Moreover, she achieved all this without the benefit of the kind of show-stopping speeches that often win her Best Actress awards. The psychological thriller Anatomy of a Fall sees Sandra Hüller's long-running character exposed to a harrowing diagnosis of her husband's insecurities, competitiveness and resentment. Please witness it. Or “Nyad,” where Annette Bening rarely misses an opportunity to riff on long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad’s “never give up” mantra. Carey Mulligan gave not one, but two dazzling monologues in “Maestro.” In it, Felicia Bernstein, whom she plays, first berates her husband Leonard about his ego and her selfishness, and then, while having lunch with her husband, criticizes her own acknowledged her role as an enabler. her sister (Sarah Silverman);
Interestingly, Stone and Gladstone, both of this year's Best Actress nominees, didn't give the big, flashy monologues that usually draw attention to the awards. Her performance of Stone was remarkable for her intense physicality, her intellectual acuity, her volatile changeability, and her unbridled appetite. Gladstone, who played Molly Burkhart, a sacrificial Osage tribe member in Killers of the Flower Moon, was the epitome of cautious, morally charged silence. In a year when there was no shortage of women boldly speaking their minds on screen, her accomplishments in Gladstone were a testament to her inner self, even if her silence spoke volumes. It was up to her to keep the quiet part of her. They were both unforgettable, one going big and the other going small.
The same dynamic played out in the Best Supporting Actress race. Her nominee America Ferrera, who portrayed the punishing double-bind of modern women in her own role in Barbie, gave her most famous film speech of 2023, but won her award. The recipient of the award was Da'Vine Joy Randolph. Oscar returned home not for the words she spoke in The Holdovers, but for the small, exquisitely observed moments she brought to life as her lonely, grieving mother. It was for accumulation.
The strength of this year's actress nominations reflected an unusually strong year for women in film. Not only did Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie make the year's biggest movie with Barbie, they also made its closest box office rival, Oppenheimer.Biggest winner of the night Much of the film's success, which won seven awards, is due to “bad guy producer” Emma Thomas (as described by the film's Oscar-winning editor Jennifer Lane) and NBCUniversal chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley. Thanks to her, she committed the studio's resources to a risky proposition. She thought a demanding, dialogue-heavy historical drama about a nuclear physicist might please audiences.
Even the winner of the Best Song award had one of the night's most powerful moments, with Billie Eilish's trembling, absolutely nail-biting performance of Barbie's “What Was I Made For?” When he performed the song, he silently addressed the controversy.
This kind of split-screen effect, a deep-seated anger conveyed in whispers rather than screams, is the pop culture equivalent of the throng of white-suited Democratic women who attended President Biden's State of the Union address last week. It was an impressive demonstration. It was a collective resolve, until we were reminded of a broader picture of regression and outright hostility.
That political reality turns out to be just as stark within Hollywood itself. The women may have been triumphant on screen, but things weren't going so well behind the scenes.Film industry researchers Stacey L. Smith and Martha Rosen talk They recently released their annual survey on women in film, and the statistics were dire. Smith found that only 12% of the directors of the top 100 films of 2023 were women. When it comes to acting, only 30 of the top 100 movies starred or co-starred with women, the same percentage as in 2010. Looking at the top 250 titles, Lauzen made an equally discouraging discovery. “Seventy-five percent of the highest-grossing films employed 10 or more men as directors, screenwriters, producers, executive producers, editors, and cinematographers,” she wrote in her annual report, “The Celluloid Ceiling.” As they write, “only 4% employ 10 or more women.”
Sunday's Oscars reflected the industry's small steps toward progress, with women and people of color winning in the acting and screenplay categories, as well as the editing, costume design, hair and makeup, and production design categories. But I was represented.
And yet, as Stone took home her Oscar, the distance between her character's freeing possibilities and the constraints that still plague real-life women could not be more dramatic. . The big takeaway seems to be that Hollywood loves liberated women. As long as that freedom is packaged as a whimsical fairy tale filled with sex and a seductive steampunk aesthetic.
Although Gladstone didn't win the award, she was the first nominee in the Native American category, and her accomplishments include stories that chronically satirize, demonize, and humiliate Native Americans. She will rightly be hailed as a symbol of how far she has come in a media built on. It should also serve as a rebuke to the industry that made her accomplishment so historic in the first place.
When it comes to upending the social order, real empowerment is neither sexy nor easy. Even the best speech, whether it comes from a screen, from within, or from a podium, is no substitute for lasting and far more difficult change.