Nomadland, Chloé Zhao’s meditation on grief and the damaged American dream, won Academy Awards for best picture, director and actress at Sunday night’s surreal ceremony, a stage show broadcast on television about films mostly distributed on the internet.
It was a sleepy event until the final minutes, when academy voters served up a dramatic twist ending: Anthony Hopkins, 83, won the best actor Oscar for The Father, beating out the late Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), who was the runaway favorite going into the night, having been lauded by film organizations and critics’ groups for months.
(The New York Times, April 25, 2021)
Trust me, Hopkins upsetting Boseman (posthumously) is the reason every review of last night’s show might seem more like a dirge than a celebration. It was self-evident that everyone, except the voting members of the Academy, expected Boseman to win.
Hell, given the acceptance speech he gave this morning from his home in Wales, because he couldn’t be bothered to attend, even Hopkins expected Boseman to win.
And it did not help that the genius producers recruited to helm this year’s show saved this downer award for last, swapping Best Actor award with Best Picture, which usually ends the show.
No doubt, given prevailing expectations, his intentions were good. But this turned out to be a well-intentioned flub (more on him later).
So thank God I didn’t bother to watch. Granted, I never do – as the following from “My Review of the 2008 Oscars,” February 25, 2008, attests:
________
With all due respect to critics and members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Academy), how much a film makes, not whether it wins an Oscar, is the generally recognized measure of its success. This, especially considering that winning an Oscar is more the result of crass political campaigning than any assessment of artistic achievement.
Indeed, it might surprise, if not disillusion, many of you to learn that studios covet the Oscar for Best Picture primarily because — as Sumner Redstone, the owner of Paramount, conceded in a moment of extraordinary candor — it guarantees millions more in box office receipts. …
I’m on record stating how much I dislike the annual Academy Awards show (the Oscars). Because I have little regard for preening, pampered poseurs showing off their borrowed frocks and bling-bling as a prelude to a nearly four-hour show — only six minutes of which anyone really cares about (i.e., the time it takes to present Oscars for actor and actress in a leading role, actor and actress in a supporting role, best director, and best picture).
_________
That said, I always peruse the reviews, if only for the schadenfreude of seeing upsets. But karma is indeed a bitch. Because the last thing I wanted to read this morning is that Chadwick Boseman was the actor members of the Academy – in their mostly old, white, geriatric wisdom – decided to upset.
I mean, why not upset Frances McDormand of Nomadland for either Viola Davis of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom or Andra Day of The United States vs. Billie Holiday. After all, I gather McDormand demonstrated during her acceptance speech that she puts the mad in Nomadland. As Whitney might’ve said, that woman is whack.
Apropos of which, the most interesting storyline going into the Oscars was that Blacks could sweep the acting categories. Well, they ended up winning one of four with Daniel Kaluuya winning the Best Supporting award for Judas and the Black Messiah.
Leave it to Gayle King of the CBS This Morning show, though, to provide consolation by saying Regina King won for best dress. Ha!
But trust me, this might be that proverbial blessing in disguise. Because, if that storyline played out as so many had hoped, I would be warning this morning about a backlash.
Because, for white Hollywood, this would’ve meant not just absolution for past racist sins, but entitlement to commit them all over again. You need only think of how America followed the election of the first Black president by electing arguably the most racist one since Reconstruction.
Coming full circle, producers of the Oscars floated another storyline – clearly to stoke interest. This one hyped their hiring of superstar director Steven Soderberg to helm this show.
Perhaps you noticed the shade the Times threw at this in its review above. But here’s the shade I threw at it in the comments section to its preview of this show:
With all due respect to Steven Soderberg, nobody tunes in to an awards show to see how a director can make it look ‘like watching a movie’.
Anyway, that’s a wrap.
Related commentaries:
The Oscars… Chadwick Boseman… Podcast: dissing award shows…