It is always nice to have a personal connection to the Oscars, however slight and fleeting it might be; hearing Conclave screenwriter give a shout-out to my daughter’s godfather Simon during his acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay was a deeply pleasurable moment. Yet this joyful touch aside, what had initially looked like one of the most wide-open Academy Awards in history eventually proved to be nothing of the kind.
Indie director Sean Baker’s twisted romantic comedy Anora, about a sex worker who marries an oligarch’s son, had won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. After various twists and turns, it asserted its frontrunner status once again, taking four awards for Baker personally: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing. In one of the night’s more notable upsets, its star Mikey Madison triumphed over the more hotly-tipped Demi Moore, resurgent in the acclaimed body horror The Substance.
Inevitably some excellent films are passed over every year. After the return of big-name, big-star classicism in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in 2024, this ceremony marked a return to celebrating avant-garde, low-budget film, commensurate with the new make-up of the voting Academy. I would have loved to see The Brutalist take Best Picture and Best Director for the indefatigable Brady Corbet, who worked wonders on a tiny budget, but that modern-day masterpiece had to be content with Best Actor for its star Adrien Brody and Best Cinematography and Best Score. Conclave, a big winner at last month’s BAFTAs and a potential Best Film pick here, only took gold for Straughan, although it did engender one of host Conan O’Brien’s best lines (“A movie about the Catholic Church…but don’t worry.)
O’Brien, in fact, proved such a smoothly assured host that it seemed a wonder that he hadn’t been picked for one of the hardest and most thankless gigs in the business. He made self-deprecating gags (“A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, and Nosferatu…these are just some of the names I was called on the red carpet. I think two were fair”), largely defused the controversy over the once-heralded French-Mexican trans musical Emilia Pérez and its star Karla Sofia Gascón’s career-ending social media history (“Little fact for you, Anora uses the F-word 479 times. That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofia Gascón’s publicist) and even his song-and-dance number wasn’t entirely embarrassing. Expect to see him return to the podium in the next few years.
What was most interesting, in fact, was how apolitical the ceremony was. O’Brien steered clear of Trump gags. And the general determination not to cause offence might be seen in microcosm by the decision to award Kieran Culkin Best Supporting Actor for his lively performance in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain and thereby pass up his Succession co-star for his magnetic appearance as Donald Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn in the controversial biopic The Apprentice. Strong would undoubtedly have made an intense, politically charged acceptance speech; Culkin goofed around and, as has become traditional with the actor, asked his no-doubt embarrassed wife if they could have another child now that he has another award.
In fact, the most significant controversy is one that has barely had time to bed in. Several of the actors in Anora are well-known stars in Russia, and just as few of the American winners had anything meaningful to say about the current state of world politics, they have declined to make any comments about Putin, Ukraine or any of the other myriad controversies that their country is involved in. However, given the general antipathy that exists towards all Russians from those sympathetic towards Ukraine – inhabitants of the White House aside, clearly – it is tempting to wonder if the current vogue for standing against that country might have led to a boycott of all their works, including their actors. Such a decision might have made for a more interesting (and, whisper it, worthier) winner at what otherwise proved to be a surprisingly unsurprising Oscars, Moore’s snub aside.
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