What was that secret revolutionary password from One Battle After Another? Oh, yeah: “Time doesn’t exist, but it controls us anyway.” Fitting words for this year’s Oscars, especially when Adrien Brody was talking.
The 98th Academy Awards was the first ceremony in years where the races had actual stakes in a showdown between Sinners and One Battle After Another, two ambitious trips through American history. Both movies came away big winners, which made it a real celebration of movie culture — an Oscar night full of highs.
And lows. Lots of those.
First things first: Who the hell decided to crank the music while Barbra Streisand was talking? That was a bad, bad decision. There’s a legend trying to talk here, sharing her misty watercolour memories of Robert Redford, and you drown her out? Then cut her off mid-sentence? For shame. It’s the shabbiest treatment Barbra’s gotten from the Oscars since they stiffed her on the Prince of Tides nomination in 1992.
Conan O’Brien hosted for the second straight year, with the right amount of bratty irreverence. As he said, “I’m honoured to be the last human host of the Academy Awards!” (The telecast is moving to YouTube in 2029.) He took shots at Timothée Chalamet: “Security is tight tonight,” he warned. “I’m told there’s concern about attacks from both the opera and ballet community.” But his funniest moment was also his bitchiest. Near the end, he announced, “Our next presenter heroically saved last year’s Oscars from running short. Please welcome Oscar winner Adrien Brody!”
The show kicked off in style with a Sinners blues jam starring a host of music legends, including Buddy Guy, who’s nearly as old as the Oscars. (He was born in 1936, the first year they were actually called “Oscars.”) The all-star cast also had Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Brittany Howard, and ballerina Misty Copeland — which means ballet got more stage time at the Oscars than Timothée did. It was a perfect way to celebrate the musical achievement of Sinners — Ryan Coogler even had a guitar braided into his hair.
The Best Supporting Actress award went to the sentimental favourite Amy Madigan, 40 years after she got nominated for Twice in a Lifetime, a movie where she plays Gene Hackman’s daughter and Ally Sheedy’s mom. She won for her terrifying turn as Aunt Gladys in Weapons. It was so sweet to see her husband, Ed Harris, give her a flirty glance when her name got called — they’re now a couple with matching Oscars, in the tradition of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh or Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz.
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Sean Penn was a no-show, a shame since he’s so reliably entertaining at the Academy Awards. (Remember the year he got pissed at Chris Rock for making fun of Jude Law? Comedy gold.) Yet there was something awesomely Spicoli-esque about not showing up for his win. Kieran Culkin, who brought down the house last year with his hilarious speech, announced, “Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening — or didn’t want to — so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf.” He also showed the envelope with Penn’s name to the camera, just for transparency.
The Best Actor race was a nail-biter right down to the final seconds. But Michael B. Jordan’s win was an emotional highlight of the night, crowning the Sinners triumph. His speech made connections between history and the present, with his mother beaming proudly in the audience. Fortunately, Brody didn’t try to kiss him — the camera wisely cut away when MBJ gave a shout-out to Halle Berry. Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for Hamnet, making a heavily emotional speech in her County Kerry brogue, telling her husband, “I want to have 20,000 more babies with you!”
Another highlight came when Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman ever to win the Oscar for Best Cinematography, as well as the first Black winner in the category. “All the women in the room stand up,” she said. “Because I feel like I don’t get here without you guys. I really, fully, truly mean that.” Ludwig Göransson was another Sinners winner for Best Score, with a touching speech about his dad buying a John Lee Hooker album in Sweden in 1964. And after so many tributes to Coogler, it was great to see the man himself win for Best Original Screenplay.
Anne Hathaway did a brilliant Devil Wears Prada bit with Anna Wintour. Hathaway: “Anna, just curious, what do you think of my dress tonight?” Wintour: “And the nominees are …” Poor Anne hasn’t looked so forlorn and abandoned on the Oscar stage since the night they made her co-host with James Franco.
Jimmy Kimmel made a welcome return to present the documentary awards. “As you know, there are some countries whose leaders do not support free speech,” he said, then quipping, “I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS.” Kumail Nanjiani presided over a tie in the Best Live Action Short category, which raised the annual question, “Why exactly do the Oscars have a Best Live Action Short category?”
Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor showed up to get sentimental over the 25th anniversary of Moulin Rouge, joining their voices to sing the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” Hey, it’s also the 30th anniversary of Trainspotting, so too bad Ewan didn’t bust out “Born Slippy.” It was a treat to see the Bridesmaids cast strut down the stage — Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and Ellie Kemper. Too bad the moment got wasted with such a clunky sketch. (The “Marty” joke was a bizarrely obscure callback to their Scorsese drinking-game gag at the 2012 Oscars.) But Sigourney Weaver got to shine in her comedy bit, catching Kate Hudson snuggling Baby Yoda and yelling, “Get away from him, you bitch!” It was almost as surreal as Pedro Pascal’s psychedelic shirt.
When Priyanka Chopra presented at the Golden Globes a couple of months ago, with Blackpink’s Lisa, her introduction went, “One was in White Lotus, and the other one wed a white Jonas!” Last night, with Javier Bardem, it was: “One is married to a Jonas Brother, and the other pronounces it ‘YO-nas!’” People who write Priyanka jokes for award shows: Try 20 or 30 seconds harder.
