The director Sean Baker in all probability didn’t predict this consequence whereas he was filming Anora, his newest small-budget indie venture, within the snowy Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Seashore—{that a} couple years later, he’d be accepting Finest Image on the Academy Awards. It was considered one of 5 prizes that his spiky indie dramedy collected on Hollywood’s greatest night time. After a drawn-out awards season through which the most important contenders appeared usually in flux, Anora dominated at a enjoyable if elongated Oscars ceremony. This 12 months’s Finest Image winner additionally took house Finest Director, Finest Actress, Finest Authentic Screenplay, and Finest Enhancing. 4 of these trophies went to Baker, tying a file for particular person wins in an evening with the legendary Walt Disney; Anora’s younger star Mikey Madison acquired the Finest Actress trophy, in a reasonably surprising upset over the broadly tipped-to-win Demi Moore.
Anora is an unconventional Oscar juggernaut. As Baker reminded audiences from the stage, it’s a true indie image, made for $6 million and with no large names within the solid. However after a triumphant debut ultimately 12 months’s Cannes Movie Pageant, the place it gained the coveted Palme D’Or, Anora continued marching towards industry-wide recognition. The film’s success is the fruits of a profession that’s seen Baker taking advantage of shoestring budgets and filming complete films on an iPhone. However Anora—which bested blockbuster heavyweights like Depraved and conventional awards fare like A Full Unknown—was an particularly incongruous winner this 12 months, because it acquired its flowers throughout a notably old-school Academy Awards ceremony. This 12 months’s present jogged my memory of the extravagant, zingy celebrations of cinema from my youth, with a extremely competent host main the viewer by way of almost 4 hours of speeches, montages, and musical numbers.
Some would possibly see the occasion’s length as an issue. Certainly, issues over the Oscars’ size have led to some unusual truncations of the present in recent times. (Bear in mind in 2022 when the producers minimize some awards classes from the stay broadcast, presenting them earlier than it started?) This 12 months reused the 2024 ceremony’s pretty ingenious answer to the runtime drawback: Simply begin the entire shebang earlier. The stay broadcast began at 4 p.m. in Los Angeles, which meant even the comparably roomy proceedings wrapped up throughout primetime on the east coast. And although some acquainted causes of bloat, equivalent to performances of every of the Finest Tune nominees, had been absent, nature abhors a vacuum and this 12 months’s showrunners discovered loads of different superfluous moments to incorporate.
To be clear: I believe the surplus is nice. The Oscars needs to be lengthy, indulgent, and for the followers; the ceremony occurs every year, and it needs to be staged on the similar absurd scale as one thing just like the Tremendous Bowl. Any try and impose rigor and order on them tends to backfire in some sudden approach anyway. This 12 months, the present’s 97th version, there was little or no tweaking to the confirmed formulation. Conan O’Brien served as emcee, about as seasoned a selection possible for a first-time host, and he did precisely what an Oscar host is meant to do: inform pithy jokes concerning the nominees, do a few foolish, scripted bits, and in any other case maintain issues transferring with a smile on his face. O’Brien has been a professional at that type of factor since I used to be in elementary college.
The selection of O’Brien as host additionally set the expectation that this was in all probability not going to be a politically charged Oscars. The comic’s model is extra centered on irreverence than commentary; he provided one glancing gag noting that Anora is about “standing as much as a robust Russian,” however little else in that vein.. He took a few cheerful swipes on the Finest Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón over her previous inflammatory tweets, however in any other case steered away from Oscar politicking, too; this was not an evening the place it felt like an attendee would possibly take the stage to slap a presenter. As an alternative, the tone was self-serious, but nonetheless enjoyable, as exemplified by musical numbers celebrating the main girls of Depraved, the lately deceased producer Quincy Jones, and the James Bond franchise.
These segments had been conceptually free—why was The Substance star Margaret Qualley instantly onstage jerking her limbs to Paul McCartney’s Bond theme music “Reside or Let Die”? I couldn’t actually inform you, however the second felt just like the form of forgettable, florid nonsense that graces even probably the most polished of Oscar ceremonies. Yearly, the present’s producers strive to consider new methods to have fun films, however the hoariest strategies are normally finest. There have been some playful twists this 12 months, nevertheless, equivalent to performers addressing craft-award nominees on to highlight their work, or the stage opening as much as reveal the orchestra enjoying the nominated scores.
However largely, Oscar night time was pleasantly acquainted, a respite after years of comparatively chaotic ceremonies. This 12 months’s occasion did have a bit extra pep to it than final 12 months, when Oppenheimer swept the large awards, nevertheless. A number of movies picked up trophies: Behind Anora in variety of wins was The Brutalist, which ended up taking three classes (Finest Actor, Finest Cinematography, and Finest Rating). Dune: Half Two and Depraved every earned two technical trophies, whereas Emilia Pérez, the nomination chief, gained for Finest Supporting Actress and Finest Authentic Tune. Emilia Pérez’s turnout specifically was a fall from seeming dominance, maybe precipitated by Gascón’s controversy.
Or maybe not. Anora reigned supreme at most of the guild awards that presage the Oscars, which are usually the most effective predictors of these items. Regardless of the movie’s offbeat subject material—a few intercourse employee who impulsively marries a Russian oligarch’s son—and its screenplay stuffed with hectoring insults and curse phrases, Anora is a screwball romantic comedy at its coronary heart. Its story clearly spoke to the widest swathe of voters, even when many pundits predicted that the tonier, extra highfaluting grownup drama Conclave would emerge as a consensus winner. (That movie, a few Papal conclave gathering to pick out a brand new Pope, needed to make do with a sole win for Tailored Screenplay.)
Baker, a chipper presence every time that he took the stage, passionately learn from a bit of paper for his Finest Director win. He argued for the primacy of the theatrical expertise, a message that he’s been pushing all through this awards season. Deliberately or not, the present round him was doing the identical, harkening again to an older Oscars vibe—earlier than streaming cinema and shortened cinematic “home windows” had been an issue anybody within the viewers needed to take care of. Anora is presently one of many lowest-grossing Finest Image winners ever, however its $15 million home gross is a relative success for such a small-scale work at the moment. Baker’s hope, which is one I share, is that his Oscar success will spur studios to re-evaluate the significance of each the moviegoing expertise and artwork that reaches past big-budget homogeny. The Oscars, amidst all their silliness, stay among the finest methods to get individuals watching fascinating movies of all sizes.
