A Tale of Two Stones
The ending to the Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone Oscar Battle has people's heads spinning!
Oppenheimer won the big prize last night at the Oscars and walked away with the most awards. While it’s well deserved, I can’t help but find humor in the irony.
Nearly four years ago the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced new Representation and Inclusion requirements for Best Picture consideration.
About the standards, a director said this to the New York Post:
“I’m for diversity, but to make you cast certain types of people if you want to get nominated? That makes the whole process contrived…The person who is right for the part should get the part. Why should you be limited in your choices? But it’s the world we’re in. This is crazy.”
I’m not in the business of telling people what stories to write or how to create their art. Would I like to see more black films make it to the big show? Sure, but I’m not willing to sacrifice quality or make excuses to do it, so Hollywood’s effort to force diversity at the expense of excellence and creativity pisses me off. I love film. I love this art form, and I love celebrating the technical achievements and advancements that make this art form spectacular.
The 96th Acadamy Awards, which aired last night, was the inaugural year for the application of these standards, and if the academy had good sense, they would scrap these standards seeing as how they didn’t make a difference. The best picture lineup included 1 black director, three female directors, and two first-time directors. In the acting categories, there were five black actors, two Latino actors, and one native American actor. You could say this was a win for diversity and that the rules made a difference, but not really. These films would have been nominated regardless because they were that good. 2023 was a stacked and highly competitive year. Every year is different. Some years yield predominately white nominations while others look like this.
I think the Academy is trying to fix a problem that’s not theirs to fix. At the very least they can require voting members to watch all of the nominees before casting votes, but they can’t force quality. I find it ironic that in the first year these rules apply, the big winner is not just a nearly all-white cast but a large all-white one. But I digress…
I’ve seen all of the Best Picture nominees and all the above-the-line nominees except one (it’s on Netflix, but I don’t like watching new movies at home), so follow me for a second.
Apple TV+ and Paramount have been campaigning for Killers of the Flower Moon since the Cannes Film Festival where it premiered in May of last year, and Lily Gladstone has always been the focal point of that campaign. From the beginning, they positioned her to be the first Native American to win Best (Lead) Actress.
While she is great in the film, and her performance is Oscar-worthy, her role is more supporting than lead, her screen time is less than an hour, and she spends most of the last half of the film bedridden. With the acting categories, studios can submit actors wherever they want, especially if they feel they have a better chance of winning in one category over another, so why did the studio and producers submit Lily Gladstone in the lead actress category when she’s supporting? For the headline. Best Actress looks better than Best Supporting Actress to those who either don’t know better or don’t know the importance of supporting roles in a narrative.
The awards were largely predictable save for one announcement: the Best Actress award going to Emma Stone and not Lily Gladstone. If all you read are the headlines you would think Lily Gladstone was the clear front-runner, and she was…until she wasn’t.
You won’t find many headlines that say this but talk about Emma Stone, whose film Poor Things premiered in Venice on September 1st, being a best actress contender began to rise, and the Oscar race conversation would have been much different if not for the strike. Because of the strike, Searchlight delayed Poor Things’ original September 8th release date to December 8th. I saw it the Thursday before Christmas, and it’s the raunchiest movie I’ve ever seen on screen. It’s wild and outrageous, and I would never recommend it to someone I care about, but it’s also an innovative and creative social exploratory commentary, and I was about 75% in Lily Gladstone’s camp until I saw Emma Stone as Bella Baxter.
Which performance you think is better is a matter of preference. Lily Gladstone gives a natural, understated, and emotional performance. It’s the perfect supporting performance because her humanity makes Leonardo Dicaprio’s character that much more complicated. Emma Stone is flashy in comparison, but she gives a transformative, full-body, head-to-toe performance. Hers is a lead performance. She is the movie and carries the cast like they’re weightless. Their performances are dependent on her ability to portray the full spectrum of human development…and she did it.
Headlines would have you believe Lily Gladstone was the clear frontrunner and favorite to win and that she was sweeping awards season, but that’s not true. Critics associations across the country were split between Emma and Lily and that split continued through to the major awards. Both Emma and Lily were able to win Golden Globes due to the split structure of the categories. Emma won the Critics Choice Award and the BAFTA, for which Lily wasn’t nominated, and Lily won the SAG Award. It was always neck and neck, but Emma Stone ultimately won the season.
The Academy tried to force a change with their representation and inclusion standards, but voters ultimately decided those standards didn’t matter. It’s hard to ignore a performance like Emma Stone’s, even when you have outside voices telling you to put diversity first, and never mind the international members of the Academy who don’t give a brown rat’s ass about America’s obsession with diversity. While the world won’t get the coveted “First Native American to win Best Actress” headline they’ve been salivating for, Lily Gladstone gets the chance to try again.
Frankly, I’m glad Lily Gladstone didn’t win, and not because Emma Stone was my pick. She’s an incredible talent who is already booked and busy and hopefully her next go-round at the Oscars she’ll be celebrated for her work and not her skin color. What an insult to her to clap her on the back because she’s native instead of screaming, “BRAVA!” for a job well done.
All well said. the difficulty of the role must be weighed. My vote was for Annette Bening for this very reason. Didn’t see Poor Things because of the raunch factor, too much for me, but sounds like the role would have rung anyone out; thus the award well deserved. KotFM ugh tedious, and yes she should have been nominated for nothing more than supporting actress. You are always spot on.