It feels like despite the showrunners' best efforts, the Oscars are a slow-moving trainwreck every year, yet always get redeemed by a couple of interesting artistic choices and some good moments of real human drama. There was an undeniable awkwardness to having four awards speeches delivered in Korean with a translator on hand, but Bong Joon-Ho is a charismatic and lovable winner, and the audience was so enthusiastically on his side. When he won Best Director, and then "Parasite" took Best Picture, it was a perfect underdog victory. It was hard to resist the urge to stand up and cheer.
The evening certainly didn't start out that way. First, there was Janelle Monae's aggressive opening number, where her attempts at audience participation mostly felt flat, and there was the odd choice of featuring elements form films that notably didn't get any love from the Academy, like "Midsommar," "Us," "Queen and Slim," and "Dolemite is My Name." There was a running theme throughout the night of the show acknowledging that it had to do better by the non-white, non-male creative community, and then expressing that in the most awkward way possible. Chris Rock and Steve Martin took the stage for some opening remarks that were tepid and strained, leaning way too hard on the angry black man v. sheepish white man divide. I still don't know if Steve Martin mispronouncing Cynthia Erivo's name was legit, or part of a bit.
However, for every pointed, self-congratulatory choice, like making a big deal of the Oscars' first maestra, Eimear Noone, ("All women are superheroes"? Really?) you had the Best Score award actually going to Hildur Guðnadóttir, who delivered a truly heartfelt and inspirational acceptance speech. There were far too many celebrities introducing each other, but it did net us good comic bits from Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Dreyfus, and Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig. Even Rebel Wilson and James Corden were smart enough to deliver their one joke and get out. The "Into the Unknown" stunt where multiple international singers sang parts of the song in different languages, showing off Disney's localization efforts, was quickly made up for by spine-tingling performances from Elton John, Cynthia Erivo, and a surprise Eminem (famously a no-show in 2002). No comment on Billie Eilish - I'm still figuring out whether I enjoy her style of performance or not.
Aside from the "Parasite" wins, most of the other races had been decided for ages. None of the acting races shook out the way I was hoping, but the actual winners were very unobjectionable choices, and the same ones who had been winning everything all season. Brad Pitt's speech was great, Joaquin Phoenix's was very earnest if a bit unhinged (appropriate, given he won for "Joker"), I'm happy Dern is being recognized for anything, and it's good to have Renee Zellwegger back, even if her speech was rambly and blah. The one win that did bother me was Taika Waititi getting Best Adapted Screenplay for "Jojo Rabbit," which leaves me conflicted because I'm a staunch defender of "Jojo Rabbit" and I've been singing its praises for weeks - however, Greta Gerwig was clearly robbed. I'm also aghast that "The Irishman" walked away with nothing, even though Bong Joon-ho very graciously paid his respects to Scorsese.
Some of my reactions to the ceremony have undeniably been colored by the fact that I finally finished reading Mark Harris's "Pictures at a Revolution," which spent its final chapter delivering a blow-by-blow account of the 1968 Oscars. It's fascinating to see how so many of the same old issues and bad habits are still plaguing the ceremony - tone deaf and overbearing presenters, self-congratulatory social messaging, and a visible clash between the old generation and the new. Still, this time around the right picture won, striking an important blow for the increasingly prominent international film community. Yeah, they cut off the Makeup/Hairstyling ladies, and yeah, the "In Memoriam" graphics were awful, but in the end the night was a triumph for the Academy Awards. It was a good year for the movies, and the ceremony reflected that, no matter how hard they seemed to try to sabotage themselves.
Watching Charlize Theron, Tom Hanks and several others shouting and waving for the microphone and lights to come back up for the "Parasite" winners was a great capper to the night.
Until next year.
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