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While Sean Baker’s Anora was the clear winner at the Oscars, winning in five categories, including Best Picture, Actress, Director, Editing, and Original Screenplay, it was the film’s producers who emerged as the big winners, as the central theme of the evening’s event was production. All three producers—Baker, Samantha Quan (his co-star), and Alex Coco—gave acceptance speeches in which they noted that their project was independent (with a budget of $6 million and a crew of about forty people, Coco noted) and the product of love and dedication. In this regard, they were not alone. Brutalist, which was independently made for about $10 million, also won three awards; its lead actor, Adrien Brody, won for Best Actor, and the film also picked up awards for Original Score and Cinematography. True Pain, made on a budget of about three million dollars, brought Kieran Culkin the statuette for best supporting actor. Even the mighty Pixar lost to the independent animated film Flow, made by Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis for about four million dollars with, as he put it, a small team of “two or three people.”
The success of independent film on the night is not at all unique; in fact, it has become a noticeable trend over the past decade, as evidenced by three wins out of eight nominations for Moonlight in 2017 and three out of six for Nomadland in 2021. But within the ceremony itself, these apparent triumphs highlight the paradoxes and conflicts that threaten the economic foundations of independent filmmaking, and that present a painful conundrum for the producers and other film professionals in Hollywood and beyond who make up the Academy’s voting membership. Conan O’Brien, as spontaneous and energetic a host as the ceremony has been for years, noted that the broadcast was watched by a billion viewers worldwide. However, the only Best Picture nominees this year with impressive box office numbers were Wicked and Dune 2 (each of which has grossed over $700 million to date) – they took home only awards for production design and technical achievement, respectively, recognizing elements that cost a pretty penny to make.
The most significant Oscars, in other words, went to films that were unlikely to be seen by many viewers of the broadcast. But while the awards have bypassed spectacle, the Oscars ceremony is something more, if not more, glitzy. Like the franchise films and popular IP that the Academy largely rejects, the show is a big-budget production so tacky and overdone, so carefully calculated in its doses of emotion and glamour, that by this point it’s almost unwatchable. Just as ratings films are tested and manipulated to the limit, the Oscars are warped to suit what executives think audiences want. Is the ceremony going on too long? Okay, speed it up: add short host jokes, interrupt acceptance speeches with brutal force, and keep the (usually elderly) honorary Oscar winners offstage altogether, relegating them to an awards ceremony held out of public view before the New Year. But don't rush it, or there won't be room for showmanship. (How funny are talking heads, no matter how famous?) So make sure to sing songs, and then find excuses for increasingly bombastic set pieces. One such piece involved O'Brien repeatedly singing, “I won't waste my time,” and it was a complete waste of time.
As a result, the heart of the evening—that is, the chance to see the people of big cinema become more like themselves than a long soundbite or a list of acknowledgments—feels increasingly rushed and perfunctory, as if the show is apologizing for what it is at its core. And with each change, the ceremony becomes more denatured, more synthetic, less fun, less personable, and less truly celebratory. With the forced joy of its frenetic pace, it has all the warmth and charm of a visit to the emergency room. There’s little humanity in a statuette nervously presented in front of the stern face of a ticking clock, with producers stamping their feet backstage.
When Sean Baker accepted the Best Director award from Quentin Tarantino, he urged directors, distributors, and audiences to visit theaters for a “shared experience you just can’t get at home.” In one segment of the filmed comedy, O’Brien pitched a new concept to several streaming clients called CinemaStreams, a building that streams movies to them live and on a large scale — a movie theater, of course. But the movies that win Oscars don’t draw significant crowds to theaters. I like going to the movies, too, but trying to attract
Sourse: newyorker.com
