First: a great deal of joy in Ireland for its tremendous successes on this year’s Academy Award nomination list. Martin McDonagh’s tragicomedy The Banshees of Inisherin, about two men falling out in a remote island community at the time of the civil war, has a host of nominations: including best picture with McDonagh getting best director and best screenplay nods, best actor for Colin Farrell, best supporting actor(s) for Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan and best supporting actress, for Kerry Condon. In addition to which, Paul Mescal gets a best actor nomination for his performance in Charlotte Wells’s beautiful father-daughter drama Aftersun; Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl is nominated for best international feature and Tom Berkeley and Ross White’s An Irish Goodbye is nominated for best short.
Otherwise, there is some unease at the gravitational pull towards the mainstream: an all-male directing list (Charlotte Wells or Marie Kreutzer could have got in there) and Danielle Deadwyler’s excellent performance in Till is ignored in the best actress list. There has been some haughty online dismissal of Ana de Armas’s nomination for her performance as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s condescending psychodrama Blonde (although the problem is surely with the film rather than De Armas), and a mixed response on social media for the estimable Andrea Riseborough’s best actress nomination for the tough indie drama To Leslie, largely due to a wary response to a celebrity-driven viral campaign. But the always excellent Riseborough certainly shakes things up.
