16 Great Recent Movies The Oscars Outrageously Snubbed
2. Silence
Nominated For:
Best Cinematography. Sorry, that's all folks.
Martin Scorsese's epic passion project has the DNA of an Oscar smash: historical setting, important themes, a big director etc. Inexplicably, it was nearly entirely snubbed. Forget the Best Picture gaffe, this was the biggest mistake of the 89th Academy Awards.
It was a good line-up on the whole, but Silence was one of 2016's finest, so this did string pretty badly. There isn't much to dislike about this shattering, rich and powerful epic, aside from the excessive length and Liam Neeson getting nothing to do. The cinematography is truly stunning and that nomination was well-deserved, but where was everything else?
This should have been nominated for quite a few other awards. These include (Deep breath): Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Adam Driver, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design and Best Editing. The big Best Picture race should've been this and Danis Villeneuve's wonderful Arrival, not La La Land and Moonlight. La La Land is unlikely to endure multiple viewings while the portentous and wildly uneven Moonlight winning was clearly an apology for #OscarsSoWhite. Still, at least Arrival actually got an award at all.
Maybe one shouldn't be so surprised about this being overlooked. The Academy has never given Martin Scorsese the awards that he deserves and when they finally bothered to give him his Oscar, it went to The Departed of all things.