It is known to any frequent moviegoer that Florence Pugh is the ‘next big thing’, or perhaps she already is. The actress has been receiving huge praise since her lead role in William Oldroyd’s 2016 film Lady Macbeth. Pugh has now received an Academy Award nomination and yet it is for the wrong performance. This year’s awards nominations have been beyond predictable and slightly dull. Much has been written about the lack of diversity, both in terms of race and gender. But genre is another area where the Academy refuses to budge. Ari Aster’s Midsommar with Pugh’s exceptional central performance was the perfect film for the Academy to stop being so distanced and stodgy and instead allow a little bit of dynamism in their nominations.
Pugh has demonstrated a knack for powerful and memorable performances since Carol Morley’s 2014 film The Falling. Although she does not get the screen time of her co-star Maisie Williams, she still shines with a certain youthful charisma, perfectly capturing the rebellious spirit of a teenage girl in the late ‘60s, striving to get out from under the stern authority of her strict Catholic girls’ school. This performance was followed by the aforementioned Lady Macbeth, in which we watch as Pugh goes from timid, to passionate, to outright cold and controlled. Pugh’s performance papers over the weaker parts of the film, the long takes of the camera rarely leaving her unseen. We watch as she descends to hideous acts and Pugh perfectly delivers a measured performance that at first brings empathy from the audience and then elicits horror. Lady Macbeth particularly marked her out as a star in the making, an actress with talent the equal of other lauded actresses of her generation, such as her Little Women co-star Saoirse Ronan.
This led to her three performances in 2019 films that have proven to be her best yet. Playing real-life wrestler Paige in Fighting with My Family Pugh brings an energy and a confidence in the ring, and a vulnerability outside of it. It is this central performance that makes this film as surprisingly good as it is. At the end of 2019 we got to see Pugh bring life to Amy March in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, a performance that has seen her garner an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But these two films sandwiched a performance that should have seen Pugh get nominated for Best Actress and it is to the Academy’s shame that she has not been.
Ari Aster’s beautifully shot Midsommar has been entirely ignored by the horror-phobic Academy. The film is a brilliant exploration of belonging and family with an excellently devised arc for the main character Dani Ardor, played by Pugh. This character goes from an emptiness and a loneliness at the beginning of the film, in a way a weak character overcome by a family tragedy and desperately clinging to her boyfriend whose affection for her is more than questionable, to a forceful character that finds both her place in the world, finds her family and also finds her own power. Pugh plays this perfectly, her harried look at the beginning of the film giving way to a truly malevolent grin in the film’s closing shot. There are few superlatives that accurately sum up both this performance and the film as a whole. It was the best cinematic experience I had all year and is in some ways even better upon second viewing. Not only should Pugh have been nominated for Best Actress, but the film also should have been nominated for Best Picture, Director, Cinematography and Editing. It is an example of what horror cinema can be, truly psychological and not just ‘jump-scares’.
The Academy needs to change sooner rather than later if they want to remain relevant. They can no longer reject films based on the fact that they are genre films. The Academy only seems to nominate ‘dramas’, a stupid genre categorisation that means absolutely nothing. In a sense, the Oscars have their own genre of films, cynically referred to as ‘Oscar bait’ movies. The fact that there is a certain type of movie, a certain cinematic formula that people know the Academy likes says it all. Some of these films are often excellent and worthy nominees and winners, but some genre diversity is needed, now more than ever. The Academy may not have quite the pretentious aversion to Netflix films that Cannes does, but it is just as out of touch and just as in need of change. We can only see what this next decade will bring.
CineLiterate 