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Last year may have been the year of “Barbenheimer,” but this year’s Academy Awards going forward will be known as the “Oppenbarbie” Oscars. There was plenty of bubblegum pink to go around, but the 96th Academy Awards effectively belonged to Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” his masterful biographical portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb. The Times’s chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and her film critic, Alissa Wilkinson, talk about the show, the awards, the snubs, the ridicule and, yes, even the movies.
MANOHLA DARGIS The movies are back…again! The survival of the medium often seems like a worrying message at the Oscars, but last night’s show was particularly – and genuinely – effervescent. The attendees are always excited to be there, but you could feel the happiness radiating from the people, even on television. Or maybe it was relief. The industry is still struggling in the wake of last year’s Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which effectively shut it down for about half a year, even as it was still trying to recover from the pandemic.
It is not surprising that the attendees did not stop jumping to give themselves a standing ovation. And while there were memorable moments (the shout-out to Yoko Ono, the close-ups of Messi the dog), I was especially happy when host Jimmy Kimmel asked the room to join him in giving a hosanna to the industry’s minions. line workers, or as he put it: “The Teamsters, the truckers, the lighting crew, sound, camera, gaffers, grips… that’s right, all the people who refused to cross the picket line.” The same people who could soon go on strike if their negotiations go badly. Solidarity, but fingers crossed too! How did it play on your TV?
ALISA WILKINSON I laughed. A lot! My Oscar night is usually filled with groans and eye rolls. Remember the 2022 “joyworthy moment” survey? Or exhausting monologues about how no one saw any of the nominees? – but I was really tickled by the bits and jokes, John Cena’s perfectly reluctant bit and John Mulaney’s breathless summary of the entire “Field of Dreams” plot. I loved all the backup Kens, dressed up to pay homage to “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” in a series full of Busby Berkeley references, and I found the presentation of the acting nominees by previous winners really moving.
The Oscars always aim to connect Hollywood’s present with its past, reminding us that there is a rich story behind every film and every nominee. That seems more important than ever right now, in an era where streaming makes it seem like you can watch whatever you want at any time, and yet a growing number of people consider any movie made before The 1990s are absurdly dark, the realm of Movie Snobs Only. In several of the most memorable moments, including Streaer’s joke, which referred to something that happened at the 1974 Oscars, it seemed as if the ceremony was looking back and forward. What do you think of that subtle pull in both directions?
DARGIS The Oscars invariably try to do that, in part, I think, because that reflection is built into these kinds of awards shows. There may be a kind of strategically nostalgic quality to the Academy Awards in particular, with their ritual nods to Hollywood’s golden age. If that urge to look back and look forward felt stronger this year, as you point out, I imagine people are grateful to be back at work doing what they love, paying rent and buying groceries. The average salary in 2021, according to SAG-AFTRA reminded us during the strike, it was $46,960.
This year, however, the look back is less nostalgic and more a declaration of faith in cinema as cinema, that is, in works that are seen in the cinema and that are sometimes shot on film, as he more or less said director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema when he collected his award for filming “Oppenheimer.” That’s one reason why having five previous Oscar winners help present the acting awards worked so well. I mean, what’s not to love when Nicolas Cage and Forest Whitaker take the stage together and shine their strange charisma in the room? Bringing in artists like Mary Steenburgen, who won her best supporting statuette for “Melvin and Howard” (1980), also created a continuity and, by extension, a sense of history that tends to be missing in an industry dedicated to the next big thing. . .
You know what also seemed old to you, but not in a good way? The hostility of the academy towards Martin Scorsese!
WILKINSON Exhausting! Although I guess you’re probably used to it by now. Scorsese is among the greatest living directors, virtually defining a half-century of American cinema, and yet he has been honored exactly once by the academy, when it gave him an Oscar in 2006 for directing “The Departed.” Since then, Academy members have shown that they love to nominate Scorsese’s films (five for “The Wolf of Wall Street,” ten for “The Irishman”) but prefer to send the statuette elsewhere. And “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which received 10 nominations of its own and the film we both chose as the best of 2023, went home empty-handed.
