Head Scratchers

Kathryn Bigelow (And Many Other Women) Get Oscar Snubs

I’m shocked — Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to ever win an Academy Award for directing, did not get an Oscar nomination yesterday for her film Zero Dark Thirty. The film was nominated for best picture, best actress, and for two editing achievements but Kathryn didn’t make the cut. Of course, had good company in other accomplished women who weren’t nominated for their work in film this year.

Women are completely absent from the  Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Mixing and visual affects categories which is really, for lack of a better word, dumb.

This is not a promising start for 2013. Though Bridesmaids was considered a major breakthrough for women in Hollywood in 2011 and it has been two years since Bigelow won the Best Director Oscar, studios still won’t take big bets on movies directed by women. In the independent film industry, there are more options but it’s a smaller market. Sarah Polley, director of Take This Waltz, said even in the independent film world, women get pigeonholed into directing women-centered dramas. “Women aren’t really trusted with anything else right now,” Polley said. “I know female filmmakers who would love to make an action film or a horror film or some kind of thriller and they just don’t get the financing for those kinds of movies. So I think that women aren’t necessarily trusted with [that] subject matter.”

Polley said Kathryn might be considered an exception because she directs action films, but it still didn’t get her an Oscar nod this year. Also, her film has sparked a friggin’ investigation into the CIA because the government believes she may have had too much access to agency information. She deserves a nomination for having to just deal with that.

It’s not all gloom and doom, though – for women in front of the camera, it is still an exciting Oscar year. In addition to much-talked about performances by Anne Hathaway in Les Mis and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) just became the oldest nominee ever, and 9-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) is the youngest woman to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar ever. If she wins, she will be the youngest winner ever.

TAGS: kathryn bigelow | Movies

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