It seems fitting that after one of the strangest & longest Oscar seasons in memory (and of course one of the strangest years, period) that we would get one of the strangest (though not the longest) Oscar nights in a while. The Oscars this year, in the middle of a pandemic, were always going to look a little different. Housed in LA's Union Station, the first change in venue for the Academy in twenty years, while the glamour was out (and god I loved that pink carpet-so bright & fun), it was on a much smaller-scale, with only the nominees in the room to accept (and even in that case, some of the nominees, even high-profile performers like Olivia Colman and Sacha Baron Cohen, were halfway around the world due to an inability to fly to the ceremony). As we do every year on the blog, we will discuss the good, the bad, and in this case the preventable of the ceremony.
We'll start with the good, because despite what you'll read on Twitter this morning, there was good in last night's ceremony. The evening started with a bang, and I quite liked the longer speeches. After a year where we were all on Zoom calls, I didn't mind getting people into a room, overjoyed to be there (and thankfully all of them tested & vaccinated so we could do something like this), and the longer speeches led to some really lovely moments. Youn Yuh-jung's speech was the best of the night, and stretched into a lovely ode to her fellow nominees (Glenn Close & Amanda Seyfried both appeared moved), and arguably the best "cringe" moment of the night was Daniel Kaluuya's flabbergasted mother & sister both looking on in horror as he pointed out that the only reason he was there was because his parents had sex. These moments surely would've been cut off by an orchestra, and while there were some speeches that did run too long, overall this was the right choice given that we didn't have the traditional ability to do skits or musical performances like we normally would have.
I also loved the camerawork & set design. Oscar-winner Steven Soderbergh added his own flare, filming the movie in 24 frames per second (this is the speed that most movies are filmed in), giving the ceremony a more cinematic glow, and the camerawork utilizing the smaller space to look at the larger room (and a beautifully lit Union Station) worked well for me (I saw someone on Twitter say "why does this look like Birdman?" and I don't think they meant it as a compliment, but I think it should have been intended that way).
And the winners were lovely. Honestly, we'll get into the shock of the night (the Best Actor situation), but the winners were really good. Nomadland will stand apart as a great Best Picture winner, one of the best in recent memory (along with Parasite), and the four acting winners were dynamite. Anthony Hopkins' win for The Father was a surprise, but honestly-this is going to put him in the same company as Vivien Leigh in terms of winning for two perfect performances. Not all of the winners were my choice, but there are very few categories that I left saying "huh" to (I know that the consensus is that they royally botched in Documentary Feature, but having seen very few of those movies I can't confirm). This is a field that will stand up well once the sheen of the ceremony wears off.
That being said, the actual ceremony itself was, for the large part, a giant whiff. I spent the first hour so enthralled with the fact that the Oscars were actually happening (in a world that feels topsy-turvy so often, I was stunned to simply get to enjoy my favorite night of the year, and I was texting my brother ferociously during it, realizing just how normal it felt, a sensation that I could've never dreamt would be so wonderful). But as the night wore on, even my rose-colored glasses started to wear off, and there were several clear problems.
The first was the lack of clips for the nominated features. For Soderbergh, a man who knows the power of visual cinema better than most anyone (he's got an Oscar for a reason), this feels unthinkable. After all, one of the bigger criticisms around this year's Oscars was that a large chunk of these movies were not as familiar to the general public...why not lean into that criticism a bit and put actual clips of the movies themselves, showing the viewers what they're missing? This one can't be blamed on the pandemic, because A) they were able to get clips for several of the films (Best Picture, Animated Feature Film, & International Feature all had them, for example), and because B) this is the one of the rare things where you don't need the Dolby to be able to pull off some grandeur. As a result, the ceremony at times felt more like a company awards dinner, rather than the Oscars. There were better ways to do this, and as the night wore on it became abundantly clear that trying to cut the movies out of the Oscars was a terrible mistake. We honestly saw more of In the Heights or West Side Story last night than any of the films actually nominated for the show, and while I don't have a problem with that (putting actual movie trailers during the commercials of the Oscars feels like a pretty natural fit to me), ignoring these movies during the ceremony, particularly in a time with an uncertain audience, was a foolish creative & financial decision.
