The Film Experience

by Nathaniel R

Throughout our "gulp" twenty years of covering the Oscars, no branch has proven more confounding than the Hair and Makeup designers. Like all branches they have weird and glaring blindspots (for some reason despite adoring makeup effects prosthetics they loathe the genre that most commonly deploys them: horror) but many of their rulings have been bizarre (remember how a little CG touchup on Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose in The Hours disqualified the film in this category but throughout the rest of the Aughts huge CG spectacles were regularly honored?!). They love old age and prosthetic effects makeup regardless of quality, except when they suddenly get fussy about it and don't. Sometimes they love wigs and other times only the makeup matters, hair be damned. They're tough to get a bead on but it's easier to suss out what might win once they've made their often perplexingly random finalist and nominee calls (Like how was Possessor and its innovative makeup effects not even on the finalist list? Oh, right, Horror film.)

The nominees are listed in ascending order of how likely we think they are to win the Oscar...

MANK
The challenge for this first-time Oscar-nominated team (Makeup department head Gigi Williams, Hair department head Kimberley Spiteri, and Hairstylist Colleen LaBaff) was to recreate Old Hollywood glamour and to do that in black and white. While it's commonly known that costumes read differently for black and white and, thus, sometimes look really odd in color to achieve their desired effect without it, the other visual crafts also have to contend with how their work will look when it goes all silvery.

One of the wonderful results of the Makeup and Hair category expanding to five nominees (where they always should have been to align with all othe craft categories) is that the Academy has found room to embrace beauty work; for decades it seemed like the only achievement in this field that Oscar voters were turned on by was prosthetic effects. We can't imagine Mank winning, because Oscars rarely prizes glamour makeup in this category, but it's a lovely nominee precisely for its atypicality (and Amanda Seyfried in particular does look like a bonafide golden age movie star with that platinum hair and ruby lips. We hope to see more beauty work landing nominations in the future.

PINNOCHIO
Makeup and Hair is one of the categories that go through what's known as a bake-off process. At the bake-offs the branch members aren't watching whole films but basically long FYC pitches. The scene selection, quality and engagement factor of those presentations can surely account for some of the best and worst decisions in categories that use this process. It's not a perfect system but what is? All it takes is for people who work in that discipline to fall under the spell of a well-designed clip reel or presentation but in the best circumstances it can help worthy work that's not coming from a Best Picture contender score an Oscar nod. As soon as Pinnochio landed in the finalist list we knew it would be nominated and not just due to the presence of British special effects makeup artist Mark Coulier who won the Oscar on his first two nominations for Grand Budapest Hotel and The Iron Lady. (Two italians, the makeup artist Dalia Colli and hair designer Francesco Pegoretti are enjoying their first nominations alongside him). Winning will be a harder get for the film as it will require a big chunk of Academy members to actually screen the film in its entirety and we know they aren't super great about doing that with films that have only shown up in the below-the-line categories. Unfortunately a Best Picture nomination gives you a huge boost in the craft categories even though crafts should be judged on their own merits. But if voters watch this film, with the main character looking as if he was actually carved from wood (and all through makeup without CGI) and so many other eye-popping characters also using intricate makeup and wig work, this fairy tale could theoretically pull off a major upset.

HILLBILLY ELEGY
Listen. Maybe this team didn't need to go so hard with Amy Adams late in film especially that recovering junkie frizz wig but the rest of the work in Hillbilly Elegy is marvelous even if "deglam" happens to be our least favourite Oscar bait with which to hook hungry voters. Makeup department head Eryn Krueger Mekash receives her first nomination alongside two previous winners in this category, prosthetic designer Matthew Mungl (Bram Stoker's Dracula) and Hair department head Patricia Dehaney (Vice).

You've probably all seen the Instagram video from the perpetually game and goofy (offscreen) Glenn Close drumming her prosthetic belly while getting into costume. MaMaw is about as unglamourous as they come but the wig and the mottled skin and every which way they aged and downplayed Glenn Close's handsome star glamour paid off in helping her create this Appalachian matriarch. It's true that the movie around MaMaw doesn't support the authenticity of Close's acting or the makeup department's careful work, but that doesn't mean that these two Oscar nominated accomplishments aren't worth respecting.

EMMA
Not one but two "beauty" entries this year. This one marks the first nomination for Marese Langan, Laura Allen, and Claudio Stolze. More than any of the other films in the running, Emma. surely scored this nomination via the wig and hair work as opposed to the makeup. Not that the makeup isn't wonderful but the Hair... goddess the hair. So many ringlets. So many adornments and much fussy attention. It's the main attraction. As with the exquisite costuming work by Alexandra Byrne previously covered not once but twice here and here... the achievement here is not just the beauty but the way it reveals things like economic class, innate taste or the lack thereof, and in some cases, character; please note how messy and natural Mr Knightley's hair is in a society otherwise filled with fussing over self-display; He stands right out as oasis and corrective. Emma herself perfects the opposite approach, the embrace and overachieving of those same expectations.

MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM
We've remarked on this before but one of the joys of this very peculiar Oscar season is how many first time nominees there are in virtually all categories. Here's another entirely virginal group: Viola's makeup artist and hairstylist Sergio Lopez-Rivera and Jamika Wilson, and hair designer Mia Neal. The broad contours of the challenge here are hairstyles and makeup work to place you in 1920s Chicago in the hot hot summer. But the spotlight and the reason for the nomination is surely the visage of Ma Rainey herself with her gold teeth, excessive makeup and horsehair wigs. We get glamorous put-together Ma Rainey at her hotel showing off her glamour girl (Taylour Paige) to provoke the bougie Northern blacks, we get the performing for the crowd Ma Rainey in flashbacks to concerts, and the sweaty tired Ma Rainey in that recording studio who has had enough of everyone's bullshit. Get her a fan and a cold coke! The Mother of the Blues was known for smeared greasepaint makeup and the effect her is memorable when she's on stage, like a colorful living painting sweating away as she croons and moans through her risque collection of songs. We think this team will win though if there's a spoiler Emma wouldn't be too surprising.

P.S. Ma Rainey has a very good shot at winning four of its five Oscar nominations. There's no way it wins Production Design but the rest are right there as either locks (Actor) or close but doable projections (Actress, Makeup, Costumes). That big of a haul for a non-Best Picture nominee hasn't happened since The Matrix (1999) but the all time record holder will surely remain Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) which won 5 Oscars.

Remember to vote on who SHOULD win the craft Oscars on the Oscar charts.

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