To paraphrase the clip played during Mikey Madison’s Best Actress presentation: There are a lot of jealous people in Hollywood tonight who are going to have to go chill in their mansions or whatever. Unless they were involved in Sean Baker’s Anora, in which case it’s champagne and fireworks all night long.
Baker’s fractured fairy tale won five awards Sunday night at the 97th Academy Awards, including Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, and Editing. Baker, who is the sole credited writer, director, and editor on the film, in addition to being one the nominated producers, becomes the first person in Academy history to win four awards for the same film on the same night. (Bong Joon-ho might have a quibble after winning three awards and guiding Parasite to an International Feature win for South Korea, but we’re not here to split hairs or rain on anyone’s parade.)
Mikey Madison was the minor shock of the evening, winning Best Actress over front-runner Demi Moore. Madison had won the BAFTA award, so the win didn’t come out of nowhere. And by the time Baker picked up his third statue of the night, the Anora wave had grown so tall that it seemed inevitable Madison would be carried along to victory.
The only award Anora lost, going 5-for-6, was Supporting Actor, where Yura Borisov lost to season-long favorite Kieran Culkin. Borisov didn’t seem too broken up about it, as he and his wife, Anna, of nominations morning viral video fame, were all smiles and bemused shock as the little New York indie film ran roughshod over the competition.
Culkin saved his best speech for last, quipping that his wife, Jazz, had told him last year in the wake of an Emmy win she would have a fourth child with him if he ever won an Oscar. From the crowd, she wordlessly acknowledged that she had in fact made that deal. “Ye of little faith,” Culkin beamed from the Oscar stage as he held his well-deserved statue.
Adrien Brody won his second Best Actor award for leading Brady Corbet’s American epic, The Brutalist. It’s a towering performance, and Brody’s return to prominence is one of the more delightful side plots of this Oscar season. Despite being the front-runner and having given numerous speeches over the past few months, Brody didn’t quite seem to have it together in his acceptance soliloquy. It was rambling and overly long, and he got played off by the orchestra twice, exactly what Culkin was poking fun at during the SAG Awards (the one place Brody actually lost). But, we can forgive the guy for being a little befuddled during one of the biggest moments of his life.
Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress, as long predicted, and delivered an impassioned, heartfelt speech that ended by emphasizing the importance of immigrants to this nation. It was a necessary acknowledgement and one of the few outwardly political speeches of the evening.
Unsurprisingly, the peak of social commentary on the night came from Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham, the Palestinian and Israeli co-directors of Best Documentary Feature winner No Other Land. They called for human rights for all and a peaceful end to the violence in the Gaza Strip, with Abraham stating, “There is another way.” It was a beautiful moment for one of the most important movies of the year. Here’s hoping some American distributor now has the guts to get behind it and give it a proper U.S. release.
Emilia Pérez finished with two awards from its staggering 13 nominations, which is not nothing but represents a stunning fall from grace. Of the 15 films ever to garner 13 nods, two is the fewest wins of any of them. Both awards ultimately felt like recognition for Saldaña – Supporting Actress and Original Song for “El Mal,” which is Saldaña’s show-stopping number in the middle of the film.
That Emilia Pérez could not even hold on to Best International Feature (Walter Salles’ Brazilian drama I’m Still Here prevailed) is proof of just how effective negative campaigning can be – which is not to say the film didn’t deserve the exact fate it got. It did, but it’s almost dizzying how quickly the film went from “Huh, that’s weird” front-runner to pariah, outside of Saldaña. Ultimately, though, this feels right and should allow the movie to fade into obscurity.
Note: At this point in my writing, Los Angeles was hit by a mild but not insignificant earthquake, centered in North Hollywood. Even Mother Nature had something to say about the Anora win.
As thrilled as I am for the Anora crew – and I genuinely adore that film – my favorite win of the night came in Best Animated Feature, where Gints Zilbalodis and Co. triumphed with the magnificent Flow. A wordless parable about a cat at the end of the world, Flow was one of the best films of the year, one of the most beautifully animated films I have ever seen, and a testament to what a small team loaded with grand aspirations can accomplish. This is the best of what the Oscars can do, stepping outside the usual big studio box and rewarding a glorious artistic achievement.
All the whispers about the potential for a Conclave upset turned out to be nothing but black smoke up a chimney as Edward Berger’s excellent papal thriller was not anointed the new pontiff of Hollywood. Instead, it settled for a single win, with writer Peter Straughan taking home the trophy for Best Adapted screenplay. It’s a tremendous script and highly deserving of the recognition, but I still prefer Straughan’s Frank.
James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown had no such luck, going 0-for-8 and joining RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys (0-for-2) as the only Best Picture nominees to go home empty-handed. And yet, the broadcast found ample opportunity to cut to star Timothée Chalamet, the unchallenged prince of Hollywood. Host Conan O’Brien directed several jokes his way, he was the ultimate punchline of a pretty good Adam Sandler bit, and he was in the front row, decked out in his butter yellow suit, smiling, cheering, and getting on his feet for a pair of Dune: Part Two victories (Sound, Visual Effects).
The Brutalist was the next-biggest winner of the night, with three awards. In addition to Brody’s victory, Lol Crawley won for his VistaVision cinematography, and Daniel Blumberg’s alternately booming and melancholic original score triumphed in that category. Meanwhile, fan favorite and box office behemoth Wicked won a pair of awards for Production Design and Costume Design, and Coralie Fargeat’s feminist body horror The Substance won for Makeup and Hairstyling that absolutely put the horror into the body.
If there’s a complaint to be had, it is that the Academy simply is not nominating and rewarding enough different films. Just 35 feature-length films were nominated for an Oscar this year. Down significantly from most years, which have 40-45 nominees. As for the winners, for the second year in a row, just one non-short, non-specialty feature (International, Animated, and Documentary) won an award without a Best Picture nomination – that was Culkin for A Real Pain. That does not make for a healthy Academy Awards, and the members simply must start nominating more different movies. This kind of stuff leads to elitism, exclusion, and worst of all, predictability.
I mean predictability as a general ill of the awards, not with specific regard to my personal predictions here on the site, which were tanked by a goose egg in the three shorts categories. I Am Not a Robot (Live-Action), In the Shadow of the Cypress Tree (Animated), and The Only Girl in the Orchestra (Documentary) were the shorts champions. I take solace that in my office Oscars pool, only one entrant guessed even a single shorts category correctly. Anyway, remind me never to bet against the uplifting music doc distributed by Netflix.
As for the show, it was a fun, fleet evening, despite a three-hour, 50-minute run time, and Conan O’Brien was a breath of fresh air. I love Jimmy Kimmel as host, but we needed some new blood and O’Brien was ready to draw some, almost always at his own expense first. I thought the opening monologue was excellent. The gags and bits were consistently funny, including a song about not wasting anyone’s time that was designed as a meta-way to poke fun at those complaining about the show’s length.
I’ll have more on the ceremony itself tomorrow, including asking what the heck was going on with that James Bond tribute, the loss of the Best Song performances, and the inclusion of a number of extraneous song performances that had next to nothing to do with the evening’s show. For now, long live Queen Anora and god save the king, Sean Baker, who closed his final speech of the night by holding up the Best Picture statue and declaring, “Long live independent film!” A king indeed.
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