My only real reservation about last year’s Academy Awards was that they were safe and predictable, both in terms of the show itself and and the winning results. But after the chaos that was the 2022 show, they needed to be. After what was probably the worst telecast in the Awards’ history (and I would remind people that’s even excluding “the slap”), there was a need to prove the show could be competently produced, respectful of the artists and their art, and still fun and inventive on some level. The 95th Oscars did a great job on the former two points, and especially at bringing a sense of passion back into the proceedings. The 96th might just edge it out on the last.
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This was another show without a lot of surprises in the winners, that had its dud moments and snub moments, but was generally a pretty good and efficient ceremony. I’m not the greatest fan of Jimmy Kimmel, back for his fourth time as host, but he is a good company man for the production; he can keep the ball rolling, and hits a sweet spot in terms of his relationship to the celebrities and the movies -in that he takes neither very seriously, but doesn’t cross the line into antagonism or contempt. He’ll teeter on the edge, as in perhaps the worst taste moment of the show where he made a couple drug jokes at Robert Downey Jr.’s expense that Downey clearly didn’t find funny, but he had the good sense to back off (even if he didn’t have the good sense not to plug his show at the end of the ceremony -but I suppose that’s inevitable as long as the Oscars remain on ABC).
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Kimmel is still not quite a Billy Crystal though, much as he seems to want to be by clumsily inserting himself at the start of the show into that scene from Barbie where the title character meets an elderly woman on a park bench. His monologue was predictably mixed -he was obligated to bring up both 'Barbenheimer' and the dumb discourse around Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie’s snubs (both of whom were nominated as producers of the film and Gerwig as screenwriter). And of course the long-tired cliché about bemoaning the length of the show and how overtime it’ll go (this year’s went over by about twenty minutes). On a similar subject there was some ribbing of movie run-times in reflection of another prevalent discourse this year, only half as uncomfortable as a gag about Bradley Cooper dating his own mother. However, a great joke came out of the recent news of a new category coming soon for Best Casting, where Kimmel alluded to actors having to watching the person who turned them down win an award.
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If anything it was the stars that saved this monologue, from Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie fist-bumping to Downey just channelling everybody’s confused reaction to Kimmel’s ‘square penis’ joke, and perhaps best of all Jodie Foster expressively affirming a gag about being twenty years too old to date Robert De Niro -something that De Niro even seemed to acknowledge when the camera turned to him (a similar joke came up later in the ceremony about final presenter Al Pacino having to call in a sitter for his very young child). The best reactor, of both the monologue and the whole show was Steven Spielberg -who seemed to master a perfect deadpan look into the camera at multiple junctures, most effectively as participant in a joke about Kate McKinnon accidentally sending nudes to him instead of Jeff Goldblum.
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But really what made this sequence meaningful in spite of the bad jokes was the end bit that acknowledged last year’s strikes -and credit to Kimmel, between his jokes he seemed completely sincere in his conviction on the importance of Los Angeles as a union town and that the strikes were necessary to ensure the future of the industry. And perhaps Kimmel’s best punch of the night came here when he rightfully mocked the Directors Guild for “folding immediately” on their lousy contract. At the end of the sequence, a chorus of behind-the-scenes technical workers were brought out on stage and given a rousing applause both for their support during the strikes and in solidarity for IATSE’s upcoming negotiations with the AMPTP.
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The rest of the show played out quite smoothly. One of the best decisions (even if it did take up some additional time) was the bringing back for each of the acting categories five previous winners (including of course the winners from last year) to briefly talk about each respective performance in lieu of a movie clip. This was done back in 2010 as well, and it ought to be a tradition as it infuses each nomination with a little more gravity. The acting nominations are selected by the acting branch of the academy and so it is incredibly meaningful to have actors out on stage to celebrate the craft of the nominees. Even if she didn’t win, America Ferrera still got to hear Rita Moreno gush about her performance while evoking a classic musical number with her name -it’s great! And nobody seemed to be half-assing it, each presenter appeared to be genuine in their appraisals -especially those who had relationships to the nominees they highlighted, like Jamie Lee Curtis for Jodie Foster or Sam Rockwell for Robert Downey Jr. There were some great moments that came out of this decision, like Ke Huy Quan being as adorable as ever talking about Sterling K. Brown’s artistic journey or Nicolas Cage noting how he like Paul Giamatti would totally go blind in one eye for a performance. Another thing I liked a lot was the aesthetics for the different categories, with pillars lit up to showcase the nominees in an appropriate context for the category -whether it’s images of the characters from the Best Animated Features to individual film frames in succession for Best Editing. In communicating the significance of each discipline I felt this did a really good job.
