‘Emilia Perez’ Leads With 13 Oscar Nominations

Image Courtesy of LA Times

By Luis Zonenberg

As we transition from the holidays, I often look back to those classic Peanut specials and how Lucy so often pulls that football from Charlie Brown’s feet. No matter how many times we watch them, we know it’s coming no matter how much we want it to. The same can probably be said for Oscars when they announce the nominees, and this year is no different.

The highlight was Jacque Audiard’s Netflix film, Emilia Perez leading with 13 nominations, followed by Wicked and the Brutalist with 10 each. While it was never in doubt the latter two would gather a good number of nominations, the wide number Emilia Perez has gathered baffles many, especially when we realize Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer biopic received just as much. The only key difference between the two might be the latter was very well received with audiences while the former was not.

Despite this, Emilia Perez has been a frontrunning contender across this Award season, even winning four of its ten nominations at the Golden Globes earlier this year. The movie even made headlines with its lead star, Karla Sofía Gascón, being the first openly transgender performer to receive an acting nomination at the Oscars this year. That alone is groundbreaking achievement, but it does beg the question of how much praise this film has received when compared to its competitors.

This is where we analyze those snubbed this year, with the biggest loss being Denis Villeneuve not receiving a Best Director nomination for Dune: Part Two. Despite the film being a massive success and gaining much more positive reception when compared to its predecessor, it only received 5 Oscar nominations when compared to its predecessor’s impressive 10 nominations.

Another huge surprise was Hugh Grant not receiving a nomination for his charmingly conniving performance in Heretic. His performance was not only a highlight of that film, but one that continuously received acclaim and should’ve been recognized during Award season. Despite him being nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes, he was strangely enough not recognized here.

With all this in mind though, there were other surprises I did not take into consideration. The biggest one would be Nosferatu’s stunning 4 Oscar nominations, all for technical awards. Following tout suite would be Alien: Romulus being nominated for Best VFX as well, which is very peculiar considering that Award shows are very reluctant to include horror flicks like these.

When looking at this year’s nominees for Best Picture, it is baffling how Emilia Perez was the worst received of the bunch and yet it garnered the most nominations out of all its competitors. Part of me feels this is to play with audience expectations, but another part of me knows it’s part of a repeated cycle we’ve seen time and time again. The loss for Dune: Part Two here can be easily compared to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Despite both being the highlighted film of their respective years, both only received 5 nominations and were snubbed for Best Director as well.
This is definitely nothing new when it comes to the Oscars and it proves to me that it will certainly be repeated in the future. There were certainly more surprises this year than most would have expected, but that comes with the territory here. Even if Emilia Perez wins most of its nominations, I doubt it will affect much as audiences have already grown accustomed to what they like despite the acclaim or distaste for them.