So....the Oscars happened.
After a year marked by mass death and Hollywood crippled by production shutdowns, it was finally time to celebrate some of cinema’s biggest achievements. Now, I understand there are those out there who think that this ceremony is nothing more than what is supposed to be only 3 hours of celebrities patting themselves on the back and using the platform of a nationwide television broadcast to promote political causes even though ratings for the ceremony are at an all-time low, but I’m not going to talk about that.
The star-studded experimental TV movie by Glenn Weiss managed to accomplish a primarily maskless celebration at the cost of the usual spectacle associated with the Oscars. All the musical performances were broadcast as part of the pre-show, and there were no elaborate onstage antics. However, I don’t want to talk about that either, because I never cared about the spectacle. I never gave a damn about who was presenting, the in-jokes, or the musical performances. The only reason I watch the Oscars is for the real-time suspense over who wins, and all I wanted was a show that was about the talent who may or may not be recognized for their achievement. Well, be careful what you wish for, I guess. Anyway, this blog is going to be about the awards and nothing more. The only other complaining I could do is that there could’ve been more clips of the movies, and that we didn’t need Questlove’s trivia segment (we were so close to a ceremony without diversions). Well, also about the ending, but we’ll get to that.
The big thing about this year’s show was that a lot more small-scale films were nominated, with Nomadland, Minari, Promising Young Woman and Sound of Metal getting multiple nods. Unfortunately, that seems like something that will be unique to this year, so let’s move on to who won.
First of all, The Father received an absolutely deserved win for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was based on a play, but after watching the movie I can’t imagine how, as the film took full advantage of the cinematic medium. It was especially impressive as the director adapted his own work. Emerald Fennell won Best Original Screenplay for Promising Young Woman, a rather odd duck among the major awards contenders. It felt like something I’d see at a Fantastic Fest-type event rather than major awards ceremonies. I’d say the competition for that one was pretty fierce, as Emerald managed to beat out Lee Isaac Chung for Minari and Darius Marder, Abraham Marder, and Derek Cianfrance for Sound of Metal.
Judas and the Black Messiah’s Daniel Kaluuya won Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. Not much I can say about that one, as in my opinion, practically all the nominees deserved the award for something. I can, however, say that Minari’s Youn Yuh-jung’s win for Best Actress in a Supporting Role was extremely well-deserved, as she was easily my favorite part of the film. Chloe Zhao won Best Achievement in Directing for Nomadland, making her the second woman to win the award and the first Asian woman to win the award in Oscars history. Zhao took a simple yet effective approach to Nomadland, using a cast primarily comprised of real-life nomads, with documentary-style cinematography and a naturalistic feel that made many scenes in the movie feel spontaneous.
Sound of Metal won Best Sound, of course. All joking aside, the sound design in that film made it a clear frontrunner for me in that category. The film did a great job depicting the perspective of its newly-deaf protagonist with the muffled audio during his point-of-view. This was actually the first film to receive the award, which was created by combining best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. I think the film did a great job with both.
Soul won Best Animated Feature Film, in a victory most people were expecting. Yes, it beat Wolfwalkers, but what can you do? I was also correct in my guess that If Anything Happens I Love You would win Best Animated Short Film. The film is currently available on Netflix and is definitely worth the watch.
Police brutality time-loop film Two Distant Strangers won Best Live Action Short Film, which I wasn’t expecting, nor would it have been my pick. However, being a genre hybrid of social-issue drama and science-fiction, it was definitely a standout among the nominees in terms of premise, and I’m glad it got noticed. It’s also currently available on Netflix. Colette won for Best Documentary Short Subject, which was my favorite win of the night as, while it wasn’t my preference among the nominees, Colette’s victory meant that the video game industry has won its first Oscar. The film was co-produced by Oculus and Electronic Arts, both of which got thanked during the acceptance speech.
