Following the promising nominations, the Oscar ceremony felt like a disappointment. For the first time, the Academy had nominated international films such as “Sentimental Value” from Norway and “Secret Agent” from Brazil in the Best Picture category. Yet in the end, it was American productions that walked away with all the awards. The big winners, “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners”, had also entered the race with the most nominations. Both are lavishly produced films that play with genre elements and convey a message.
Since "Boogie Nights" Paul Thomas Anderson has been nominated for an Oscar eight times now he has finally won one – in fact, several – for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. “One Battle After Another” is his most commercial and entertaining film. His earlier works such as “Magnolia”, “There Will Be Blood”, “The Master” or “Phantom Thread” were rather subtle character studies; now he sends his characters on a wild trip through time, accompanied by spectacular action and slapstick sequences. “One Battle After Another” is alarmingly close to political reality, an unambiguous statement against the brutal deportation practices of the immigration agency ICE.
They could have done without awarding Sean Penn the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, though. Penn, who has already won two Oscars, didn’t even turn up at the ceremony. He plays the bad guy, ICE officer Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, as a two-dimensional, caricature-like character. The actor, who likes to be photographed as a political activist, was perhaps visiting President Zelenskyy in Ukraine at the time, to whom he had donated one of his earlier statues, for which he was awarded the Ukrainian Order of Merit in return. Teyana Taylor, who races through the film like a bolt of lightning, would have been more deserving of the award, as would her on-screen daughter Chase Infiniti, who wasn’t even nominated. Or the Norwegian discovery Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who impresses in “Sentimental Value”.
The fact that Joachim Trier’s film was only awarded Best International Feature Film was also a disappointment. In that category there had been stronger contenders such as ‘Secret Agent’ or the Palestinian-Tunisian production ‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’. Awarding the latter would have been a powerful statement against the war in Gaza – apparently too much for the current mood in Hollywood. Who knows what director Kaouther Ben Hania and her actors would have said on stage. At least Javier Bardem, as presenter of the award for Best Foreign Language Film, expressed his solidarity with Palestine.
The fact that the Danish-English-German production “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin was honoured as best documentary was not a highlight of the evening. Talankin ‘plays’ a teacher in the Russian provinces who is confronted with increasing ideological indoctrination in the classroom. What is presented as a documentary appears highly staged; one wonders how it is possible that the rebellious hero is constantly being filmed at school, and by whom.
“The documentary tries to heighten the stakes of Talankin’s story by casting his efforts under a pall of danger, dread or distress,” writes the New York Times in its review. The sense of menace that the documentary suggests feels just as staged as the film as a whole. One could almost suspect that one is dealing with a mockumentary.
Back to the second big winner of the evening, the vampire drama “Sinners”, which secured a record-breaking 16 nominations. Ryan Coogler directs a story set in the Deep South of the 1930s as a tale of black self-empowerment. White vampires threaten a black juke joint where people are dancing and singing exuberantly. Coogler won the award for Best Original Screenplay for this somewhat muddled story, which he stages with plenty of blood and an apocalyptic fire.
It came as no great surprise that Michael B. Jordan was chosen as best leading actor, having already won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award just a few days earlier. Jordan plays a dual role as the twins Smoke and Stack, two black gangsters from Chicago who refuse to be intimidated by white racists in Mississippi. Coogler likes to show Jordan with a muscular shirtless upper body to physically emphasise his black power. However, Michael B. Jordan has only a limited emotional range. “Jordan often seems like he’s playing blood pressure as an emotion,” as Wesley Morris notes in a profile of the actor in the New York Times. This works well in the action sequences, but is less convincing in quieter moments. Wagner Moura, who was also nominated and plays the lead role in “Secret Agent”, would undoubtedly have been the better choice.
Given the US war of aggression against Iran, the whole event turned out to be rather timid politically. Apart from Jimmy Kimmel’s biting remarks about Trump and Melania, there were few critical voices to be heard, with the exception of Javier Bardem. One recalls with nostalgia Michael Moore’s angry outburst against George W. Bush a few days after the start of the Iraq War in March 2003: “We’re against this war, Mr Bush! Shame on you!” The ceremony used to be criticised as ‘Oscars so white’. Now one could say ‘Oscars so American’. With “One Battle After Another”, there was a deserving winner. Otherwise, Hollywood is celebrating itself and seeking to avoid political controversy.