Forget Barbie, Anatomy Of A Fall’s dog actor was the Oscar snub of the year

The following article discusses the plot of Anatomy Of A Fall. Reader discretion is advised.

This Oscar season is filled with magnificent performances, from Cillian Murphy’s politicking introvert in Oppenheimer to the just-learned-to-walk movements of Emma Stone in Poor Things. It’s the rare Oscar year where the Academy got it right, nominating projects that deserved recognition and Nyad. But such a bounty means hard decisions for voters, who face the inevitable backlash of the impossible-to-avoid snub. But the biggest misstep of the year wasn’t the lack of nominations for Barbie. Mattel’s better-than-expected toy comedy will have to make do with eight nominations and a billion dollars. Rather, Messi, the mult-hyphenate canine from Anatomy Of A Fall, deserved more this Oscar season.

In Anatomy Of A Fall, Messi plays Snoop, the black-and-white seeing-eye Border Collie that assists Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner), the visually-impaired son of Sandra (Sandra Hüller) and Samuel (Samuel Theis). Throughout the film, as others have pointed out, Messi makes excellent use of the screen, building suspense with the cock of his head or a well-placed sit. The camera loves this guy, so his movements could be read as foreshadowing the crime at Anatomy’s center, hinting that he might have the answer to the crime locked in his adorable dog brain.

Cynics could dismiss Messi’s contributions as the result of Justine Triet’s Oscar-nominated direction, handing the credit of an uncommonly good dog performance to the human artists behind the camera, which is fair. But Snoop’s overdose is animal acting on another level. Toward the end of the film, when Daniel is swimming in information from days of testimony regarding whether or not his mother killed his father, the boy feeds Snoop aspirin to test a theory related to the case. He later finds Snoop keeled over, struggling to live and seemingly on the brink of death.

Messi trained for two months to play dead, particularly those moments when Daniel moved him. “What we did need to work on throughout was how to be able to carry him and have him remain in this play acting of being inert,” said Laura Martin Contini, Messi’s owner, told Variety. “This was something I added over time by working every day. It started on the bed, and it was just how much disturbance was this dog going to be able to withstand whilst remaining limp.”

And limp he was. Tongue unfurled and eyes glazed over, the dog withstands the high drama around him. Even more surprising was the lifeless tongue of the Collie, which managed to stop licking people for five seconds and lay outside his mouth. Contini says she saw Messi’s tongue in the perfect position after a round with his favorite ball, referred to as “his holy grail” by the trainer. She and Messi began making that tongue the scene’s centerpiece.

Anyone who’s ever tried to get their dog to stop barking at the lovely neighbor he sees and smells daily knows how well-trained Messi must’ve been. Maybe if word got around that he was forcing crew members to call him “Snoop” on set or he had spent months in a rehab facility for dogs undergoing treatment for aspirin addiction, the Oscar push would gain traction.

We get it. Plenty of hardworking professionals within the arts receive zero recognition. The list grows more glaring every year as we await acknowledgment for assistants, stunt performers, and Margot Martindale. Last year was the perfect time to reward the animal actors who light up the screen with fearless and naturalistic performances. The 2023 awards season had a tight race for Best Donkey between The Banshees Of Inishirin and EO. The Oscars declined to participate, going so far as to mock the idea by bringing an imposter donkey posing as Jenny to the ceremony.

The Academy can’t keep letting these non-human animal performances slip through their paws. How often does the Academy get to recognize a new star on the rise? This is Messi’s feature film debut, and he’s already the toast of Hollywood. 2023 is the year for the Academy to stand on that stage and declare Messi “Good Boy of the Year.”