There were scattered moments of genuine excitement during the 98th Academy Awards, which saw One Battle After Another emerge with six Oscars, best picture and director amongst them, followed by the 16-times-nominated Sinners with four, including Michael B Jordan as best actor, and Frankenstein with three.
It was hard not to thrill, for instance, at Sinners' Autumn Durald Arkapaw making history as the first woman ever to win for cinematography, a milestone she registered by having all the women in the audience stand: "I don't get here without you guys," she told the crowd. Or to be moved by Billy Crystal's impassioned tribute to his colleague and lifelong friend, the murdered filmmaker Rob Reiner, during an extended In Memoriam sequence that granted additional pride of place to twin acting legends Diane Keaton and Robert Redford. Barbra Streisand showed up to warble a bit of "The Way We Were" in a tribute to her onetime leading man, Redford, that the 83-year-old multi-hyphenate perhaps inevitably turned into a story about herself.
But as a roll call of (largely expected) winners – none more anticipated than Hamnet's Jessie Buckley (pictured below) – made their way to the stage, so did far too much ludicrous blather from presenters, not to mention a compere in Conan O'Brien who struggled from his opening monologue onwards to connect with the audience. By the time he was seen gassed at the end, in a parodic film clip riffing on a defining scene from One Battle, O'Brien looked both stricken and defeated: repeating an assignment he took on last year, the TV host and comedian seemed unlikely on this evidence to be back in 2027 for a third hosting gig in a row.
Possibly the best part of a wildly distended night came at the very start. Got up in the signature, um, style of Weapons' secret weapon, the instantly iconic Aunt Gladys, a suitably wigged and bespectacled O'Brien was chased by an array of children through a mixture of (pre-taped) segments that found the whacked-out witch interacting with various best picture nominees before culminating in a live race up the aisle of the Dolby Theatre. O'Brien quickly reappeared this time as himself, and the ceremony proper began – a buoyant sequence that by the end of 3 hours and 40 minutes felt as if it had happened last year. (A new prize – for casting and won by Charlotte Kulukundis for One Battle – expanded the list of Oscar categories to 24; theatre folk will remember this winner's late uncle, Eddie, who was a prominent financier and producer in and around the West End.)
The winners won't have poleaxed most Oscar pools. O'Brien's Aunt Gladys soon found that role's originator, the wonderful Amy Madigan, take the prize for supporting actress, her legs shaking, or so she revealed during a touching acceptance speech that culminated in a loving shout-out to her husband, four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris. Supporting actor Sean Penn, One Battle's terrifyingly clenched Col. Lockjaw, was a no-show in what marked the renegade performer's third Oscar. Conversely, Hamnet's ever-enthusiastic Buckley – the night's one absolute lock – told her husband, Fred, that she would like "20,000 more babies" with him, presumably as part of what she eloquently termed "the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart". One Battle's Paul Thomas Anderson, a father many times over, used his joint wins for writing and directing to remind the audience, however gracefully, that he had lost 14 times before.
That said, Sinners seemed the clear favourite amongst those assembled, Ryan Coogler's layered story of twins, vampires, and juke joints prompting cheers with every mention and repeatedly catapulting the audience to their feet. Coogler himself was an exultant recipient of the prize for original screenplay, and while Jordan wouldn't have been my personal choice for leading actor amidst formidable competition (Timothée Chalamet! Wagner Moura!), the shoutout to his adoring mum was as heartfelt as the actor's resonant roll call of the Black talent that had preceded him at the Oscar podium. (That said, you have to wonder what Chalamet at this point has to do to win an Oscar, if Call Me By Your Name, A Complete Unknown and now Marty Supreme weren't sufficient, voters this year having cast their ballots before his much-maligned remarks about opera and ballet went viral.)
And it was a measure of the stiff competition that the prize in the song category went not to "I Lied to You", which all but sent the Dolby auditorium into liftoff in performance, but to "Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters, which won additionally for animation. Shame, though, that both prizes for the Korean film found their exuberant recipients played off by an overzealous orchestra, who would have done better to drown out the introductory idiocy to one award or another that soon became the norm.
Where to begin on that front? It was sweet to have five cast members from Bridesmaids reunited 15 years after the release of that film, but they did they really need to read out hand delivered (made-up) notes from the likes of nominees Benicio del Toro or Stellan Skarsgård? The sound award at this late date surely doesn't need explaining, and the editing prize to One Battle was preceded by comic interplay between father and son actors Bill and Lewis Pullman that was dead on arrival; ditto onetime Moulin Rouge co-stars Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman singing about love – huh? – before announcing best picture. O'Brien for his part looked increasingly ashen, perhaps derailed by a tough crowd at the start and more than one joke that pointedly failed to land. Indeed, repeated shots of a ceaselessly bouncy Teyana Taylor made one wonder whether the supporting actress nominee might hook up her apparently limitless energy supply to help fuel next year's Oscars.
The lame writing was thrown into bold relief by repeated references to our "very chaotic, frightening times" – O'Brien's assessment near the start returned to in numerous, often immeasurably moving ways. There before us was Gloria Cazares, mother of 9-year-old Jackie who was shot dead in the Uvalde school shooting that was part of the grievous landscape of All the Empty Rooms, winner of the prize for documentary short.
David Borenstein, accepting the feature-length documentary prize for Mr Nobody Against Putin, pointedly reminded us that "when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don't say anything, when oligarchs take over the media ... we all face a moral choice". Add in presenter Jimmy Kimmel's conjoining of North Korea and CBS – this from a talk show host at bellicose odds with his own government – and we were reminded of the one battle after another posed these days by the real world. Sure, it's fun to see presenter Demi Moore dressed to resemble what seemed to be a pineapple plant: that stuff all forms part of Oscar lore. But let's cut the puerile banter going forward and allow the passion and the power of movies, and those who tend to them, to have their say.
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