Another Round received a win for Best International Feature Film, a victory that I was hoping wouldn’t happen but also seemed inevitable. It was far from the best film nominated though, with Quo Vadis, Aida? and Collective being the two films I thought deserved to take it home. My Octopus Teacher won for Best Documentary, scoring a win for cephalopod fans everywhere. It also beat out Collective, and admittedly, I’m kinda pissed that Collective went home with nothing. It was truly one of the best films nominated and, in my opinion, deserved both awards.
I should probably comment on the technical and art awards too. Those tend to get ignored, but they’re also among the fields I tend to be interested in, so I feel I should pay attention to the winners. Who knows? That could be me someday. Sound of Metal won Best Achievement in Film Editing, beating out my favorite of the nominees, The Father. Mank won Best Cinematography and Production Design, and while a lot of people thought Mank didn’t deserve to win anything, I agree with those wins. The film was heavily stylized in both categories so a win for those makes sense. I also agree with Best Achievement in Visual Effects going to Tenet because the time-based action was pretty awesome. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom won for Best Achievement in Costume Design, as well as Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling. Judas and the Black Messiah’s “Fight for You” won for Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song), while Soul won for Original Score. I don’t have much of an opinion on those, so let’s move on.
Tyler Perry and the Motion Picture and Television Fund both won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, and with that, we come to the part of the broadcast that everyone was talking about. Yes, the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of the Year was announced third-to-last, breaking decades of tradition and practically derailing the rest of the show. Best Picture went to Nomadland, which I think deserved it wholeheartedly. Frances McDormand also won Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film. While other contenders like Promising Young Woman’s Carey Mulligan and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’s Viola Davis gave more overt performances, McDormand managed to say so much by expressing so little. Also, since she was an established performer among a mainly non-actor cast, the fact that she blended into the setting so seamlessly ironically made her work in the film stand out.
Well, it’s time to get this over with. The Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role seemed like it was going to go to the late Chadwick Boseman for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. I had been wanting to avoid talking too much about the actual broadcast because I wanted to make this about the movies and people that won, but I can’t ignore this. The only reason I can think of to switch up the lead acting and best picture nominations was to end the show with a touching send-off to Boseman, and when the award went to Anthony Hopkins instead, I was shocked and disheartened for about a minute or two, and then I felt happy for Hopkins’ win. The truth is, I had been ready to predict Boseman as the winner until I saw The Father. Anthony Hopkins gave one of the best performances of the year in what was easily one of the best films of the year. It was a well-deserved Oscar, and I cannot stress this enough.
That said, why did they end the show like that? There was no reason to, and doing so completely derailed the momentum. Anybody watching the broadcast knew that the main reason to stay up until the end was to find out who won Best Picture, the big award, which is when the director, actors, writers, producers, editors, cinematographers, makeup artists, production designers, musicians, caterers, distributors, and everybody else involved discovers that their collective effort was recognized as the best film of the year at the industry’s most prestigious awards show. The ratings for this ceremony have been declining for years, but there are still holdouts like me who watch for the real-time reveals over who wins, and they managed to find the one way to screw that part up.
In the end, this was as bare-bones an Oscars as you can get, and I’m fine with that. However, while I have decried the excess spectacle during a typical ceremony, I’m really only saying that as someone on the outside. Let’s be honest, if I were up for the award, I’d want the big fat show too. Hell, I would’ve settled for the Oscars we got this year. If my college graduation in January 2021 had been like this year’s Oscars, I would’ve been fine, because I got nothing for that, only an on-demand video speech from the college president. If, after the lonely dumpster fire of the last year, all of these people want an iota of a ceremony where they can find any excuse to see each other’s faces, let them have one. Making a movie is a tough job, and they deserve it.
So there was my report on the Oscars, with as little said of the actual ceremony involved as I possibly could. Let’s hope next year’s Oscars is a return to normalcy. Okay, I’ll say one more thing about the ceremony. Those Oscar table lamps were pretty cool.
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