The Hits, Duds, Hope and Change of the 90th Academy Awards

  

The Oscars are superficial. They don’t and never have alone denoted a movie’s quality. Some pretty terrible films have won Oscars while many classics and masterpieces never got one. This has been the case going back to the first ever Academy Awards where Wings won, while qualifying greats like The Passion of Joan of Arc and Metropolis got no recognition. Yet a lot of us movie fans still watch them fervently, but why? For me, it’s because they’re a celebration of film, and even if they don’t always pick the right nominees or winners, it’s fun to judge what films are worthy of the most adulation. Even those who don’t care for the Oscars use their categories as a template. It’s also curious, given the politics behind the Oscars, how they represent current attitudes in American pop culture and media; how certain choices are influenced by the conscientious and ideological tide of Hollywood. Sometimes, this results in Crash winning Best Picture; but it can also result in the first black man winning Best Original Screenplay for a movie that may not have been the best in its category, but deserving of credit nonetheless.

          And so for that I watched the 90^th Academy Awards and was excited to do so, despite this being one of the longest shows in recent memory –which is saying something. For a landmark year of these Awards, 2018’s show managed to be both an important one and an underwhelming one. Jimmy Kimmel returned to host and I think the Academy has finally found a host who’s just bland and safe enough yet enthusiastic and funny once in a while to trust. He’ll probably come back again. The opening was done in a very minimalist fashion for the Oscars –being just an old time sensationalist parody even I already did last year. But there were a few decent gags in it. The show officially started by obviously acknowledging the elephant of last years’ mix-up before proceeding into a few jokes about Weinstein and the sexual harassment situation in Hollywood. The best joke was an observation on how every Best Picture nominee has already been beaten by Black Panther at the box office. There were a few noted landmarks, such as Christopher Plummer being the oldest acting nominee in Oscar history, Timothée Chalamet being the youngest in his category, and Jordan Peele being only the third person nominated for writing, directing, and picture on his debut film (and he’s in pretty good company in that regard, Orson Welles being the first for Citizen Kane). The running joke throughout the show was a promised jet-ski as a prize for the shortest speech. I was very disappointed this came back, but LaKeith Stanfield shouting “get out” instead of the traditional music to play off a long speech never did.
          One thing this show did better than others in recent years was the choice of presenters. There were your typical batch of celebrities reading cue cards obviously and one really bad moment where the cast of Star Wars, who have proven chemistry, were forced to tell jokes somehow even lamer than Kimmel’s preceding “ten-year-old me” bit. But this show also featured a funny Kumail Nanjiani, the awesome Eva Marie Saint, Rita Moreno, Wes Studi, and Christopher Walken. Daniela Vega became the first trans presenter at the Oscars (perhaps the first trans performer involved with the Oscars at all), and it was great to have Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence joking about Meryl Streep sabotaging them –if anything it’s just nice to have people at a ceremony like this not kissing up to her. The Oscars wisely broke with tradition by not letting Casey Affleck present Best Actress, which was nice. That’s another responsibility the Oscars had to have this year. Though the Golden Globes was more visceral in addressing Hollywood’s harassment scandal, it needed to be brought up here too. Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra, and Salma Hayek took the podium with a message, and many other presenters and winners addressed the feminist and equality theme of the night. There were a few acknowledgings of other recent political topics, such as the plight of dreamers and the Parkland students’ campaign, but foremost was the necessity for change in the opportunities afforded to women and minorities in filmmaking. There was a good video segment featuring directors like Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, and Ava DuVernay that especially took an optimistic approach to this evolution in the industry. And though it’s easy to be cynical about Hollywood just trying to cultivate a progressive impression, I do have hope that what they’re saying will come to fruition.
          That being said, the show wasn’t very entertaining a lot of the time. For the most part Kimmel wasn’t funny. His best contribution was a stunt where he took various celebrities over to the theatre across the road (interrupting an advance screening of A Wrinkle in Time) to surprise the audience and give them treats. On the one hand, it was very reality show and the guy Kimmel picked to introduce the next presenters gave an expectedly awkward reading; but on the other hand, Gal Gadot saying this experience was better than the Oscars and Armie Hammer shooting a hot dog cannon is just too surreal not to enjoy. Kimmel seemed out of it for the rest of the show and even the jet-ski became an afterthought. The musical presentations for the song nominees were fine, but didn’t stand out, and the power of “This is Me” was diminished significantly by the fact that none of the disenfranchised figures from The Greatest Showman were there as back-up performers.
