Amidst watching the updates on
the war to understand what’s happening in the Middle East, we also looked at
the clips streamed from the iconic Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, … the
arrival of celebrities … actresses walking in in crazy outfits, red carpet
interviews … emotional acceptance speeches at the 98th Annual
Academy Awards ceremony—the
biggest event of the entertainment industry—held on 15th March 2026.
This year’s show was hosted by
the comedian, Conan O’Brien, for the second year in a row. Critics commented
that he hosted this year’s event better than last year by exquisitely blending
silliness and self-deprecation with a splash of political commentary(?). Many
critics observed this year’s show as the freshest and most exciting. Even the
awards were on the lines of most of the prognosticators’ lists. Perhaps that
would have made this year’s Oscars more enjoyable for the masses.
As everyone anticipated, the comedy
action thriller, “One Battle After Another” produced by Paul Thomas
Anderson that received widespread critical acclaim and numerous accolades won
six Oscars at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday, including those for best
picture, best director (Paul Thomas Anderson), and Best Supporting Actor (Sean
Penn), besides Best Adapted Screenplay, Casting, and Film Editing.
Manohla Dargis, writing for The
New York Times, opined that ‘One Battle After Another’ is “a
carnivalesque epic about good and evil, violence and power, inalienable rights
and the fight against injustice; it’s also a love story. The film speaks to the
failures of the past and of the present but insists on the promise of the
future”. Hope is the spark of life!
There is another interesting
allusion that viewers of the movie One Battle After Another noticed: It
shows how authority is unpredictable and, through its enforcement power, how it
can destabilise entire neighbourhoods. Some critics have commented that this film
is a subtle pointer to the ongoing happenings under the aegis of the US
immigration authority. Nonetheless, critics say that the takeaway from all of
this is optimism. No wonder, as some argued, this film and the awards that it
fetched have at last cemented Anderson’s status as one of the foremost contemporary
filmmakers.
Its close contestant, Ryan
Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ picked up four Oscars: Best Actor, Best
Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Score. Unusually,
both these films had so much in common: both were released by Warner Brothers,
and both were genre-mashing projects handled by respected directors. And both
have white supremacists as villains
Michael B. Jordan, who
played both the lead roles in Sinners, became the sixth black actor to
win the Best Actor Oscar in its 98-year history. And Ryan Coogler became only
the second black screenwriter to win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Winning
the Oscar for Best Cinematography, Autumn Durald Arkapaw made history as the
first woman to win the award. Accepting the award, she quietly asked every
woman in the Dolby Theatre to stand up and share the historic moment with her. I
wish the women in the hall had given her a standing ovation on their own!
There was another historic moment
which I relished more: Jessie Buckley, who already won the Golden Globe for Best
Female Actor (motion picture) and other influential awards, became the first
Irish star to win the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Agnes
Shakespeare in ‘Hamnet’—a film
made out of a hugely successful fictional novel of the same name by Maggie O’
Farrell published in 2020. It almost reads like a bird’s-eye view of Shakespeare’s
life.
Jessie Buckley, though, confessed
that she was "conscious and scared" of whether she could portray the
character of Agnes "as honestly and bravely and humanly as possible",
for she was by then “not being a mother and having not lost a child”, gave such
a performance that it was “nothing less than magical”, as commented by Kevin
Maher of the Times.
In her acceptance speech,
Buckley, paying tribute to the singular love of mothers, said: “We all come
from a lineage of women who continue to create against odds”. Her statement by
itself is highly potent, but had one read Hamnet, these words— instantly recalling Agnes’s acts
of care, resilience, and her quiet defiance —make the statement register more
fully in one’s heart.
Lastly, I must touch upon the ‘In
Memoriam’, which was the highlight of the evening: the organisers presented
their tributes to the recently passed away film-industry icons quite wisely and
sensitively, acknowledging their contributions to the art. This year, they have
given more time than in the past to ‘In Memoriam’, wherein Indian actors were also
remembered.
Overall, this year’s Oscar ceremony
ended on a high note.
**
No comments:
Post a Comment