Selma - The Academy Fails

It wasn't a total failure. The nomination for Best Picture is reasonable, and for Best Original Song.

"Glory" is a good song in its own right, but the way it blends elements of spirituals and hip hop together - which have been about comfort and self-expression but have also been an important part of resistance - is a most appropriate representation of this movie that is both historic and timely. It deserves praise and it deserves the nomination.

That being said, there are three glaring omissions.

Costume Design - Ruth E. Carter

The wardrobe represented the era well and looked fabulous. I know Selma wasn't the only period piece. I understand the nominations for The Grand Budapest Hotel and Mr. Turner, and for Anna B. Sheppard to make the title character's horns work in Maleficent gets her in there fairly. Inherent Vice doesn't have bad costumes, but I think Selma has better, and honestly the costumes for Into the Woods were not that special. There was nothing wrong with them, but Selma did better.

Best Actor - David Oyelowo

This is sort of a tricky one. The academy tends to recognize portrayals of real people, and four of the five nominees are for that - everyone but Michael Keaton in Birdman. All are apparently good performances. People who know say that Turing was not at all the way Cumberbatch portrayed him, but then if that was the script he was given and he did a good job with it, it's more like a regular fiction performance, I guess.

Regardless, Oyelowo did an amazing job with King. There wasn't really a physical resemblance between them, but the voice and mannerisms and the feeling was there, and that is not an easy role to pull off. Maybe it was close, and he nearly made it in, and with the competition it's not as glaring as the omission for Costume Design, but still, he should have been in there.

Best Director - Ava DuVernay

You knew this was coming.

Linklater and Iñárritu were going to be in there no matter what, I get that, but there was plenty of room for DuVernay in there, and she should have been in there.

I'm going to give my reasons for this, and some of these may be reasonably attributable to Paul Webb's screenplay, but my understanding is that the screenplay started in a very different form, and she spearheaded those changes, so I feel comfortable including them here.

One reason is the handling of the church bombing. It is a hard thing to see. It should be felt, but it is important to not be so overwhelming that the viewer can't get back into the film. I wrote Monday about how the scene fits into the scenes before, and that it is structured correctly; that could easily be Webb. In terms of deciding how to show it, that there will be the blast from the side, and that it is almost abstract, and then you are looking at the wreckage, and you see the dresses but not body parts, and it kind of looks like an oil painting. It is horrible but it is bearable, and that is exactly what it needs to be.

Another important scene is an informal meeting where the organizers are discussing the obstacles to voting, and it takes the form of a brainstorming session for what needs to be included in the Voting Rights Act. We have seen some of the obstacles in place when Oprah Winfrey's character, Annie Lee Cooper, tries to vote, but this scene needs to not only reinforce it, but fill in the blanks. That could easily be boring, but the way it is done makes sense, it gives you an idea of how to attack a problem, and there is a liveliness to it that comes from smart, determined people who like each other, but are passionate and can disagree, discussing it. Again, that could be at least partly Webb in terms of the writing, but for capturing the energy the actors and directors get at least some of the credit.

This leads to another point, in that DuVernay got some really good performances out of the actors. There were a lot of good performances, but I was especially impressed by Giovanni Ribisi and Cuba Gooding Jr, who often play more comic roles. DuVernay let them be human and dignified, and they could do it, but she let them. I respect that.

That is also giving credit to Aisha Coley's casting, and I will give credit to Bradford Young's cinematography too. The film looked great. Colors and lighting presented the images powerfully, the way they deserved. Film is all about the collaboration. Putting all of that together, the guiding hand over it all is Ava DuVernay, and for the movie to succeed on so many levels in so many ways is a huge achievement.

I have seen controversies over Best Picture nods not coming with Best Director nods more than once, and it isn't something I worry about a lot, but this one does seem glaring. I've seen the "brutally honest" anonymous explanation, but she also said there was no art (which was blatantly false) and criticized the politics while putting aside the politics of American Sniper in the same breath.

That source also had a strange fixation with Patricia Arquette's aging. Mainly that reminds me that you need to be honest with yourself before you can be honest with anyone else.

For me, the movie had a lot of images of old white men that were dinosaurs, and would have looked a lot like the people who make Best Director nominations. Maybe they didn't like that portrayal, but that's a lot of what makes them dinosaurs. The sooner their perceived relevance decreases to match their actual usefulness, the better.