Correcting Oscar 2015

[Big Magilla]

Maybe it was Vikander they nominated in lieu of Rampling. She had the win in the bag for Ex Machina in support. The double nomination was unnecessary.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
I don't think anyone thought she would win, but I thought it more surprising that she wasn't nominated for a BAFTA than that she was nominated for an Oscar. She was nominated for a London critics' award as well as numerous U.S. critics' awards as well as the Broadcast Film Critics. She won the Boston critics' award.

Before I continued, I wanted to gauge out how many acting nominees we've seen since 2010 who received a nomination without a Globe, BAFTA, or SAG nomination and I was a little surprised at what a semi-regular occurrence it is. There are 12 total: von Sydow, Hill (Wolf of Wall Street), Cooper (American Sniper), Cotillard, Rampling, Harding, Shannon, Aparicio, de Tavirna, Stanfield, Cruz, and Dench (Belfast).

That said, eight of them are from Best Picture nominees: von Sydow, Hill, Cooper, Harding, Aparicio, de Tavirna, Stanfield, and Dench. Only one of the remainder was not from a Best Picture, but was from a film with an additional corresponding nomination: Penelope Cruz, from Parallel Mothers.

Since 2010, there have only been three performances nominated that didn't get a Globe, a SAG, or a BAFTA and were also sole nominees. Marion Cotillard for Two Days, One Night, Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years, and Michael Shannon for Nocturnal Animals.

I guess it's worth noting that all three of them were nominated for a Critic's Choice award. I don't know how much sway there is in that mention, but suffice to say it's not uncommon for a performance without a Globe, a SAG, or a BAFTA to get a nomination, but it's certainly an uphill battle. Especially in the case of Charlotte Rampling where voters clearly saw 45 Years and nominated it for Best British Film but still overlooked her for Maggie Smith.

[Big Magilla]

Big Magilla wrote
I don't know why you think Rampling would have been snubbed for anyone that year. It was a career nomination for a film in which she was very good.

Charlotte Rampling was great. I would've been fine with her winning. But that doesn't change the fact that she wasn't nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, or a SAG. That puts her chances on the margins. Isabelle Huppert won the Golden Globe and Emmanuel Riva won her BAFTA. There's reason to believe that voters just wouldn't go for it, especially considering that Rampling couldn't manage a BAFTA over Maggie Smith for The Lady in the Van.

I don't think anyone thought she would win, but I thought it more surprising that she wasn't nominated for a BAFTA than that she was nominated for an Oscar. She was nominated for a London critics' award as well as numerous U.S. critics' awards as well as the Broadcast Film Critics. She won the Boston critics' award.

[Sabin]

It’s pretty interesting that so many people think that Rooney Mara had a better chance of being nominated for lead than Alicia Vikander. I would not have guessed that outcome.

[Sabin]

Big Magilla wrote
I don't know why you think Rampling would have been snubbed for anyone that year. It was a career nomination for a film in which she was very good.

Charlotte Rampling was great. I would've been fine with her winning. But that doesn't change the fact that she wasn't nominated for a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, or a SAG. That puts her chances on the margins. Isabelle Huppert won the Golden Globe and Emmanuel Riva won her BAFTA. There's reason to believe that voters just wouldn't go for it, especially considering that Rampling couldn't manage a BAFTA over Maggie Smith for The Lady in the Van.

[Big Magilla]

I don't know why you think Rampling would have been snubbed for anyone that year. It was a career nomination for a film in which she was very good.

[Sabin]

Interesting, so you pretty much have the opposite of take as mine in that you think the Academy would have nominated Mara but not Vikander for lead, but we both agree that had Vikander been elevated to lead she might have won in supporting for Ex Machina. It's certainly possible that both Mara and Vikander could have taken the place of Lawrence and Rampling.

A side point, Carol was the second to last Weinstein Oscar campaign (his last being Lion). I remember reading somewhere that nobody was that pleased that he ended up getting involved with the film although I can't remember the details. Either way, Weinstein couldn't get Carol to connect with voters despite it being seemingly a sure bet on paper. This film came as close as could be to winning the Palme d'Or (apparently, Xavier Dolan was a stubborn holdout until the end). It got more Golden Globe nominations than any other film. It won the NYFCC Award for Best Picture. And it ended up with six nominations, the most for any film since Dreamgirls (and the expansion) to not end up with Best Picture. One could make the argument that Foxcatcher might be the biggest Oscar snub of the decade with five nominations for acting (x2), writing, directing, and makeup but Carol is right up there with nominations for acting (x2), writing, cinematography, costume, and music. Certainly, it was the most acclaimed film. Maybe there were other films that year in competition about women (Brooklyn and Room) that voters connected with more.

