2020 Oscar Nominations: Indie Movies, Diverse Performers Mostly Absent

A lot about this year’s Oscar nominees, which were announced Monday morning, was in keeping with what many predicted would emerge from a chaotically short, but exciting awards season.

Best Picture nominations went to Ford v Ferrari (Fox), The Irishman (Netflix), Jojo Rabbit (Fox Searchlight), Joker (Warner Bros.), Little Women (Sony), Marriage Story (Netflix), 1917 (Universal), Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (Sony), and Parasite (Neon).

None of those was a surprise.

Netflix’s contenders had dominated the conversation since early fall festival premieres. Tarantino’s Hollywood epic had been a critical darling from the moment its first frame debuted at Cannes. Little Women was a beloved addition to the mix starting at its first-ever FYC event last October. Joker racked up an 11 total nominations and is still going strong at the box office after a haul of $1 billion. Sam Mendes’s war saga 1917 exploded into the race in late 2019 and has earned most major wins and nominations since. Searchlight’s Jojo picked up steam of late as director Taika Waititi earned a DGA nomination. And the year’s most exciting potential spoiler, Korean auteur Bong Joon Ho, has seen his satire-thriller Parasite become the sixth-ever International Feature—previously known as Foreign Film—nominee to also earn a Best Picture nomination. (He also nabbed an Original Screenplay nom as well.)

Outside of a bummer snub for Lionsgate’s Bombshell, which did earn acting nominations for Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie, not a lot about the Best Pic pool offered an opportunity for shock.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t results over which fans and insiders may choose to grouse.

Once again, women were shut out of the directing category, as many had hoped to see Little Women’s Greta Gerwig in the mix, though she was honored with a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. But realistically, no other women directors had enough momentum to crack this year’s boys’ club nominees: Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Bong Joon Ho, Sam Mendes, and Todd Phillips.

Among the season’s other female contenders at large—Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers), Alma Har’el (Honey Boy), Lulu Wang (The Farewell) and Kasi Lemmons (Harriet)—ultimately only Gerwig had enough buzz to even just hope for Best Director kudos.

Har’el and Wang are interesting omissions as they also represent the overall snubbing of smaller art films in this year’s Oscar pool. Among those most egregiously absent—based on early predictions and reviews—are A24’s Uncut Gems and star Adam Sandler, The Lighthouse and costar Willem Dafoe (though the film did earn a cinematography nom), The Farewell, and Amazon’s Honey Boy, which had generated impressive grassroots buzz last fall for both Har’el and star/writer Shia LaBeouf.

On the snubbing front, some may also see Hustlers costar Jennifer Lopez as being overlooked, though now-frontrunner Laura Dern (Marriage Story) has dominated that race so intensely as of late, it likely won’t matter now against whom she’s competing.

And outside of Harriet Lead-Actress nominee Cynthia Erivo, a slew of other performers of color who many felt were deserving were also ignored: Dolemite is my Name’s Eddie Murphy, Us actress Lupita Nyong’o, Just Mercy’s Jamie Foxx, Waves’ Sterling K. Brown, and The Farewell’s Awkwafina (who just won the Globe), to name a few. By comparison, the 2019 Oscar-winners pool offered a decidedly diverse snapshot of talent as Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Rami Malek, If Beale Street Could Talk‘s Regina King, and Green Book‘s Mahershala Ali, three actors of color, dominated last year’s acting races.

As the Academy braces for the inevitable criticism to follow for some of the above results between now and the Feb. 9 telecast, others will likely choose to celebrate this year’s Best Picture nominee pool as one of the strongest—and in the case of Joker, Ford v. Ferrari, Once Upon a Time… and now 1917, best-performing—groups of movies in years.

And for Parasite fans, it’s the chance to hope for what could become the most thrilling, history-making Best Picture spoiler of all time.