OVP: Best Makeup (2023)
The Nominees Were...
Karen Hartley Thomas, Suzi Battersby, & Ashra Kelly-Blue, Golda
Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou, & Lori McCoy-Bell, Maestro
Luisa Abel, Oppenheimer
Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier, & Josh Weston, Poor Things
Ana Lopez-Puigcerver, David Marti, & Montse Ribe, Society of the Snow
My Thoughts: There was once a time when the Makeup category was quite unpredictable, and it would stand out because Oscar would get weird with it. You'd see random films you've never heard of or box office bombs or movies that are at like 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. But in recent years, this category has lost a good chunk of its personality, minus the craziness going along with the "everything must be one of the ten Best Picture nominees," and this category isn't an exception. There are three Best Picture's here, and while there could've been more (we'll get there), the remaining two include an International Feature film, so there's really only one reminder of how crazy this category can get.
This is the first, last, and only nomination we'll get to for Golda in our 2023 OVP. This is the sort of "transform a movie star" work that they tend to love in this category, and given how little personality the Oscars allow the tech categories anymore, I really wish I liked it, but I don't. The only piece here that's worth any value is Helen Mirren as the former Prime Minister of Israel, and even that work feels rubbery. The nomination is for the whole film, not just one set-piece, and if it is for that set-piece (here, it clearly is) it shouldn't look like latex.
We ended up having two non-Jewish actors playing famous Jewish figures in 2023 (make of that what you will), but only one stirred up a lot of controversy around the makeup. I don't mind biopics that don't mirror real life (you need to bend to make it an interesting movie), but I will say that giving Leonard Bernstein a significantly larger nose than he had in real life in Maestro to accentuate his appearance feels like a choice, and a suspect one. The more impressive old-age makeup, quite honestly, was what they did to Carey Mulligan in middle-age, with strained lines in her makeup to make her look older than she is, but that's not why this got a nomination-it was Cooper's nose, which isn't all that remarkable.
I was much more taken with the consistent makeup work in Society of the Snow. Here we have makeup throughout, even if it's just the same effect, but I do feel like we got a sense of the degree of frostbite these men & women endured as they tried to live in the bitter cold of the Andes. The makeup is subtler, and it grows over time so it feels like more of a consistent tracking achievement the further we get in, measuring the despair from the looks of the actors since the actual environment is meant to be an unyielding constant.
Poor Things is perhaps the film with the "most" makeup in its story. The headline is Willem Dafoe's Dr. Frankenstein-adjacent work, but we also see the growth of the makeup in Emma Stone and Kathryn Hunter's characters as well. I think this is also very well-done. I do think that some of the gross-out choices feel more there to shock the audience (particularly those that are associated with blood or body humor), but Dafoe looks incredible here, totally believable makeup while also feeling quite natural to the picture.
Our final nomination is the first of the mountain of citations won by Oppenheimer, our Best Picture winner for this season (and the leading nominated film). I'm in the middle on this particular aspect of Oppenheimer. Cillian Murphy & Emily Blunt are achieving this nomination based on their old age makeup which, I'll be real, isn't that good, especially Blunt's (Blunt's forehead does not look like the age of a woman who hasn't had access to Botox, I'm sorry). But I do like some of the looks when they're younger. This category, it has to be remembered, is not just about transformations-it's okay to make pretty people look pretty. The severe red lipstick of Blunt during her testimony, Benny Safdie's caked-on sunscreen...these are solid touches by the makeup department. They aren't why it got this nomination, but they're under the technical umbrella of why it's nominated so they get it some points.
Other Precursor Contenders: BAFTA went with Poor Things as its winner, besting Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Napoleon, and Oppenheimer. The Saturn Awards covered multiple years due to some late-breaking Covid issues where they had a longer eligibility window than usual, but they did largely stick to 2023 films. The Covenant won (the Saturn Awards have weirdly flexible eligibility in terms of what's allowed to be nominated, but their winners tend to favor horror or fantasy), beating Evil Dead Rise, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Oppenheimer, Renfield, and the 2022 release Prey. The shortlisted contenders here were Beau is Afraid, Ferrari, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and Napoleon, so one of them was in sixth place. At the time I only predicted incorrectly that Oppenheimer would miss in favor of Flower Moon, and so that's my guess at sixth, though honestly Napoleon isn't a crazy guess either given it did pretty well with the tech categories.
Films I Would Have Nominated: Despite a couple of good nominees, I'm totally upending this when we get to the My Ballot. Of the five I'll nominate the one that feels the most Oscar-y is Nyad, which is really fascinating prosthetic work on Annette Bening as she weathers literal days in the salt water, and the swelling and sunburn that gets on her face is so realistic (and hard to watch). It's the Best Actress nominee that deserved inclusion.
Oscar’s Choice: The winner was Poor Things, probably over Maestro and Oppenheimer. This was the best/only chance Maestro had to win, and given the "spread the wealth" of the past few years, I'm kind of surprised it didn't, and its loss a testament to Poor Things doing quite well in the tech categories.
My Choice: I'm going to start out properly contrarian in 2023 (this will not be the first time) and pick Society of the Snow, a movie I liked much less than Poor Things (my silver), but one that had the better makeup work so I need to give credit in the category itself. Behind them I'd do Oppenheimer, Maestro, and then Golda.
And those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you want to enter the laboratory with Willem Dafoe or go hiking the Andes with me (scratch that-let's all just put sunscreen on Benny Safdie instead)? Why do you think that clear contenders Guardians 3 and Nyad couldn't even make the shortlist? And was it Napoleon or Killers of the Flower Moon that just missed here? Share your thoughts below!
2 comments:
I think the industry backlash (undeserved as I thought it was) hurt Maestro here, and Poor Things was the lucky recipient that won instead. I also think that any Academy member who was upset that Willem Dafoe's sympathetic portrayal of the doctor didn't get nominated for an acting award probably made up for it in this category.
That's a good call-this was a proxy way to honor Dafoe. I also just think that there's almost always a film that the Academy gets a crush on in the tech categories, even if it's not winning Best Picture. This year it was clearly Poor Things.
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