The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history, what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
The nominees are:
Coming 2 America
Cruella
Dune
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
House of Gucci
Hey, look at that, a category full of fun, deserving nominees and movies stuffed to the brim with famous people. Exactly the kind of entertainment Oscars watchers tune into the Academy Awards for. So, of course, this is the first category we are talking about that will not be featured on the live broadcast of the show.
The logic – if one can call it that – is kind of baffling. Of the past 10 pre-pandemic winners in this category (excluding Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a Netflix pandemic release), seven of them grossed more than $100 million. If the goal is to highlight more popular, crowd-pleasing films, this is a category the producers never should have cut.
Cruella is a Disney film that made $230 million at the box office, while Dune is a $400 million-grossing smash hit. Even House of Gucci made $150 million worldwide. Meanwhile, Coming 2 America is an Amazon Prime release with a big budget and huge movie stars. Only The Eyes of Tammy Faye really falls short here, but you still have Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield delivering buzzy performances.
But viewers will not get the chance to celebrate any of this when they tune into the show. Instead, we will get pre-packaged clips and “fan service” that services no one, least of all fans of what the Academy Awards always purported to be about: great films.
Dune - Much of the work on this film is excellent, down the instantly iconic hairstyling on Oscar Isaac and Timothée Chalamet, but there really is one reason this movie is here: Baron Harkonnen, the “Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now” style villain portrayed by Stellan Skarsgård. The character represents the kind of big, showy prosthetics work the Makeup Branch loves to reward. As deployed in the film, it is effectively repulsive, communicating immediately the gluttony and vanity at the heart of the character.
Makeup artist Donald Mowat is a first-time nominee, but the Swedish hair and makeup team of Love Larson and Eva von Bahr are recent favorites of the Academy with previous nominations for popular Swedish hits A Man Called Ove and The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. They are masters of prosthetic work, and Dune provides them the biggest stage yet on which to ply their trade.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye - The makeup is so integral to this biopic of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker that it actually becomes a small plot point. However, as the movie goes on and the pounds of makeup and prosthetics gather on Jessica Chastain’s face, a ghoulishness develops that I found occasionally hard to watch. To some degree, that is part and parcel of who Tammy Faye was, as portrayed in the film, but at a certain point, the balance tips in the direction of the comically grotesque.
This would not be a problem in a movie with a firmer grasp of its tone, but The Eyes of Tammy Faye often vacillates wildly between satire and earnest admiration of the character. Hairstylist Stephanie Ingram and makeup artists Linda Downs and Justin Raleigh do their level best, and Chastain is certainly transformed in the role, but the foundation of the movie can’t quite support the weight of all that makeup.
House of Gucci - It is hard to believe director Ridley Scott released two big-budget films this year to some amount of acclaim and Oscars buzz, and between them, this is the only nomination garnered. This film in particular is more likely to be remembered for its snubs than its nomination, with Lady Gaga and Jared Leto passed over while Göran Lundström, AnnaCarin Lock, and Frederic Aspiras were recognized for their work in bringing Gaga’s and Leto’s characters to life.
House of Gucci is a strange film, and the makeup artists know this – so, it should be noted, does Leto, who is the only actor who seems to be having any fun on screen. Gaga’s big hair and Leto’s balding head and wrinkled visage would be more at home in an opera or melodrama than in any serious character study, but Scott rides a fine line, embracing the weird and giving his makeup and hair department free reign to create the special work on display here.
Coming 2 America - This is the kind of nomination we come to this category for – the little loved oddity that features genuinely superb makeup work the branch just had to nominate. Critics score be damned, the prosthetics and makeup in every corner of this long-awaited sequel are a sight to behold, just as they were the first time.
It has been 31 years since Rick Baker scored a nomination for Coming to America, in which he transformed Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall into the myriad distinctive characters that peppered their Queens, New York. This time, all those characters are brought back and more, with equal skill by makeup artist Michael Marino and hairstylists Stacey Morris and Carla Farmer. The Academy is unlikely to go this route, though Murphy’s The Nutty Professor previously won this award, but isn’t it fun that something this unusual and outside the box is being celebrated by the Academy on their show? Or, wouldn’t it have been?
Cruella - One of the more fun multiple nominees on the ballot this year, Cruella could very well win an award come the big night, but I would not predict it in this category. The PG-13 punk rock origin story of one of Disney’s darker villains, this movie was intended to be high on style from the jump, and it mostly reaches those heights.
First-time nominees Nadia Stacey and Julia Vernon, along with previous nominee for 1917 Naomi Donne, team to create a series of looks that feel right at home in the high-fashion world of the film. The transformation of Emma Stone’s Estella into the titular Cruella is a feat in its own right, and Donne, who was the personal makeup artist and hair stylist to Emma Thompson, makes The Baroness a canvas on par with the film’s gorgeously stylized costumes.
The final analysis
As with many of the below-the-line categories, it is smart to look to the Best Picture nominee in the group for the potential win, which here means Dune. That would be a smart prediction and a deserving winner. However, things have shifted in recent years, as the Academy moved in 2019 from three Makeup and Hairstyling nominees to five. In the small sample size of the previous two years, the Best Picture nominees in the lineup have failed to snag the award, falling to showier work in slightly less acclaimed films.
In 2019, Joker and 1917 both lost out to the fantastic prosthetic work on display in Bombshell, while just last year, Mank came up short against the sweaty intensity of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. If we are looking for alternatives this year, House of Gucci is certainly a possibility, but my money is on The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
With Jessica Chastain perhaps slightly in the lead for Best Actress, based on her Screen Actors Guild victory, it would be easy to see this year following the path of 2011, when The Iron Lady pulled the same double act. Meryl Streep won Best Actress for a performance greatly enhanced by the hair and makeup teams, and the makeup crew was rightly recognized for its contribution. Here, the hair and makeup are perhaps even more integral to the central performance, and it seems likely they will be rewarded as such.
Will win: The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Should win: House of Gucci
Should have been here: Old
Next time: Costume Design
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