monday, March 16, Australian time.
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