Only two Best Picture-nominated Oscar films won zero awards at the this year’s ceremony.
A Complete Unknown, which is about music legend Bob Dylan’s early career, was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Director for James Mangold, and Best Actor for Timothée Chalamet. It was snubbed at the glitzy event despite receiving rave reviews from Amazon Prime viewers after it recently debuted on the streaming service.
Nickel Boys, a story about two African American boys sent to an abusive reform school in the 1960s, missed out after also being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. It lost out on Best Picture to Anora and Best Adapted Screenplay by Conclave.
The movie is an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was released in 2019. It received a stunning 91% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.
The movie received rave reviews over its powerful storytelling and outstanding lead acting. One critic declared: “Not only the best film of the year but one of the greatest movies of this decade. Gobsmacked and bedazzled, I was left.”
Nickel Boys was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film (
AP)
The movie is shot in a first-person viewpoint and tells the story of Elwood Curtis aspirations for going to college being dashed when he lands in the horrific Nickel Academy during the Jim Crow era. There he befriends Turner, another Black teen in the institution who becomes his guide in navigating their perilous surroundings, reports Surrey Live.
Among A Complete Unknown’s other nominations was Best Supporting Actor for Edward Norton and Best Supporting Actress for Monica Barbaro. It missing out on awards comes after Mangold said claims that the singer Bob Dylan wanted a fake scene added to the biopic are pure “fiction” which stem from a misunderstanding in an interview.
Timothée Chalamet plays Bob Dylan in the movie (
AP)
Before the film, starring Timothee Chalamet, was released in UK cinemas, US actor Edward Norton – who plays folk singer Pete Seeger – said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that Dylan, who approved the script, had wanted one lie added to the screenplay. After this was taken to mean an inaccurate scene had been included, Mangold said it was “not a true story.”
He said Dylan “never asked for some fictional scene to be stuck in the movie,” adding, “Edward Norton, in an early interview, said that Bob asked for one untrue thing put in, but it was simply he wanted to change the name of his girlfriend from (real-life artist) Suze (Rotolo) to the character Sylvie Russo, (played by Elle Fanning), that was it. But anyone can disbelieve me and search about for whatever fiction they think meets the criteria of the story.”