ND: America Ferrera’s entire monologue in Barbie, whether you loved it or not, is about this. How much more does Greta have to do? Lady Bird, she gets nominated for Best Director, which, I think is a phenomenal film and very well-done across the board. With Little Women, she takes a story that everybody knows and whenever I rewatch it, I’m just so impressed with how she was able to lay it out. Some of the shot structure, like the shot-for-shot recreations of, SPOILER, Beth’s death in both the past and the present, that was incredible to me. And then that still didn’t warrant a nomination. To your point, now Greta goes and does Barbie, which is now different from what she’s done because it’s a more “commercial” movie. Her and Christopher Nolan brought people back to the theaters for „Barbenheimer.“ Christopher totally deserved his nomination, but how do you only have one-half of that big moment in this category?
It’s not my favorite Greta Gerwig script. Direction-wise, she subtly made Barbie as an ode to old Hollywood movies, with references to The Wizard of Oz, Singin‘ in the Rain, and more. The way her mind worked to pull it together made it very much a directing movie for her, in my opinion.
NJ: It’s interesting that you bring up the references within Barbie to other movies, because usually industry stuff is catnip to the Oscars. I wonder if, because it’s packaged in a way that’s very fun, accessible, and doesn’t take itself too seriously, it clashes with other things we have historically seen rewarded at the Oscars.
I can sense people are gonna say, Well, who do you think SHOULD’NT have been nominated for Best Director? For me, the bigger point is emphasizing that it’s okay to see Ryan Gosling get more individual nominations than Greta Gerwig and think, this doesn’t leave a great taste in my mouth.