Are there any six words that spark joy like “Please welcome Oscar winner Lionel Richie”? Lionel was once, twice, three times happy to be there (“All right, I’m back!”) and remind everyone he won 40 years ago for “Say You, Say Me,” declaring, “Stories cannot be told without music.” Best Song went to the KPop Demon Hunters hit “Golden,” after an upbeat live performance. It was the night’s least surprising win, so it’s hard to explain why the songwriters were so totally unprepared to give a speech, but the orchestra cut them off, “Takedown”-style. Least welcome voiceover of the night: “To hear all of this year’s original song nominees, scan the QR code on your screen now!”
Truth be told, Chalamet really should have won his long-a-thirsted Oscar last year for his Bob Dylan movie — he played a similar brat in Marty Supreme, just not a very fascinating one. Ironically, he showed up in a white suit and a pencil-thin moustache, just like Dylan when he won his Oscar 25 years ago. But the film got shut out, so either there was a late-breaking backlash from opera and ballet fans, or the voters spent the second half of Marty Supreme asking, “Wait, isn’t this the funny ping-pong movie? Why the hell are we looking for a lost dog?” Better luck next year, Tim. Maybe a Dylan sequel?
One Battle After Another took Best Picture, with Paul Thomas Anderson finally winning after 14 nominations. He gave a shout-out to his inspiration, Thomas Pynchon, probably an Oscars first. (Pynchon didn’t show up, unless he was disguised as Chalamet.) “I wrote this movie for my kids,” he said, “to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them.”
But it was funny to see PTA flip the switch into OCD film-geek mode at the end of the night. “In 1975,” he reminded us, “the Oscar nominees for Best Picture were Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Nashville, and Barry Lyndon. There is no ‘Best’ among them.” He clearly meant to segue into a tribute to his fellow nominees — but he got so distracted by those famous film titles, he simply forgot. It was an endearing moment. (Also, sorry, but Dog Day Afternoon got robbed. Atticaaaa!)
Happy Gilmore 2 didn’t get nominated for anything, but when you think about it, it’s basically the same movie as One Battle After Another. A beloved Nineties icon of perpetual boyishness makes a serious comedy about growing old and feeling washed-up, but returning to a passionate cause they gave up years ago (golf for Sandler, the revolution for Leo) while being comically rumpled and out of date and embarrassing to their teenage daughters? But it all works out, because Dad means well and it’s a movie? (I love both films, in very different ways, so it’s a compliment to both of them. RIP Bob Barker.)
Until last night, Paul Sorvino was probably the most legendary movie star (as opposed to TV star) ever to get left out of the “In Memoriam” loop, though you could make a case for Alain Delon. But Brigitte Bardot stole the crown last night — just an astounding omission. (They also skipped director Henry Jaglom, but Bardot, wow.) There’s no precedent for skipping a movie star anywhere near as famous as Bardot. It’s just never happened. Maybe they censored her for not being a good role model, before or after her retirement, but she’s a mighty strange place for the Oscars to begin drawing that line. (It can’t be her right-wing politics, since they honored Robert Duvall.) When you’re in a Godard movie, an Olivia Rodrigo song, and “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” you’re overqualified. What happened?
Like the Grammys last month, the Oscars stretched out the “In Memoriam” segment to a sizable chunk of the show. Billy Crystal, the nine-time host who can claim credit for making Oscar night the ritual it is today, began with a heartfelt tribute to his close friend and frequent colleague Rob Reiner. Actors from Reiner’s movies gathered onstage — although the camera didn’t catch their faces, a sadly clumsy gaffe.
Rachel McAdams paid tribute to her onscreen mom Diane Keaton, saying, “She wore so many hats — literally and figuratively.” She also quoted Keaton singing the Girl Scouts’ “Make New Friends” song — if you remember your trashy award-show lore, you probably recall Keaton singing that one the night the Golden Globes gave a massively awkward lifetime-achievement tribute to Woody Allen. (The “In Memoriam” montage also had Marcel Ophuls, who directed The Sorrow and the Pity, then later in the show Sigourney Weaver — so Annie Hall had a big night. La-di-da, la-di-da.)
But what could compare to Streisand’s heart-twisting tribute to her muse Robert Redford? She spoke about their bond, evoking the way he used to call her “Babs.” (“Bob, do I look like a Babs?”) She called him “an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail.” But when she started to sing “The Way We Were,” it was an all-out attack on the tear ducts. She even had her own conductor in the aisle, because she rightly didn’t trust the house orchestra to get this moment right — a very Streisand touch, and one that Redford would have relished. StreisFord were one of the most iconic 20th-century screen couples, in The Way We Were, the Brooklyn noodge versus the Santa Monica tennis jock. (As Pauline Kael wrote, “It’s good to see Redford with a woman again after all that flirting with Paul Newman.”)
When Babs sang her farewell to her Bob, it was the kind of Oscar magic that could only happen on this award show. You couldn’t miss the way they botched this moment, almost drowning her out with the soundtrack — yet you also couldn’t miss the fact that Streisand was determined to fight through it and make history anyway. It was the best and worst of the Oscars, in one moment. Sing on forever, Barbra.
From Rolling Stone US