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Some of the presenters did less of one -notably Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy ate up time with a very lame bit while presenting the screenplay categories. For some reason the announcer David Allen Grier kept mispronouncing Anya Taylor-Joy as “Enya”. And there was an awkward joke from Dwayne Johnson about Bad Bunny’s English. But for the most part the presenters were really good. John Mulaney may have gone far into a stand-up set on Field of Dreams but he had charisma McCarthy and Spencer didn’t, Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara were quite funny presenting Best Make-Up. Keaton later got to be singled out by Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Danny DeVito as both of them had gone up against Batman -DeVito utterly killing it by noting he was defeated by being “thrown out a window”. A couple younger presenters like Zendaya and Ariana Grande just seemed wholesomely excited to be there, and in perhaps a push for another category to be added, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt introduced a cool tribute to stunt performers.
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Likely to be the most talked about presenter segment though was a routine between Kimmel and John Cena, meant as a “tribute” to fifty years ago at the 46th Academy Awards when a streaker ran across the stage. While Cena initially played reluctance to do it, eventually he did cross the stage seemingly naked, envelope at his crotch to announce Best Costume Design. It was a laboured bit but ultimately funny enough for that great visual gag of a punchline. So too was a moment late in the show where Kimmel read out an apparently genuine Trump post about the show (Kimmel’s “past your jail time” line was pretty good).
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As usual the most elaborate parts of the Oscar show are the Original Song performances. And with the exception of the rather dull John Batiste number, they were all quite impressive. “The Fire Inside” didn’t have a chance of winning but Becky G and her child back-up dancers performed it with gusto. Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell were of course terrific performing the soulful “What Was I Made For”, and it really was something to see a troupe of Osage singers and dancers up on stage performing “Wahzhazhe”, a song I’m sure is unlike any other that has been nominated here. But of course the big one was “I’m Just Ken”, probably the biggest movie song of the year, that Ryan Gosling, despite not being a live musical performer, knocked out of the park! Beginning by setting his cowboy hat on Margot Robbie’s head, to being joined by a fleet of back-up dancers including fellow Kens Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Scott Evans, and Ncuti Gatwa (making for the rare occasion Doctor Who has been at the Oscars!), to dragging the cameraman on stage and then closing it all out by singing alongside Robbie, Gerwig, and of all people Slash, it was the stand-out moment of the night that wasn’t a win.
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And I guess now is the time to get to those wins. Here again though, there were not a lot of surprises. Best Supporting Actress, first of the night, went to Da’Vine Joy Randolph whose speech was lovely and emotionally charged and set a precedent for winners throughout the show to thank often low-credit figures in their careers like publicists and stylists. War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko won Best Animated Short Film, and Best Animated Feature went to The Boy and the Heron; the second non-Disney movie in a row to win the award it is also only the second anime film to win it after Miyazaki’s previous Spirited Away. Miyazaki of course wasn’t on hand to accept, but it goes to show just how much great respect he has accumulated from animators (and perhaps also how much younger now that voting base is) that this win was possible. The Screenplay awards then came surprisingly early in the telecast, with maybe the biggest surprise of the night coming with American Fiction winning Best Adapted (I was sure it would go to Oppenheimer, Barbie, or Poor Things). But maybe I just underestimated how much writers like a script about a writer. Cord Jefferson gave a great speech that acknowledged both his limited time to speak and the vital importance of funding mid-budget movies like his. Original Screenplay went to Anatomy of a Fall, crushing my hopes of Past Lives pulling out at least one win. Justine Triet commented the Oscar would help with her mid-life crisis. In the audience, despite being uninvited just the other day, Messi the dog was seen happily “applauding” the win.
Poor Things then had a roll, winning Best Make-up, Production Design, and Costume Design consecutively. Best International Feature went to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, and in a night where the politics in the atmosphere around the show were kept to a minimum (several in attendance wore red pins symbolizing a call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and a protest on the war was held outside the Dolby theatre delaying the show by six minutes), the British Jewish filmmaker went up on stage and in no uncertain terms condemned the war as he noted the parallels to the present we must find in movies about the past. “Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst,” he said. “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. All the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?” The absence of booing that followed was another rare surprise for the night.
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Best Documentary Short then went to The Last Repair Shop, and its feature equivalent to 20 Days in Mariupol -where came the second explicitly political speech of the night from director Mstyslav Chernov, who noted this was the first Oscar for Ukraine. His speech went into how he wished he never made the movie and would trade the Oscar for an end to Russia’s invasion -he went on to stress the strife in the region and for his people before closing on the poignant assertion that “cinema forms memories and memories form history.” It was a touching moment, undercut by the music of “I’m Not Ken” following it to commercial break.
