When I laid out my predictions for the Oscars, there was one thing I didn’t take into account – that given the chaotic road leading up to the ceremony, this was always going to be a pretty weird year for award winners. The Academy’s desperate bids to remain relevant threatened to cut some of the technical categories from the live broadcast and paved the path to some big awards for some critically derided crowd-pleasers. So it was only fitting that the ceremony itself ended up being a mixed bag of highs and lows. And while there were many more highs, the few lows really stuck out.
Highs
A Hostless Ceremony
Following Kevin Hart’s decision to step down as the Oscars host, the Academy was left without anyone to hold the night together. As it turns out, this was probably the best thing for it. Without any lengthy monologues or montages, the Oscars flowed smoothly and rarely dragged at any point. A quick opening by Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler was all that was needed to break the ice before launching into the tight and well-paced proceedings.
Queen’s Opening
Queen’s legacy rocked the evening in more way than one when the ceremony opened to Brian May, Roger Taylor, and Adam Lambert performing a medley of ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘We Are The Champions’, and ‘The Show Must Go On’. Setting an energetic vibe for the evening, it was just enough to temporarily soothe our worries about this evening might not be so messy after all.
The Surprise Win For Best Actress
Up until this announcement, everything was pointing to Glenn Close finally taking out the Best Actress Oscar after a total of seven previous acting nominations. But although her performance in The Wife elevated it from being a good movie to a slightly better one, it still wasn’t enough to stop Olivia Colman from stepping in and nabbing that Oscar for her dithering portrayal of a miserable Queen Anne in The Favourite. Had Close won this year it would have been for nothing more than recognition of a great career rather than a great performance. But her time will come one day, and this year Colman truly was the most deserving recipient for this award.
Everything About Spike Lee
Speaking of unrecognised talent, Spike Lee finally got his Oscar win – but not in directing or producing. Along with a team of lesser-known writers, Lee instead took out the award for Best Adapted Screenplay, beating out The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Can You Ever Forgive Me, If Beale Street Could Talk, and A Star Is Born. But this was just the start – his jump into Samuel L. Jackson’s arms as he reached the stage, his rallying acceptance speech, and the shade he threw at some of the arguably less deserving winners of the evening made him the real MVP of the 2019 Oscars.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Wins
He might not have won the Best Picture Oscar, but Alfonso Cuarón’s wins for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, and Best Director were small glimmers of hope for the art film community in a ceremony that spent so much time recognising crowd-pleasers. Guillermo del Toro’s presenting of the Best Director award to his long-time friend was also a sweet moment that reminded us how many times in recent years they have dominated the category, along with their other friend Alejandro Iñárritu. This powerhouse trio of Mexican directors has consistently set a standard for other directors to live up to, and by continuing this trend of recognising one of them in the Best Director category the standard is upheld.
Lows
The Favourite’s Many Snubs
Yorgos Lanthimos’ weird little period piece The Favourite may have gone in with ten nominations, but it was sadly only successful in winning one of those. Its single win was Olivia Colman’s surprise upset mentioned above, but its performance overall was a little underwhelming considering how much love it had been getting earlier on in the awards season, and especially at the BAFTAs. I can’t be too disappointed here though because the categories I was rooting for it in (namely Best Costume Design and Best Production Design) ended up being snatched by Black Panther, which is still a deserving winner.
Bohemian Rhapsody’s Many Wins
Okay I might be a little biased on this one… but Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t a well-made film. Most of the blame can be put on Bryan Singer’s unprofessional behaviour on set, which led to him being fired and the rest of the team scrambling to salvage the rest of the production. In particular, the editor John Ottman was given the immense task of stitching it all together without any directorial overview. This lack of supervision shows in its inconsistency, with its brilliance peaking at the Live Aid sequence and dipping in scenes like this:
bringing this back because bohemian rhapsody actually won best film editing pic.twitter.com/D6zF0rTCSH
— ً (@fiImargot) February 25, 2019
The fact he got through it all on his own is impressive, but it was this ability to keep it together more than anything else that gave him the Oscar for Best Film Editing in the end. Along with this, Bohemian Rhapsody secured three other awards that night – Best Actor for Rami Malek, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing (A Quiet Place was robbed and you can’t convince me otherwise). As a result Bohemian Rhapsody won the most awards out of any other film that night, simply going to show the power of its passionate fan base.
Best Picture Upset
Oh Green Book… how wrong I was about this one. I had been getting way too comfortable with the Best Picture winners of the past few years being relatively free of controversy, so I really thought the Academy was over its days of bland, feel-good movies. If it wasn’t already obvious, my favourite to win this year was Roma, but I would have been pretty fine with any other nominee taking this award (with the clear exception of Bohemian Rhapsody).
Green Book isn’t a bad movie, but it is a forgettable one. A lot of its supporters will appreciate it for being a nice tale of two people who became friends and nothing more, and this would be fair enough if it was any other film and not the winner of the Best Picture Oscar. But when something is called the best film of a particular year, there are certain things this implies – it should represent a certain culture at a certain point in time, it should challenge us, and it should stimulate constructive, radical discussion.
The true story of Dr Shirley and Tony Lip’s road trip offered so much potential to dig into the loaded history of The Negro Motorist Green Book and ongoing racial tensions that have no easy solutions, but instead the most that can be drawn from the movie is a basic message that we should all be nice to each other. So while its win is not as egregious as Crash’s notorious success at the 2005 Oscars, it exists in a similar vein of commemorating rose-tinted films that celebrate liberal achievements without any level of self-awareness or nuanced critique.
If there is one positive thing that came out of this though, its that we can now play the game of listing people that producer Nick Vallelonga has more Oscars than – Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick…
