"... We begin our presentation at the place where every great movie begins, with a story that simply had to be told."
Last night's first presenter, Emily Blunt, spoke these lines before her co-presenter, Charlize Theron, handed the Original Screenplay Oscar to Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy, the writers of Spotlight. Spotlight also won the final, and most important, award of the night, Best Picture(as I correctly predicted), but nothing else in between. So last night's great(?) Oscars show literally began and ended with Spotlight's powerful story. Those 2 wins match the fewest for a Best Picture winner since 1952's The Greatest Show on Earth, which also only won for Best Story and Best Picture.
The movie with the most wins last night? Mad Max: Fury Road, as I correctly predicted. Every one of its 6 wins(Best Editing, Costume Design, Hair & Makeup Design, Production Design, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing) was the Moment of the Night for me.
*Mad Max: Fury Road editor Margaret Sixel, who's also the wife of the film's director, George Miller
I predicted that Mad Max would be the one, instead of The Revenant, to sweep the technical categories, therefore opening the way for a Spotlight victory. One Mad Max prediction I missed? I went out on a limb and said that George Miller would edge out Alejandro G. Iñarritu for Best Director. For the first hour and a half, as Mad Max was beating The Revenant in every tech category, and The Revenant was also losing to upset winners Ex Machina in Best Visual Effects, and Bridge of Spies' Mark Rylance in Best Supporting Actor, I was feeling pretty good about my prediction, and about Mad Max's chances to pull off the historic Best Picture upset.
*Best Supporting Actor winner Mark Rylance
But as I wrote in my Oscars preview on sunday: "If you gave me a choice, I'd say Iñarritu is more likely to win Best Director than Best Picture, seeing as how The Revenant joins Mad Max without a screenplay nomination ..." so I wasn't that far off. After last night's results, there have still only been 2 Best Pictures in the last 50 years to win without a Screenplay nomination: The Sound of Music and Titanic. But The Revenant did have a good, and historic, night. Iñarritu's win for Best Director is his 2nd consecutive win in the category, something that's only happened three times now in Oscars history, and not since 1949-1950. He gave a great speech, touching on the major theme of the night, diversity, all while the orchestra was trying to play him off, something that didn't happen to DiCaprio. When you win 2 consecutive Best Director Oscars, you don't bow down to the orchestra. Good for you, Iñarritu!
That win was also the 3rd consecutive win for Mexican directors in the category. Alfonso Cuaron preceded Iñarritu's 2 wins in 2013 for his work in Gravity. Speaking of 3 consecutive wins for Mexican filmmakers, Emmanuel Lubezki completed the 3-peat in the Best Cinematography category for his beautiful work in The Revenant. He previously won with Cuaron and Gravity in 2013, and Iñarritu and Birdman last year. He is the first filmmaker in the category to accomplish that feat.
The 3rd and final Oscar for The Revenant came in the category that was the biggest lock of the night: Leonardo DiCaprio for Best Actor. He finally gets his first Oscar on his 5th career Acting nomination, and 22 years after his first nomination. And he definitely didn't disappoint once he got on stage, giving what was one of the best speeches of the night that included an important message about climate change.
Other winners with important messages included: Sam Smith, who upset Diane Warren's(she loses again) and Lady Gaga's(EGOT dreams shattered for now) "Til it Happens To You"(which itself was an impactful moment featuring the victims of sexual abuse on college campuses) for Best Original Song and spoke about LGBT inclusiveness as an openly gay man, Pete Docter, who won the Best Animated Feature Oscar for Inside Out and encouraged kids to #makestuff, and Adam McKay(along with Charles Randolph), who won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Big Short(the only win, correctly predicted by me, for the 3rd supposed frontrunner of the night) and spoke about the evils of unrestricted campaign financing in politics.
But the one message that hogged the spotlight from Spotlight was the whole #Oscarssowhite controversy. Some of the moments worked, like Chris Rock's opening monologue(which got my predictions off to a good start as he took only 6.83 seconds to say the word "black" after he started speaking, much faster than the 30 seconds I predicted), and the bit about placing black actors in some of the nominated films, but by the halfway point it felt like every time they would come back to that topic it would grind the show to a halt. I mean, we get it, more diversity, equal opportunity for not just black actors, but hispanics, asians, and other races too, but could we please just get to who won for Best Actress ...
It was Brie Larson, a lock going in that was the only win of the night for Room.
The other actress to win was Alicia Vikander, for her supporting(really a lead, but whatever) performance in The Danish Girl, also that film's only win. Both were young, gracious, first time winners and nominees, who stayed away from the political discourse of the night, and helped to balance things out a bit.
But in the final moments of the show, it was a little difficult to focus on the Spotlight producer's message about the catholic church sexual abuse scandal, when it was sandwiched between the sight of Morgan Freeman walking out on stage(see viewers? we let black Oscar winners announce the Best Picture winner too) and Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" playing over the closing credits(see viewers? we're hip with the black community, even though this song was released in 1990). So perhaps, in a year where so many causes and controversies were battling for the attention of over 800 million viewers, it was only fitting that the eventual winner turned out to be (the)Spotlight.