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When the show resumed it was Oppenheimer’s Hoyte van Hoytema who after several nominations won his Oscar for Best Cinematography. Best Live Action Short went to The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, interestingly marking the first Oscar win for Wes Anderson -though he was not in attendance. The Zone of Interest then won Best Sound, again certainly the right result as no other movie this year so depended on sound for its harrowing mood. Former Community composer Ludwig Göransson took home his second Academy Award for Best Original Score for Oppenheimer, thanking his parents for buying him musical equipment rather than video games. All the songs performed, Barbie won its single award of the evening -but in spite of the energy of “I’m Not Ken”, “What Was I Made For” was the one that got it. Billie Eilish accepted with her trademark Gen-Z befuddlement -setting yet another record as recipient of two Oscars at only twenty-two.
Following this was the In Memoriam segment, which began with a quote from Alexei Navalny (who was the subject of last year’s Best Documentary winner), and then set beautifully to “Time to Say Goodbye” performed by Andrea Bocelli and his son. It was a badly shot sequence though, the camera rarely came in close enough that the names of the deceased could be made out; once again focusing more on the performers than the artists being homaged and then condensing a ton of them into names on a single collage.
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The final awards proceeded with Best Actor going to Cillian Murphy who thanked his twenty year partnership with Nolan, and in lieu of his performance dedicating his award to peace. Best Director was next -Spielberg on-hand to present and it was quite fitting. In 1994, he was the most popular movie director in the world finally winning an Oscar for his work, and now he presented one to the man who is his equivalent in the twenty-first century: Christopher Nolan. Nolan gave a gracious speech, ending on a note about the history of film and where it is possible to go from here, and how much it means for him to be considered an important part of it.
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In what might be seen as a slight upset after several wins in other awards shows, Lily Gladstone ultimately lost Best Actress to Emma Stone -a loss she took immensely well though. Singling out Gladstone as spiritually sharing the award with her, Stone accepted her second Oscar while pinching her back as part of her dress was coming apart -but took it all in stride, making a joke about it before expressing her thanks and appreciations. The show finally ended with Best Picture; a slightly absent-minded Al Pacino not bothering to list the nominees instead awkwardly reading Oppenheimer off of the envelope (Kimmel had just made a callback to the 2017 fiasco so I was a mite concerned). But there was no mistake, it was Oppenheimer’s night -ending a run of seven wins with Best Picture. The crew and assembled cast (several already carrying Oscars) got up on stage as producer Emma Thomas -Nolan’s partner, emphasized the collaborative process of making the movie, almost forgetting to thank the Academy themselves.
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Seven wins for Oppenheimer, four for Poor Things, two for The Zone of Interest, and a fair spread for other nominees -with one glaring exception. It was a long shot for Maestro or my beloved Past Lives to win anything, but Killers of the Flower Moon -for its ten nominations- went home empty handed. It’s the third time this exact thing has happened for a Scorsese movie -both Gangs of New York and The Irishman were just as unlucky. And there’s going to be an argument that Gladstone in particular was robbed, tied in with the Academy’s larger issues surrounding representational recognition. Though I preferred Stone’s performance, a part of me agrees Gladstone should have won -it would have meant more certainly,and we would for sure have gotten a great speech out of it.
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But that is a nitpick really given the quality of both performances and of the movies this year. It was such a strong line-up that I can’t begrudge any result -a rare thing for the Academy Awards. One of the first things noted at the show’s conclusion has been that Oppenheimer is the highest-grossing (and thus most statistically “popular”) movie to win the Academy’s top prize since The Return of the King exactly twenty years ago. With Barbie and even Killers of the Flower Moon in the mix there as well, does it exemplify a return to populist Oscar winners? The thing is, it might -but only because populist movies are starting to get that good again. Audiences are turning out for generally better movies. And something like Dune: Part Two -perhaps a serious contender at next year’s show- is demonstrating that it’s not a movement confined to 2023 alone. I wonder if that means the Oscars are poised to gain in relevance again.
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It’s tough to say. The Oscars are in a weird spot. They were broadcast an hour early this year to give some space for an hour of prime-time after the show (and more specifically to premiere a new episode of Abbott Elementary). A reminder it is still an event at the whim of the corporate masters of ABC and Disney -who were sure to use the show to promote upcoming projects- and of course the show is going to be available to stream on Disney+ in the next week. How long before Disney decides to cut out the ABC middle-man altogether, as Netflix was able to do this year for the SAG Awards.
The usual kinds of hiccups notwithstanding, this was a pretty great Oscars ceremony; in presentation, in wins, and in those moments that make for good Oscar history -maybe not to the degree as some of the speeches last year, but I’m certainly going to be replaying a few of them. It’s nice to have my love-hate relationship with the Oscars on more of the loving side lately -and who knows, next year could be a repeat of 2015 or 2017, 2019 or god forbid 2022. But for now I’m pleasantly content with where things are at it, optimistic about where they will improve, and looking forward, though distantly, to the 97th Awards next year.
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