In the very best of all worlds, the Oscars are exciting: fun and suspenseful, moving and meaningful. At their most supreme, they leave you with the sensation that movies matter. Within the worst of all worlds, the Oscars are boring: blasé and predictable, overrun by kitsch, with no seeming import. But then there’s the in-between version, which is what we got tonight. The Oscars this 12 months weren’t boring, since the winners felt like they mattered (and were good selections), and the individuals who put the show together have learned — by listening to the gripes about boring Oscar telecasts — the way to sand off the rough edges and avoid the missteps and keep the spectacle moving.
However the Oscars tonight weren’t exciting, either. They were a bit rote. Not because they were badly executed, or larded with segments that made you groan (by my count, there have been none), but because they tended to take the safest route possible. The set, with its tall wall of slatted windows revealing plants on the opposite side, resembled nothing a lot as an open-air steak restaurant within the lobby of an oversize corporate hotel. (After some time, the backdrop shifted to sushi restaurant.) It was pleasing and cozy and a bit generic, just like the show itself. Conan O’Brien got here out and did an entertainingly sharp monologue, from his Ted Sarandos diss (“That is his first time in a theater!”) to his AI shoutout (“I’m honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards!”) to the inevitable benign tweak of Timothée Chalamet (“I’m told there’s concern about attacks from each the opera and ballet communities”) to a joke of pure juvenilia that was just…funny (“Between ‘Hamnet’ and ‘Bugonia,’ it’s been a giant 12 months for movies that sound like off-brand lunch meat”).
Yet one reason that Conan now rules the Oscars just like the recent Jimmy Kimmel, if not the brand new Billy Crystal, is that the jokes were trimmed of the cutting sharpness the Oscars have flirted with previously. Conan struck a note of friendly winning mockery, and made a touching statement at the top of his monologue in regards to the joy and optimism that movies incarnate. Then it was on to business as usual.
We went into the show expecting suspense, because major categories were up for grabs, and that may produce its own horse-race tingle. The perfect actor category remained a nail-biter: It was considered one of the one times I can remember when right all the way down to the wire, after the names had been read, I felt as if any considered one of 4 nominees (Michael B. Jordan, Timothée Chalamet, Ethan Hawke, Wagner Moura) could win — and, making the entire thing a bit surreal (no less than for me), the actor I personally would have chosen, Leonardo DiCaprio, was the just one out of the running. Jordan’s win provided the night with a much-needed catharsis, because this was really the Academy’s deepest acknowledgment of the ability of “Sinners” — and watching Jordan’s beautiful speech, with its shoutouts to the past and its confidence in the longer term, you realized just how much of the film’s personality got here from him.
But there have been telling indications, early on, that “One Battle After One other” could be marching to victory, starting with the indisputable fact that it won the award for best casting, a brand new category that many predicted would go to “Sinners.” The triumph of Sean Penn, though he didn’t show, only seconded that feeling. And by the point Paul Thomas Anderson took the very best director prize, the trajectory of the night had begun to come back clear. Anderson, as he’s been throughout the season, was the soul of pensive grateful modesty, though it felt like he’d taken a page from the Book of Chalamet when he admitted how much he wanted that director prize. And I could be amiss if I didn’t ask why, during his acceptance speeches, the director of “Boogie Nights” (still his biggest film, by the best way) kept rubbing his gold statuettes, as in the event that they were magic lamps he thought might disappear.
The 2 performances of numbers nominated for best song — the transcendent “Golden” from “K-Pop Demon Hunters” and a type of international restaging of the “Pierce the Veil” sequence from “Sinners” during “I Lied to You” — were each killer. The reunion of Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, from “Moulin Rouge!” (a movie now 25 years old), was tart and touching, though the “Bridesmaids” reunion (the solid members gathered to present the award for best rating and wound up reading sexist notes “written” to them by Stellan Skarsgård) didn’t levitate in the identical way. The In Memoriam section found room for major statements, from Billy Crystal’s pitch-perfect tribute to the populist artistry of his friend Rob Reiner to Barbra Streisand’s touching homage to her “The Way We Were” costar, Robert Redford. I actually have to say, though: How could this segment have omitted any mention of Brigitte Bardot? She became a right-wing troll, but she’s an important a part of film history.
For all that, the crucial element missing from the evening was a more explicit salute to what “One Battle After One other,” as a movie, really meant. We didn’t need obnoxious political preaching — though I did like hearing Pavel Talankin, the co-director of the very best documentary winner “Mr. No one Against Putin,” speaking out against the “complicity” that permits fascism to take root. In contrast, Javier Bardem’s sloganeering (“No to war. And free Palestine!”) felt like a dated throwback to the era when Oscar celebrities would turn the rostrum right into a soapbox. But “One Battle After One other” is a movie that has the politics of America today on the very core of its cinematic DNA. The film was not a bit of “resistance.” It was a bit of cathartic political art. In a night where it took home six Oscars, that reality must have been on the forefront of the celebration of its triumph. As a substitute, for those who tuned into the Oscars but hadn’t seen the movie they saluted most ardently, you would possibly never have had the slightest idea of what the movie was about.