The Oscar nominations were announced this morning. There will be plenty of analysis regarding good surprises and bad surprises, and I may dip my toes in later today. But the most egregious omission is the sadly not-entirely-surprising absence of Selma’s Ava DuVernay from the five contenders nominated for Best Director. This is not a place to complain about the five nominees who did make the cut, although anyone who knows me well enough knows which one or ones I could have swapped in and out. To the extent that one can be “angry” about a certain filmmaker not being nominated for a major award that honors the best in filmmaking, I am angry. I am angry because she deserved a nomination. I am angry because if the legacy of DuVernay’s Selma becomes shaped by its Oscar-season controversy, I fear that it will affect the artistic opportunities afforded to its African-American female director in a manner different than if Selma would have come under fire under the directorial lens of a white male filmmaker.
Ms. DuVernay directed one of the very best films of the year and has been lauded and celebrated accordingly for the last two months and yet she was shoved aside for at least a few contenders who were nowhere near as celebrated. There is a real chance that this terrific and towering achievement that highlights the profoundly heroic and blood-stained work of those who worked with and for Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement will be forever defined by the notion that it wasn't nice enough to a powerful white guy in a supporting role. Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty allowed itself to be defined by those sniping from the sidelines (including many outside the filmmaking and critical community) that the film somehow endorsed and glamorized torture because it didn't have characters monologue at length about the immorality and impracticality of torture. Despite the film’s rave reviews and rock-solid box office ($132 million on a $40m budget), the narrative around Bigelow’s masterpiece, for which she too was denied a Best Director nomination, has become “that torture movie.” Zero Dark Thirty, an overwhelming indictment of our entire post-9/11 mindset wrapped up in the story of one of the War on Terror’s alleged successes, was tainted along with its female filmmaker, who currently has no projects on tap.
Selma is not the first “based on a true story” picture that has come under fire for historical inaccuracies. But it is the rare black-centric historical drama told explicitly from the point of view of its black protagonists. So it is both ironic and infuriating that it has now been defamed because of the (I would argue false) notion that it isn't nice enough to a really powerful white guy who plays a key supporting role. More importantly, it is a rare big movie, even if it was merely a $20 million independently financed production, which comes from the lens of a female African-American filmmaker. We are just now getting to a point where Warner Bros./
I have no idea what offers (if any) have been afforded to Ms. DuVernay in the aftermath of Selma’s initial rave reviews and Oscar-happy media tour. But she is, to put it bluntly, by virtue of her race and her gender, at a greater disadvantage in terms of what opportunities are afforded to her in a still explicitly white/male-centric Hollywood. Mortem Tydlum will face no penalty for the borderline libelous (but unquestionably entertaining and engaging) The Imitation Game when it comes time for him to pick his next project. Clint Eastwood may have sanded off the rough edges off of American Sniper’s protagonist, but he will still get to do what he wants to do next time out. Bennett Miller will face no qualms getting a directing job despite the various "we're pretending our protagonists are secretly gay for drama" fabrications in
WATCH: Common Talks About Working On 'Selma'
But Ms. DuVernay used Paramount's (
That Ms. DuVernay didn't get a Best Director Oscar nomination doesn't make Selma any less of a great film. But that she was not among the final five announced this morning points to the notion that the smear campaign worked as intended. It’s a sad reflection of a year when a number of good, great, and lousy fictionalized true-life biopics about allegedly great or somewhat interesting white men are well-represented while one of the very best-reviewed movies of the year went with hardly a single relevant nomination, aside from getting into the expanded Best Picture field, arguably on account of controversy over its accuracy. Considering the obstacles that Ms. DuVernay faces in terms of just steady employment by virtue of her gender and skin color, the risk of Selma being defined not by its once-unquestionable quality as a motion picture but rather by the context of its back-and-forth bantering over its alleged historical embellishments is more than just trivial.
I’m angry because one of the best films of the year has been libeled and that said libel apparently worked. I hope I’m wrong about both Selma’s cinematic legacy and about DuVernay’s career prospects. Maybe she will get a call from Marvel tomorrow to helm a Phase Three picture as Luke Y. Thompson brilliantly advocated on Monday. Maybe she will quickly make a deal to do whatever it is she wants to do with little fuss and little melodrama merely based on the obvious filmmaking talent than Selma displays. But her omission from the five Best Director candidates this year makes that possibility that much less likely in a way that it wouldn’t have for a Selma directed by (for example) Paul Greengrass. Greengrass, who originally intended to direct Memphis based on an earlier portion of King's life, would have emerged unscathed. I can only hope Ava DuVernay does. And that’s why it matters. And that’s why I’m angry.
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