The Oscars: Washing Away Sins, Awarding the Favored


The Academy Awards Show is a little like Good Old Reliable Nathan from “Guys and Dolls”:

They’re good (partly), old (going back to the 1920s) and, for sure, reliable. At the Oscars, all manners of sins are forgiven—sins of shamelessness, sins of foot-in-mouth-disease, sins of fashion (extremely unforgivable among the unforgiving fashion critics), sins of omission (where are the many missing nominations for “Selma” and the one for Clint Eastwood?), and just your usual run-of-the-mill sins, entirely particular to Hollywood, that enclave of look-at-me, self-absorption, wretched excess, accompanied by hordes of media minions, given to mind-blowing displays of both buttering up and cutting up (and down).

Yet, amid the sometimes unbearably tedious length of the proceedings, things happen. Drama breaks out. Tears, some of them genuine amid the sea of actors, flow. Surprises occur, although perhaps not where they’re expected. The deserving get rewarded (good for you, Julianne Moore; you go, J.K. Simmons) and sometimes people say just the right thing (Simmons, again, the ad pitchman and television character actor who won the supporting award for “Whiplash,” telling viewers to call their parents), and sometimes not (Sean Penn, on announcing the three-time winner Alejandro Inarritu, saying, “Who gave that S.O.B. a green card?).

The favored front-runners pretty much won: Eddy Redmayne for Best Actor, playing Stephen Hawking; Moore for “Still Alice,” playing a woman suffering from dementia; “Birdman” for Best Picture, Patricia Arquette for Best Supporting Actress and Simmons for Best Supporting Actor.

What didn’t happen was almost as interesting—“American Sniper,” which has been getting critical praise (and some damnation, too), and big box office, got hardly anything, and omitted Eastwood again from a Best Director nomination, even though he showed up. “Boyhood,” which had critics swooning as only the smitten can, got little except for Arquette’s nod. The evening seemed to be a triumph of the fact-driven, small, and slightly independent film—witness “Whiplash” and “The Grand Hotel Budapest,” which won a number of awards, letting us see faces we ordinarily do not get to see in People Magazine.

Host Neil Patrick Harris was smooth, but also a little underwhelming, even when he stripped down to his skivvies and revealed himself to be quite buff. There is a little bit of disconnect there, but that might have something to do with the fact that the whole ABC night—counting a 90-minute red carpet show amounted to more than four and a half hours.

Just when you’re feeling a little dizzy, up came Arquette, getting Meryl Streep and other actresses to jump out of their seats advocating for equal pay and women’s rights. Just when you think nothing can move you, country star Tim McGraw singing ailing Glen Campbell’s moving “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” to an audience stunned into silence. Tears erupted also when John Legend and Common sang and rapped “Glory,” the song from “Selma.”

And who knew that Lady Gaga could be such a Broadway star, running through a medley of songs from “The Sound of Music” on the occasion of the film version’s 50th anniversary? Actually, Tony Bennett probably knew.

Those nice surprises and those moving movements almost always make the Oscars, if not relevant, worthwhile.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *