Time and time again, the Academy has recognized Greta Gerwig’s films, but what about Gerwig herself? The Barbie director has yet again received nominations for her writing (alongside Noah Baumbach), and the movie was nominated for Best Picture, but where was Gerwig’s nomination for Best Director?
The 2024 Oscar nominations dropped on the morning of January 23 and left some big names out. Why? No one knows. But the category with a lot of question marks around it is Best Director. It truly is a mess of a category, excluding two female directors who have their films up for Best Picture. Limiting it to five directors has never particularly made sense to me when all those Best Pictures would have a hard time getting there without directors, but hey, I’m not the Academy.
Still, nominating only one female director when both Gerwig and Past Lives director Celine Song were nominated for their writing, as well as for their films overall, is frustrating. Justine Triet more than deserves her nomination for Anatomy of a Fall, but that doesn’t mean only one woman should take a spot on the nomination list. On top of that, this is becoming a trend with the Academy and Gerwig’s work.
With the exception of her film Lady Bird (2017), Gerwig has not received a Best Director nomination for any of her movies that were nominated otherwise. Barbie marks the second time that Gerwig was nominated for her writing and Best Picture while she was left out of the directing category. Why? Eliminating Nights and Weekends from the conversation (because it did not receive any Academy Award nominations), all of Gerwig’s other work have been Best Picture nominees. So the fact that she only has one Best Director nomination under her belt is absurd.
She’s not the only director this has happened to, but it is becoming increasingly common for Gerwig. Famously, Christopher Nolan has been nominated for Best Director one time for Dunkirk prior to his nomination for Oppenheimer. All that being said, Gerwig continually not getting a Best Director nomination is beyond disappointing.
Little Women and Barbie both deserved the nom
While Lady Bird was an incredibly personal film from Gerwig (and her direction of it was stunning), I do think that both Little Women and Barbie being left out of the Best Director conversation is, quite frankly, asinine. For me, there is no movie in recent years that I find as comforting as I do the 2019 Little Women. Gerwig’s almost soft direction of these women, focusing their chaotic yet intoxicating energy on their love for each other, made it my favorite of the adaptations.
Her use of time, splitting the story between the latter half of the March sisters’ lives and their upbringing, makes moments like Jo (Saoirse Ronan) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) sitting on the beach together so devastating.
That paired with the vibrancy and love poured into Barbie shows not only Gerwig’s skill as a director but the balance she strikes within her own writing.
It is just frankly a trend with the Academy that I do not understand. How can voters look at a movie and deem it worthy of a Best Picture nomination but continue to stiff the directors who brought it to life? Make it make sense!
(featured image: A24/Warner Bros./Sony Pictures Releasing)
