The 2019 Oscars nominations prove change is coming – but nowhere near fast enough

As Clarisse Loughrey argues, this year’s picks have proven to be a mix of bold choices and disappointing old habits

(Marvel Studios-Disney/AP)

If the nominations for this year’s Oscars have demonstrated anything, it’s that progress is always slow – excruciatingly slow. It feels less like pushing a boulder up a hill, much more like trying to push a boulder up a cliff face. For every nomination worth celebrating – Black Panther for Best Picture! Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio for Best Actress! – there are brutal reminders that the film industry is so often all talk, zero action. The total lack of female directors recognised, in either the Best Director or the Best Picture categories, perhaps hurts the most here.

If you take into account the awards ceremony’s recent history, you’ll see the path that’s brought us here. The academy, in response to 2015’s #OscarsSoWhite controversy, responded a year later by expanding its membership, in an attempt to ensure that its diversity better reflected the world around us.

Of course, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how much this has affected who’s won and who’s been nominated, but there has been progress, from Moonlight’s spectacular win in 2017 to Greta Gerwig’s Best Director nomination for Lady Bird in 2018.

In 2019, the trend continues, with the nominations suggesting a gulf between the more diverse choices of the academy’s newer members, and the traditional choices we’ve come to expect from its more longstanding ones.

On the one hand, the impact of Black Panther’s seven nominations this year shouldn’t be understated. Certainly, academy organisers will be overjoyed that, finally, a superhero film is up for Best Picture. Perhaps this might even boost TV ratings for the ceremony and ensure we never have to speak of the despised proposal for a Best Popular Film category ever again.

Given that it was Black Panther, and not any other superhero film, this nomination feels even more important. Indeed, the film had an impact far beyond its genre, celebrated not only as a piece of masterful storytelling and visual splendour, but as a full-blown cultural phenomenon.

It proves that the Oscars are capable of rewarding the blockbusters that are genuinely exceptional, without crowbarring them in as part of a desperate bid for viewers. It’s also promising to see BlacKkKlansman nominated in six categories, earning Spike Lee a long overdue nomination for Best Director.

Another takeaway from this year’s nominations is how well pictures not in the English language have fared outside of the constraints of Best Foreign Language Film. It’s a positive move in breaking down the concept that filmmaking is an entirely Hollywood-centric affair (with the occasional UK production thrown into the mix). With any luck, in the future, we’ll see the traditional notions of the “Oscar-bait movie” (Green Book, anyone?) fall away. Roma has tied with The Favourite, an English language film, albeit by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, for the most awards with 10 nominations.

The former has even beaten the odds and fared well in the acting categories: Marina de Tavira has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress, alongside Yalitza Aparicio’s Best Actress nomination which puts her up against the likes of Lady Gaga and Glenn Close. Roma is now in a strong position to win – and what a win that would be, as it would become the first foreign language film ever to win Best Picture.

It’s heartening to see such important strides being made, but it’s hard to celebrate in the face of so many disappointments. Women behind the camera are still being shut out of awards season. By this point, it’s just embarrassing. Despite all the talk over the past 12 months of the film industry’s commitment to change, the academy has snubbed a string of high-profile and critically acclaimed works by women – all of them with the right credentials to be deemed awards-friendly.

There can be no excuses this year when Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, Chloé Zhao’s The Rider, and Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace were all eligible. Most egregious of all, Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? was nominated in several other categories, including Best Adapted Screenplay – only for it to be glaringly excluded in the two biggest categories. What’s more, the academy failed to nominate a single female cinematographer, editor, or composer.

Although these omissions also reflect the fact that women are rarely granted the type of high-profile jobs needed to secure awards recognition, the academy also has a duty here to acknowledge lesser-known work, elevate female talent, and give women the spotlight needed to secure more high-profile work in the future. Only then can the cycle finally be broken.

Meanwhile, several of this year’s nominees have been mired in the same kind of controversy we’ve seen before. Green Book writer Nick Vallelonga, for example, was criticised for having posted an anti-Muslim tweet years ago, while the film’s director, Peter Farrelly, felt compelled to apologise for past allegations of sexual misconduct on set.

Bohemian Rhapsody, meanwhile, has been controversial since production even began. The decision to hire Bryan Singer as its director was widely criticised due to his history of sexual abuse allegations; his involvement was then further complicated when he was fired from the project due to “unreliable behaviour”, with Dexter Fletcher stepping in to complete the film.

The film has also been criticised for mishandling Freddie Mercury’s sexuality. To see both these films nominated for Best Picture at the expense of, say, Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, will inevitably strike a dour note come Oscars night.

While change is in the air when it comes to the Academy Awards, it’s still happening far too slowly. Surely there is more that can be done here?