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Any Oscars ceremony in which most of the major awards go to Anora and Brutalist, two strikingly profound and personal films that are a promising sign for an American independent film that has not faced the expected challenges, is a remarkable Oscars ceremony indeed. That was not an inevitable outcome, or immediately apparent once the event began Sunday night. At more than three and a half hours, Brutalist is the longest of the Best Picture nominees, and while director Brady Corbet moves at a brisk pace—something that was slightly lost on Oscars host Conan O’Brien when he made his obligatory joke during the broadcast—the film, like a slow-moving giant, gradually awakens. It was only in the second half that Corbet’s picture began to pick up the pace, winning three awards in a row: best cinematography, best original score, and best actor for Adrien Brody.
Meanwhile, Anora proved itself to be a very competitive film throughout the evening. It won five Oscars, including four for Sean Baker, for writing, editing, directing, and producing; he shared the best picture prize with fellow producers Samantha Quan and Alex Coco. With that achievement, Baker tied the record for most Oscars won by one person in a single year, which had been held by Walt Disney since 1954. (Note: Bong Joon-ho nearly joined that esteemed company in 2020 with four Oscars for Parasite, but one of them, for best international feature film, is technically awarded to the submitting country, not the director—it’s an achievement for Korea, not a career achievement.) Note also that Disney, unlike Baker, won its four awards for multiple films; Moreover, unlike Baker, Disney did not accompany its Oscar triumph with a rousing “Long live independent film!” And Uncle Walt did not appear to be voicing solidarity with sex workers, as Baker has been vocal about since Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year. Its star, Mikey Madison, echoed these sentiments when she accepted the best actress award for her physically and emotionally charged performance as a Brooklyn stripper, noting that she would “continue to be a supporter and an ally.”
Indeed, if there’s one thing Anora and Brutalist have in common, both onscreen and behind the scenes, it’s a dedication to the art of the hustle. Baker and Corbet understand this well, having learned to hold their unconventional ideas together with courage, economy, and resourcefulness. Both are avid cinephiles, outspoken advocates of going to the cinema—something Baker laid out in his best director acceptance speech, drawing applause while emphasizing the difficulty of maintaining creative control while still making a profit. (Neon’s Anora and A24’s The Brutalist have each grossed about $40 million worldwide—solid sums for both, though nowhere near the nearly billion-dollar haul of last year’s juggernaut Oppenheimer winner.) Unsurprisingly, both Baker and Corbet have seized the opportunity to offer pessimistic, if not downright bleak, views on the American dream. The Brutalist signals this from the start with an inverted image of the Statue of Liberty; what follows is an epic of lingering trauma and artistic compromise in which a Hungarian immigrant’s most generous benefactor turns out to be his nemesis. Likewise, the promise of an unlikely financial rescue is repeated repeatedly in “Anora,” a rollicking Cinderella story that, amid riotous sexual passions and brutal comedic outbursts, culminates in a barely whispered “happily ever after.”
The voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could only have further underscored their deep American pessimism by paying tribute to Nickel Boys, Rahmel Ross’s extraordinary drama about two black boys who endure the hell of a notorious “reform school” — really, a government-sponsored crypt — in 1960s Florida. Brilliantly adapted from Colson Whitehead’s devastating 2019 novel, Nickel Boys was the best American film I saw last year, and my personal favorite of the Best Picture nominees. That it walked away empty-handed from the ceremony — where Ross, oddly, wasn’t even nominated for Best Director — was expected, but no less disappointing.
Nevertheless, Sunday was a night of American dreams coming true and some enjoyable historical premieres. Paul Tazewell, accepting his Oscar for best costume design for “Wicked,”
Sourse: newyorker.com