In not having these breaks, the ceremony really didn't have enough escapism, and the presenters didn't provide any of that. The show desperately needed a host, perhaps not one that was particularly funny, but at least someone to realize that the show was dragging & needed something to lighten it up. The only skit of the night was a silly Oscar trivia one, and while some of the internet didn't like it, for me it was water in a desert (Glenn Close being the obvious highlight-what the hell does this woman still need to do to get an Oscar?!?), as we finally had something breaking up the monotony. I texted about halfway through the ceremony how much a comedian as a presenter would've killed at about the halfway point, but the funniest presenter of the bunch was Harrison Ford (which is not a good sign for your ceremony, as Ford is many things but he's not a comedian). The show was classy as a result, but it also was slow. In a show with no movies & no humor & no music...glamour can only get you so far.
There were three things, though, to me that stood out because it was clear from the onset that they were preventable and we're going to start with the easiest thing to fix...the music. In a somber year, one filled with criminal justice protests & a global pandemic & a tempestuous election, it was obvious that the speeches were going to be moving & political & tender. And yet, you would have thought from the outro music that was happening before each commercial that we were at a wedding dance. Chloe Zhao being walked out to the Wings classic "Live and Let Die" was the first time I noticed it, but "9 to 5," and "Let's Hear it for the Boy," both also showed up as outro's (not, in fact, songs during the "Oscar Trivia" bit). This was tacky, but more bizarre than anything else, as if no one seemed to know the cadence of the ceremony.
Music choice was definitely a problem during the "In Memoriam." Obviously tone isn't always the best indicator of meaning, and Stevie Wonder's "As" is a lovely song for a funeral for someone who wants their life to be a celebration, not a dour occasion (it's about how you'll love someone always). But putting this upbeat number alongside a PowerPoint presentation without any sort of clips of the actual actors themselves (just screenshots) felt rushed & disrespectful. Having actors like Olivia de Havilland & Max von Sydow, screen titans, flash on that screen for milliseconds after 70 years of film memories is pretty much unforgivable. I have said for years that they need some sort of rule about who is included (it should just be for Academy members, former nominees, and if the Academy gets a petition to include someone additional, but not every person in the entertainment industry can be put in, particularly if they only have a tertiary connection to the movies), but speeding through this as if it was a box to check off before you get to the end was really gross, and the worst part of the night.
Getting back to the cadence of the ceremony, though, I initially thought it was bizarre to start with the writing awards, but thought it might have been a choice to kick off with an attention-grabbing category. At about the hour marker, though, when they announced that Best Director was happening so soon, I was stunned-this is usually one of the last 4 categories, and it was happening too early...even in years where it's a foregone conclusion who will win it, they still wait until the end. And then, of course, they did the unthinkable-they moved Best Picture up, moving the acting trophies to the end.
For those not versed in their Academy history, this isn't totally unprecedented. Until 1955 Best Picture wasn't always last: in 1954, for example, they ended with the honorary trophies), and in 1947 they ended with Best Actress (the last time they ended with an acting trophy). There are a couple of problems with this, though. The first is that the show was lacking a lot of old-school Hollywood glamour. While there were big star presenters, every year some of the best Oscar moments tend to come from trotting out screen legends, particularly for Best Picture. But last night the only obvious legends (and not just "future legends") you could claim amongst the presenters were Harrison Ford & Rita Moreno. And when you bury both of those figures in the middle of the ceremony, it minimizes the impact.
The bigger problem, though, was obvious. While it was known that all of the Best Actress nominees were going to be there, it was clear that the two leading contenders for the Best Actor trophy were not going to be able to attend. It was obvious, in fact, that the producers were counting on this, hoping that Chadwick Boseman's widow would accept his posthumous award on his behalf, a crass cash-in on the producers behalf to end with a bittersweet tribute to the actor. But that was precipitated on the idea that he'd actually win. And it was clear to anyone paying attention that Anthony Hopkins was gaining steam in the weeks leading into the ceremony, and it was also clear to anyone paying attention that the 83-year-old Hopkins, who lives in Wales, did not intend to travel in the middle of a pandemic to accept a trophy he wasn't the favorite to take. But the fact that the producers clearly never thought about the prospect of Hopkins winning was a clear lack of preparation...and one that they needed when they had no emotional climax to their show, ending with a stunned Joaquin Phoenix bringing them to the credits. How they never thought that this could happen is beyond me-Rule #1 at the Oscars is you never take for granted that anyone is going to win, because upsets can & do happen. While it will surely be a viral conversation topic all week, it was another sign that the producers were so worried about the logistics of the show that they warped things that were already working (to disappointing results).
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