If this Oscar season were a movie, it would surely win the Golden Globe for best drama.
In the headline-making months that led up to Sunday night's show, it often seemed like we were asking more questions about the very nature of the Academy Awards than about who would actually win them. Could the ceremony soldier on without a host? Would all 24 categories still be broadcast live?
And did a variety of hasty, scuttled decisions -- among them, the desperate notion of introducing a popular-film trophy for big blockbusters -- suggest the Oscars were mired in an identity crisis they could not overcome?
I suspect we'll still be asking some of these questions next year, though Sunday's show was encouraging. After an awkward opening montage featuring critically derided duds like Tag and Destination Wedding -- the sort of thing that plays like a politician trying to woo undecided voters at the expense of his base -- the Oscars managed to settle into an appealing groove.
Fleet without seeming hurried, the show still knew when to slow down and linger. Overjoyed acceptance speeches from the likes of Spike Lee and Olivia Colman were allowed to play out in full, and the performance of "Shallow" from Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga was the sort of intimate high point that would have been lost if it had not been allowed to crescendo over several minutes.
Could a host have brought more coherence to the comic material? Yes, but the one-two punch of Queen's performance and Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph as the opening presenters offered comparable momentum to a killer monologue. At the Governors Ball after the show, I saw the academy president, John Bailey, clinking champagne glasses with his fellow governors: After months of controversy, they had still managed to land the plane.
Director Kimberly Peirce, who sits on the academy's board of governors, told me she was happy with where the show ended up. "Everybody saw some of our decision-making play out in the press, and you know what? I think that's par for the course. It's like when you make a movie: You have a screening and you get new information and things can change."
Peirce was particularly pleased that the academy had broadcast every category live, after the original plan to award four Oscars during the commercial breaks was met with an industrywide backlash. "I fought for that, I supported that, and I'm thrilled because everybody deserves their share," she told me.
Indeed, everybody got their share Sunday, since the eight movies nominated for best picture all picked up at least one Oscar. The biggest of them went to Green Book, Peter Farrelly's racial-issues comedy, which won Oscars for supporting actor Mahershala Ali as well as original screenplay and best picture.
The movie's awards strategist, Tony Angelotti, was all smiles when I found him at the Governors Ball. "You're always shocked when your movie's named best picture, and I've had the luxury of working on a few," he said, citing The English Patient, among other films. "That was supposed to win, and when they said the name, I was still shocked, because I've seen it go sideways so many times."
Most pundits, myself included, predicted the Netflix film Roma might take the top prize, and while it did collect trophies for director, cinematography and foreign-language film, many in the industry -- including Steven Spielberg, who helped champion Green Book -- resisted the notion of awarding best picture to a streaming service. As I spoke to Angelotti, one nearby well-wisher shouted, "Theatrical distribution lives!"
But the win for Green Book was not without its own controversies: The makers of the film have spent most of this season on the defensive. The star Viggo Mortensen issued a statement after he used a racial epithet at a Q&A, while Nick Vallelonga, a screenwriter, deleted his Twitter account after an old tweet surfaced that disparaged Muslims. Family members of pianist Don Shirley, played by Ali in the film, have also criticized Green Book for misrepresenting the man's life.
"There's been a lot of slings and arrows," one of the film's executive producers, John Sloss, admitted at the Governors Ball. "And yet the intention of making this film was very straightforward, from a group of decent people. As a very smart man once said to me, 'The only people who like Green Book are the audience.'"
Though some will be vexed that the same academy that rewarded Moonlight two years ago has now given its top prize to the far more conventional Green Book, that, too, is the nature of the Oscars. This is a show through which we can examine not just the state of Hollywood but also figure out where we're at as a culture, and what we glean from the mirror it holds up can be frustrating and illuminating all at once.
Just look at Hannah Beachler, who won the production design Oscar for Black Panther, and Ruth E. Carter, who earned the Oscar for the film's costumes. It was a highlight to see these black women take the stage, and sobering to realize that they are two of only three black women who have ever won an Oscar in a category other than acting.
Through their victories, many more can be inspired. "It was great to see them be honored and have a platform like that," Black Panther director Ryan Coogler said at the Governors Ball. "Sometimes people deserve certain things and they don't necessarily get them."
MovieStyle on 03/01/2019