[Big Magilla]

Blanchett and Mara were co-leads in Carol and should both have been nominated in the lead category with Blanchett winning in my opinion.
Her screentime may have been slightly less than Mara's but she has the more interesting role. She's something of a chameleon while Mara is the same person all the way through regardless of her various relationships. I think they relegated her to support because Blanchett was/is the bigger star, but Mara should have been nominated in lead over Jennifer Lawrence in the forgettable Joy.

I never did get the acclaim for Vikander's work in The Danish Girl, but if they were going to nominate her for it, it should have been in lead, though I doubt she would have had much a chance there. She should have been nominated and won in support for Ex Machina.

[Sabin]

I thought about including Mark Ruffalo for Spotlight but I didn't think there was a chance he would get a single vote for lead in that film.

No, here we come to one of the prime reasons to have this conversation. 2015 and Rooney Mara and Alicia Vikander. Two cases of category fraud that lead to some very confusing Oscar predictions that night as both performances were cited as leads by more than one group, making entirely uncertain whether either would be nominated at all.

First, the numbers:
-Rooney Mara is in 59.67% of Carol, totaling 1:10:37 running time.
-Alicia Vikander is in 49.88% of The Danish Girl, totaling 59:37 running time.

Who are they supporting?
-Cate Blanchett is in 54.71% of Carol, totaling 1:04:45 running time.
-Eddie Redmayne is in 65.85% of The Danish Girl, totaling 1:18:42 running time.

As we know, Alicia Vikander ended up winning the Academy Award. How big of a role is this compared to other winners? You have to go back to Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon (65.49%) to find, although Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower (46.10%) comes close. Besides O'Neal, only Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker (61.67%) exceeds her total %.

As I mentioned, one of the strange things about these two performances was the willingness of other groups to venture other opinions. The Screen Actor's Guild considered Vikander a supporting actor (as per her studio designation) but the BAFTAs and the Hollywood Foreign Press considered her a lead.

Oddly, Rooney Mara started her awards run as a lead winning the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, but the BAFTAs and SAG considered her supporting. Only the Hollywood Foreign Press considered her a lead.

There's a history of both of these types of roles being designated as supporting. Vikander as the long-sufferer while Mara is the sexual submissive in a gay relationship. Both films are close enough to being two-handers but Carol is far more so than The Danish Girl. Were I to logline both films, I would certainly centralize Eddie Redmayne's character in The Danish Girl but I could just as easily centralize Mara's character as Blanchett's in Carol, or simply frame it as "two women."

I think the reason for Alicia Vikander being elevated to lead more than Rooney Mara has more to do with Vikander than Mara. In every case where Alicia Vikander was elevated to lead, she was also nominated for supporting for Ex Machina. In fact, she won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Ex Machina and not The Danish Girl. So both groups were considering The Danish Girl her lead performance of the year while Ex Machina her supporting performance. Separately, I think the reason why there wasn't much studio conversation about how to organize her placement was because Ex Machina was an A24 film, it was pretty early in A24's run, and nobody really thought it was going to pick up much awards traction anyway. Today, I'd imagine there might be a little more coordination.

The reason for Rooney Mara's placement is simple. The studio didn't have enough faith that voters would nominate both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara for Best Actress, so they nominated her for supporting. But I think they maybe treaded too carefully. First of all, Rooney Mara was already a Best Actress nominee for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so she was already in the club. Second, I could see a world where that kind of campaign pushing both actresses for lead could gain a bit of traction. But because she was the sexual submissive, she was pushed for supporting.

I think both performances should be considered leads. Would either have gotten nominated? Consider the competition. The two most vulnerable performances were Jennifer Lawrence for Joy, a Golden Globe winner for sure but a box office dud that nobody was particularly passionate about and Charlotte Rampling for 45 Years, a performance that won many critic's prizes but failed nominations at SAG, BAFTA, and the Hollywood Foreign Press.

I think Alicia Vikander benefited from being in a worse film that boasted showier moments that could have seen her nominated for Best Actress. I'd like to think that Rooney Mara could do the same but my hunch is that she would fall just short of a nomination to Charlotte Rampling, so for her I vote neither because in no world is she supporting.