Awarding that year’s Best Actress Oscar to Kate Winslet instead – for her show-stopping performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – would have also freed her from an “it’s time” narrative four years later (when she won for her role in the stuffy courtroom drama The Reader).
This Oscar year (2012) was also a great one for performances by women, most of whom didn’t even get nominations – Charlize Theron in Young Adult, Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids, Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene.
With such an “it’s time” narrative therefore unnecessary in 2015, that year’s Best Actress Oscar could have gone to a terrifying Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl instead.
While you could excuse Landau’s win based on the quality of his performance in Ed Wood, it remains mystifying that the Academy Awards determined Waltz to be the standout of the Django Unchained ensemble – particularly when he had won for another Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds, just three years earlier.
From awarding Rami Malek’s all-teeth performance as Freddie Mercury to Julianne Moore winning Best Actress for the wrong movie, the Oscars have always inspired confusion and frustration.
