Nomadland Drives Away With Best Picture

 

An incredibly unusual year, both in reality and in film, finally comes to an end with a mostly dull Oscar ceremony. This ceremony was never going to feel like a normal Oscars, but some of the choices they made seemed especially strange regardless of the situation. We'll get into those in a minute, but first, let's look at the winners.

As expected, Nomadland won Best Picture and Best Director. Less obvious was its win for Actress for Frances McDormand. She now enters the very small ranks of Actors who have won 3 or more Acting Oscars. She is an exciting addition to that list, especially considering most people never would have even considered her as being in that class of Actor a decade ago. Nomadland as a Best Picture seems a little strange, but the options weren't really there for an alternative so it got there a bit by default. I'm curious to see how it holds up as a film years from now, divorced from the situation in which it won.

As for the other Acting categories, it was great to see Daniel Kaluuya win. Some actors just feel like they will be Oscar winners, and he was one of them. Yuh-jung Youn proved to be a delightful winner as well, and I'm glad she was the element of Minari that was recognized. But let's talk about that surprise Best Actor win. Of the five nominees, Anthony Hopkins was arguably the most deserving based purely on the performance. But he already had an Oscar and the narrative that Chadwick would win this posthumously seemed impenetrable. I suspect enough people caught up with The Father late to give it a surge during voting, combined with enough voters saying that "of course Chadwick will win, so he doesn't need my vote," thus resulting in enough people thinking he was safe and voting with their heart. Chadwick was never my preference of the five, but to end the show like that with him losing after so much hype, and then on top of that for Hopkins to not be there and the show to just end felt very mean.

And let's talk about the structure of the show. Saving Best Actor for the end was clearly meant to be for a specific reason, but that reason blew up in their faces. There is a reason awards show follow a specific structure, and this showed just why that is important. On top of that, Nomadland's historic wins for Picture and Director felt less significant by relegating them to earlier in the show. This is your favorite film of the year, why would you not want to build to it winning? There were so many other creative decisions that felt wrong. Not showcasing any of the work being nominated outside of five categories was baffling, especially in a year when a lot of these films haven't been seen by a wider audience, so giving them reasons to look for these films would have made a lot of sense. Instead they focused on the nominated craftspeople, which sounds good in theory but quickly becomes boring and redundant. A lot of these people don't want to be on camera, and the tidbits about some of them felt irrelevant and forgettable. I'd much rather see what they did than what they look like.

The whole show in fact felt a little listless. With no focus on the movies being rewarded, it just felt like reading off names all night. The comedy bit that came in at the 2:45 mark was both a wonderful reprieve from the pace of the show, but also very jarring since we hadn't been doing this at all up to this point. Even the in memoriam montage was rushed and to a terrible song choice. The whole thing felt like no one was really interested in an Oscar ceremony this year. Which is doubly frustrating because Steven Soderbergh was the producer this year and it sounded like he had a lot if interesting ideas on how to shake up the ceremony. Aside from that very cool opening shot with Regina King, none of it felt very inventive or clever. 

Random Thoughts

• I went 14 for 23 in my predictions this year, perhaps the worst I've done since really following the Oscars. I took some chances by predicting the underdogs in a few categories, but none of them paid off. Last year was my best ever for predictions so I guess I was due for such a bad night.
• I love that they brought the Honorary Awards back into the ceremony. That was the one thing about this year that really made me happy. And cool to see Tyler Perry get an Honorary. He's not the kind of guy who would ever win a competitive Oscar, but given the work he has done for cinema and the country, he is deserving of this.
• Nomadland becomes the first film since Million Dollar Baby to win Picture and Actress. They really have an aversion to female stories at the Oscars, so this was a nice drought to break.
• Frances McDormand now has as many Oscars as her husband, Joel Coen. Between them there are 8 Oscars in their home. 
• Such a shame that Glenn Close now ties the record for most losses by an Actor. And on top of that she had the one breakout moment of the whole ceremony with "Da Butt!" I really hope she gets one, or at least on Honorary soon.
• They really spread the wealth! Nomadland had the most wins with only 3 trophies. Everyone else had 2 or less.
• The whole show felt so humorless. I don't necessarily like all the comedy bits they try to do, but a few more would have been nice. Anything to liven things up just a bit!
• It was also nice that Frances made a point of saying how important it was we all go back to the theater as soon as it is safe to do so. It would have been nice if there had been any focus on that fact beyond her though.

So maybe next year they'll return to something more normal. It's hard to fault the Oscars too much this year given the circumstances they were dealing with, but it still felt like a missed opportunity to do something fun this year. Fingers crossed that they can figure out how to move forward next year when everything is back to normal.