The parasitic Oscars®
Sorry to take so long to gather and share my thoughts on Sunday night’s Academy Award telecast, but I was waiting for Renee Zellweger to finish her speech. (Badda-bing!)
Personally, I was really proud of myself. There should be an Oscar for the viewer who has stayed awake during the whole ceremony the most years in a row in an inconvenient time zone. Every year I think to myself, you know, I’m getting too old for this shite. Next year I should just get a good night’s sleep and then watch the highlights on YouTube. You know, like I do for the State of the Union and the Democratic primary debates. And every year I wind up sitting there all night anyway in a cold room hanging on every uninspired moment.
This year it was even more of a feat. The previous day (I mean Saturday; I’m trying to not to confuse my American readers by mentioning that it is actually Monday by the time the Oscar telecast starts here), Ireland had a general election. In the system here you generally cannot vote absentee, so students away at college have to go home on election day if they want to vote. My kid wanted to vote in the election, but it was a very busy weekend at school, so she had a mere 12-hour window for traveling home, voting, and then turning around and traveling back. So guess who got to collect her at a Galway bus station at 3 in the morning? So, yes, I pulled two, count ’em two, quasi-all-nighters over the course of one long weekend. Please keep your applause down.
The cool thing this time (apart from the temperature in the room) was that for the very first time the Missus stayed up and watched the whole thing with me. This meant I only had to watch the thing once. Traditionally, I have always also watched the abridged international version that airs in prime time the following evening with the wife and kid, but this year there was no need. Yay! Once was definitely enough.
But enough about me. As you can tell from how my Academy Awards predictions worked out, I was mostly blindsided again. I totally underestimated the extent to which Academy voters have gone all foreign movie on us. Sure, they voted for the same four actors that every other film body has voted for all during awards season, but they went against the conventional wisdom on Best Picture, Best Director and Original Screenplay to give the awards to Parasite, and since they couldn’t also give that movie the award for Adapted Screenplay, they gave that one to Jojo Rabbit.
I’m already hearing comments that this is only further evidence that Hollywood is increasingly out of touch because they gave the top prize to a movie that “most people” didn’t even see. Hey, they could have done worse. Parasite was a really good movie and—this is what really seems to have won voters over—it is impeccably crafted. If you are going to reward filmmakers for pure quality of work, then this is a fine choice. Sure, it’s no Avengers: Endgame, but then few movies are. As I got into in reviewing my prediction results, however, the fact that the same movie has now won Best Picture and Best International Feature definitely raises tricky questions about awards categories as they currently exist.
So how was the show in terms of entertaining those of us at home? What can I say? They have continued the downward trend of squeezing out every un-scripted, spontaneous bit of spirit out of the thing—even to the point of eliminating the host for the second year in a row. Sure, the old reliables (Steve Martin/Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph/Kristen Wiig, James Corden/Rebel Wilson) who came on to present were funny in their bits, but it was all too familiar.
Acceptance speeches? As usual, the best ones were by people you never heard of. In fairness, Bong Joon Ho and his interpreter Sharon Choi are a delight no matter how many times you have to listen to them. As for the actors, well, they always remind us why they are actors and not screenwriters or, for that matter, theoretical physicists. As I inferred, Zellweger went on for too long, but at least her message was about uniting people and not about dismissing half the potential filmgoing audience as rubes, like a lot of self-important actors. (That reminds me. Where was Meryl Streep?) I never get tired of Laura Dern praising her parents, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. Joaquin Phoenix? What can I say? If you cannot use the Academy Awards as a platform for venting your feelings about cow insemination, then what good is it anyway? At least his customary rant this time was somewhat redeemed by a touching reference to his late brother River.
I was most looking forward to Brad Pitt’s speech since his previous ones have been very good. His quip at the Golden Globes telling Leo DiCaprio he should have gotten on the raft in Titanic was, well, golden. His speech at the BAFTAs was the best one of the night at the Royal Albert Hall—and he wasn’t even there. Margot Robbie had to read it and it got off to a great start with a Brexit joke: “Hi, Britain. Heard you just became single. Welcome to the club. Wishing you the best with the divorce settlement.” Good one! It ended with a joke about him naming the statuette Harry and looking forward to bringing it back to the States with him. (I am sure that tickled Prince William who, as president of BAFTA, was front and center in the audience.) By contrast, his Oscar speech was nowhere near as good, bizarrely beginning with a rant about the U.S. Senate not hearing testimony from John Bolton. Hey, it’s okay, Brad. John Bolton will be all right. I promise. You probably haven’t heard, but he’s written a book, and we will all get to read it, and it’s going to make him a shedload of money which he can use for his pet warmongering causes, and it won’t matter a bit that he never got to testify. Stop worrying your pretty little head.
Part of the fun of watching this stuff from here is the Irish angle. This time around, all of the country’s hopes rested on one person. Saoirse Ronan was nominated for Best Actress for Little Women, and the media here were beside themselves talking up her chances and then dwelling on her disappointment when she didn’t win. It’s cute the way they go one, just like every four years when they always seem to expect the Irish soccer team to win the World Cup. Hey, Irish media, she’s 25 years old and she’s already been nominated for Oscars four times. I think she’ll be okay.
The other focus of Irish interest was in the orchestra pit. Galway’s own Eímear Noone, whose composing and performing work includes the World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor video game, was highlighted for being the first woman to conduct at the Academy Awards. Too bad that Sigourney Weaver managed to butcher the pronunciation of her name.
How will some clueless Yank presenter manage when the Best Actress award is finally announced as going to someone named Saoirse?
-S.L., 11 February 2020
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