The Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday was a celebration of cinema. What it was not, however, is a showcase for politics or social commentary. Neither the chaotic 14 months of Donald Trump’s presidency, nor the recent war with Iran, nor the entrenched conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine; not even the potential merger of Paramount and Warner, such a momentous piece of industry news, proved stronger than Hollywood glamour and cinema itself at the 98th awards ceremony. There were jokes and veiled references, but nothing explicit. The president’s name wasn’t even mentioned at a party where One Battle After Another emerged as the undisputed winner with six awards, including the biggest ones: Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Sean Penn), Best Editing, and the new Best Casting award.
Hot on its heels was Sinners, with four awards out of 16 nominations, and which dominated much of the evening’s conversation. The period horror film won for original screenplay, best actor (Michael B. Jordan, who got the biggest applause of the night), cinematography (Autumn Durald Arkapaw was the first woman to achieve this), and original score. Frankenstein took home three awards (makeup and hairstyling, costume design, and production design). The Spanish film Sirât, by Oliver Laxe, failed to win either of the two awards for which it was nominated, with Best International Feature going to Norway’s Sentimental Value. K-pop Demon Hunters won two awards (animated feature and original song, for Golden) and one went to F1 (sound), another one to Hamnet (best actress, Jessie Buckley) and another to Weapons (best supporting actress, Amy Madigan).
Madigan took home the first award of the night. The most veteran nominee in the category, for her now-iconic role as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, couldn’t stop laughing. “My legs are shaking!” she exclaimed, thrilled to be taking home “the little golden man” 40 years after her first nomination. Following Sean Penn’s nomination, which he was not there to accept (“he couldn’t or didn’t want to,” as Kieran Culkin said when presenting it), the awards for leading actors were left for last. First up was Best Actor, the big question mark of the night. It went to Michael B. Jordan, who brought the audience (and the press room) to their feet after defeating Timothée Chalamet. “I stand here because of the people who came before me, Sydney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Jamie Fox, Forest Whitaker, Will Smith,” he said, calling them “giants” and “greats.”
Irish actress Jessie Buckley, who won for best actress, told her husband, “I want to have 20,000 children with you.” She thanked Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell, the author of Hamnet, and remembered her eight-month-old daughter: “I’d like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart. We all come from a long lineage of women who continue to create against all odds. Thank you for recognizing me in this role.”
Buckley was the first Irish woman to win in her category. And it was not the only first of the night, many of them for women. There was Madigan, who took home her first statuette after 40 years since her previous nomination. There was Arkapaw, the first woman to win in the best cinematography category, who asked everyone in the room to stand, because, she said, without them she would never have gotten there. There was Anna Wintour, former editor of Vogue and grande dame of global fashion, presenting two Oscars (costume design and makeup and hairstyling, both for Frankenstein), and joking with Anne Hathaway. And there was the award for best casting, a new category for the first time in 25 years (next year there will be another one, for best stunt double). The winner was Cassandra Kulukundis, somewhat surprisingly, for One Battle After Another. Academy President Lynette Howell Taylor, in her first year in office, stated that we all need the joy of movies, for them to connect us with our experiences and change our perspectives.
There were also some unusual, if not unique, situations. For the seventh time in the 98-year history of the Oscars, there was a tie. It was in the Best Live-Action Short Film category. The last time it happened was in 2012, for sound; the first, in 1931-1932, for best actor. Furthermore, Sean Penn did not show up to collect his third Oscar. And there were a handful of reunions: the actors from Marvel and The Mandalorian, the Pullmans (Bill and Lewis, father and son), and the stars of Bridesmaids, who celebrated the comedy’s 15th anniversary. And those from Moulin Rouge, Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, celebrating and even breaking into song on the 25th anniversary of the film.
The audience also experienced a moment of profound emotion and communion. This year, the In Memoriam segment was especially poignant. The murder of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, in mid-December (their youngest son is the only suspect) deeply affected Hollywood. His close friend Billy Crystal took to the stage to speak about him, his art, and above all, their decades-long friendship. “They fought together against the injustices of this country,” he said of the Reiners. “Buddy, what fun we had storming the castle.’” As a final touch, some of the actors who had worked with him—from Meg Ryan to Cary Elwes, Demi Moore, and John Cusack—a total of 17 stars and friends, joined him on stage.
In a year of great loss, the full segment remembered Val Kilmer, Robert Duvall, Claudia Cardinale, Diane Ladd, Catherine O’Hara and Diane Keaton, who received tremendous applause from the audience. And as a grand finale, Barbra Streisand presented the tribute to her beloved Robert Redford, or Bob as she called him, praising the creation of the Sundance Film Festival amidst applause. “He was an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail,” she said with a smile, recalling how he always made her laugh and how they talked “on the phone about politics, art.” And she launched into a snippet of “The Way We Were” from the 1973 film, which won an Oscar in 1974.
The Best International Feature Film award was presented by Priyanka Chopra and Javier Bardem, who took the opportunity to send a political message: “No to war. Free Palestine,” he said before presenting Norway with its first Oscar for Sentimental Value. “All adults are responsible for all children,” said its director, Joachim Trier, quoting the American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin, “let’s not vote for politicians that don’t take this seriously into account.”
These were two of the few political pronouncements of the night. Mr. Nobody Against Putin won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature to thunderous applause. In the press room, its creators spoke about how filming it could have landed them in prison for up to 20 years, and they were also asked if they saw parallels between the situations in Russia and the United States. They themselves believed so, but their Russian colleagues assured them otherwise: “Things move faster in the United States. Trump moves much faster than Putin.”
In his second year as host, Conan O’Brien made a few political references here and there. He came out on stage as Aunt Gladys from Weapons, running while being chased by the children in the horror film, but went on to reference all sorts of movies, from the set of Hamnet to Benicio del Toro’s car in One Battle After Another, and even became an animated character alongside the K-Pop Demon Hunters.
But the one who made the most pointed remarks was his predecessor as Oscars host, the late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who became the epicenter of the conversation this year after his show was suspended by the Trump administration for a week in September. “We hear a lot about courage at shows like this, but telling a story that could get you killed for telling it is real courage,” he said. “As you know, there are some countries whose leaders don’t support freedom of speech. I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS.”
But in the end, it was a gala for and about film. There were only two musical performances, the soundtrack from Sinners and the K-Pop demon hunters with their viral hit Golden. It was a night for Paul Thomas Anderson, who took to the stage three times. “What a night!” he exclaimed. “Let’s have a martini.”