          There also weren’t a ton of surprises this year in the winners, starting with Sam Rockwell winning a long-deserved Oscar for Three Billboards and giving a great speech to boot. Darkest Hour won Hairstyling & Makeup for turning Gary Oldman into a convincing Winston Churchill, and Costume Design went to Phantom Thread (and it would be really be embarrassing for the film about dressmaking if it didn’t). Icarus, the film about Russian doping, won Best Documentary while Dunkirk took both Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. The Shape of Water’s first award of the night was for Production Design. Best Foreign Language Film went to A Fantastic Woman from Chile, the only one I’ve actually seen, and really worth checking out. Alison Janney got Best Supporting Actress as most of us predicted, for her hateable but enjoyable performance in I, Tonya. It was nice to see former Disney great Glen Keane win with Kobe Bryant (yeah that’s a weird combo) for the animated short Dear Basketball, and of course Coco won Best Animated Film, despite the grander artistry of Loving Vincent or the more emotionally engrossing Breadwinner. But it is still a great film despite Disney’s monopoly on the category making its win seem less so. And I liked the dedication to Mexico. In fact, between Coco’s wins (it also scored the Lopez’s second Best Original Song statue), Daniela Vega and A Fantastic Woman, and del Toro, this was pretty strong year for the Hispanic community. Despite its many other snubs, Blade Runner 2049 won Best Visual Effects for some of the most mesmerizing visuals and impressive compositing I’ve ever seen; yet somehow Dunkirk beat Baby Driver for Best Editing. The Silent Child and Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 won for Live-Action and Documentary short respectively. Veteran screenwriter James Ivory won Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me by Your Name, and as mentioned before, Jordan Peele won Best Original for Get Out. By far the most satisfying award of the night was when Roger Deakins after fourteen nominations finally won Best Cinematography for his enrapturing work on Blade Runner 2049. He’s a true cinematography legend and it’s nice he’s been vindicated at last by the Academy. Alexandre Desplat’s beautiful score for The Shape of Water earned him an Oscar, and not long after, del Toro won Best Director for that same passion project. Gary Oldman predictably won Best Actor for Darkest Hour going a little long with his speech, even for the Oscars. And then Frances McDormand triumphantly collected a second statue for her role in Three Billboards, a role which may still be my favourite character from last year. And as soon as she said “I’ve got some things to say”, it was a sure thing hers was going to be an incredible speech. With formidable directness and conviction, she quickly got her own thanks out of the way before setting down the Oscar and getting all the women nominees to stand before delivering them a powerful message about getting their stories told. It was certainly a highlight late into an overlong show. For Best Picture though, they brought back Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, which I felt was mistake given it put the focus more on last years’ fiasco than this years’ winner. Nevertheless there was no confusion this time: The Shape of Water took the top prize, del Toro got to give another great speech, and Mark Bridges (the costume designer of Phantom Thread) got to take home Kimmel’s jet-ski.
          If not for the mix-up last year, this year’s Oscars would certainly be more memorable, however it was still mostly mediocre. Its best moments were in some of the speeches, the genuine air of hope for the future, and the few moments when it did feel like a landmark ceremony. Probably my favourite part was a lengthy movie montage that I’m sure will draw criticism, but for a cinephile like me, I loved it. It was a tribute to just about every era, every genre, every style of film, and it was glorious! That’s where the celebration of movies is that prompts me to watch the Oscars year after year. They did a smaller version for each of the acting categories, showcasing performances that have won in the past, and even a war movie tribute that relied too much on Saving Private Ryan. But I still really enjoy that kind of stuff, and the assuredness that there are going to be more great films added to those rosters from more new and diverse points of view in the years to come has me in eager anticipation. The 90^th Academy Awards may have left a little to be desired in some areas, as they certainly always will, but as a statement towards the future more than a tribute to the past, I find it promised more for the Oscars to come than many a ceremony that has preceded it.