For an awards body known for awarding trophies to terrible performances because “it just seemed like it was their time”, this is all baffling. There are some possible explanations. Maybe the tedious speech about how long “Killers” is for some members of the academy. (Also the source of Kimmel’s worst joke of the night.) Maybe people assume that everyone else is voting for him. Maybe they just don’t like the movies, even though the nominations indicate otherwise. Scorsese also makes it look easy, so it may not be as memorable as others on the list. It is an oft-repeated saying that academia likes to reward the “more” of something rather than the “best” of something: those who perform the most, those who edit the most, and perhaps also those who direct the most. I have no problem with Nolan’s victories, but I sure would like to see Scorsese receive the praise he so richly deserves. (I’m sure someone on the Internet will chalk it up to his comments about Marvel movies, but in that room, I doubt that’s the problem.)
One of the “Killers” nominations was for “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People),” which was performed on stage. Its handwriting is in Osage, which was an example of how the academy paid attention to international and non-English-language films: three of the 10 best picture candidates and all of the nominated documentaries, plus the winning original screenplay for “Anatomy of a Fall ” demonstrate the academy’s growing international membership. Do you think that will have any effect on the Oscars?
DARGIS The international push will only intensify, in part due to academia’s diversification efforts, but also because of industry results. For some time now, at least until the pandemic hit, the international box office has accounted for at least half of the industry’s total takings. “Barbie” earned a staggering $1.4 billion worldwide, and more than half of that amount came from overseas markets. This year won’t be as flashy partly because, after the strikes, many release dates have been pushed back, but the trend will continue, as it should.
It was disappointing, then, that some members of the documentary branch Earlier this year he complained that there were no American films nominated. I understand that there is great unrest throughout the field because the market has been very miserable in recent years. But I can’t endorse the idea put forward in Variety by one producer that the absence of American documentaries this year essentially serves as some sort of setback for the field as a whole. Films like Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” about the siege of the titular Ukrainian city, which won best feature-length documentary, are not putting American filmmakers back in “a ghetto,” as this producer put it. . Awards for films like “Mariupol” make the academy seem less provincial. Plus, it’s a great movie.
Chernov’s acceptance speech was one of the most emotional of the evening and one of the most overtly political. It was surprising in its directness…unlike those little red buttons the attendees wore. I had to look up what they were (talking about performative)!
WILKINSON The other truly political speech, of course, was that of Jonathan Glazer, accepting the award for best international feature film for “The Zone of Interest.” He seemed nervous, but he was also the only winner who spoke about his views on the war between Israel and Hamas and, frankly, I would have been surprised if he hadn’t. It’s been clear throughout the season that he watches his movie, which dramatizes humans’ ability to look away from suffering and evil through very real atrocity, as if it spoke directly to the current conflict. It’s been a topic that few people have wanted to touch on during awards season, and he went there.
In fact, everything we’ve been discussing makes me think about this year’s Oscars in a new light. I thought a lot of the films were in tune with the kind of existential questions the industry is having to deal with right now. What is the responsibility of the filmmaker when it comes to geopolitical situations? Are decision makers really paying attention to the repercussions of their decisions? Will the industry prioritize machine-generated “content” over human-created art? And what are movies really? forat the end of the day?
In a year of big hits and small wonders, as well as big flops and heated disputes, it’s surprising that the show felt as seamless as it did. But I wonder if we’ll look back on these Oscars as if they represented a major turning point in Hollywood.
DARGIS I wonder too: I mean, the relationship between the Oscars and the American film industry has always been quite fantastic and ambitious. Every year the academy tries, in its sometimes absurd, certainly cynical, but often quite sincere way, to put on a show that reflects the best of the industry. Once upon a time in Hollywood, that meant a parade of glamorous, overwhelmingly white people under contract at the big studios; However, that show increasingly conveys a vision of a cinematic world (both in its hosts and in audience-directed cuts) at its most tolerant, diverse, inclusive, and perhaps independent-minded.
Not a bad sight to convey to millions of moviegoers in our ever-shrinking world. When Chernov accepted his Oscar, he certainly reminded us of a purpose that movies “serve”: “We can make sure that history stays straight and that the truth prevails and that the people of Mariupol and those who have given their lives will never be forgotten. because cinema forms memories and memories form history.” Hear! Hear!