Most predictions at the Oscars this year misfired. Todd Field’s Tár wasn’t enough — Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress for her role of a Chinese immigrant mom in America for Everything Everywhere All At Once over Cate Blanchett’s explosive and incandescent portrayal of Lydia Tár, a renowned classical music conductor who is embroiled in a career-ending scandal over accusations of serial sexual abuse. The profusion of moods and motivations that is demanded of Blanchett in their role is staggering. New Yorker’s Anthony Lane describes it wonderfully: “This woman is alive, ominously articulate, crisply styled, and all too present. She burns like a cool flame.”
It was the more unconventional, edgier choice to award an actor just for the power of her performance. Yeoh was all immersive and intense in her role of Evelyn, but her movie is about all the things that would satisfy a generation of audiences for whom diversity through actual representation is a crucial index of quality. It is also one of the most original screenplays to have come out of Hollywood in a long time — an ideal package for an academy award. Everything Everywhere All At Once won the top seven awards — Best Picture, Best director for Daniel Kwan (who had, hands down, the Best Speech by a non-actor at the ceremony) and Daniel Scheinert, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor Ke Huy Quan (who had the most impassioned, tearful speech about his long journey as an Asian actor).
It’s crucial to remember that the voter membership of the Academy increased by nearly 50 per cent in the recent years, and no longer consists of just actors or directors, but also journalists, radio hosts, influencers and other media professionals. Winners are more populist-leaning. Popular, culturally relevant films and performances have the edge. And the fact that Everything Everywhere All AT Once, which has an ordinary Chinese immigrant mother-daughter duo soar in surrealistic raptures, where talking pebbles offer insights into existence, became a global hit, has all the bait for the top awards. The Best Actor for Brendan Fraser for his role as an obese man trapped in his own physical and mental hell in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale was a lovely surprise because this was the other role, among all nominations, that makes the actor the absolute centre of a film. Fraser was all kinds of wonderful in portraying this tragic character desperately looking for redemption.
The Asian moment in Hollywood has been a long time coming. Ever since the 1970s, from the time Bruce Lee became a phenomenon the world over, Asians have been working in the American entertainment and film industries. Ang Lee’s wins as Best Director twice (Brokeback Mountain, 2005; Life of Pi, 2012) propelled Asian recognition further. Yoeh’s speech, in which she talked about taking the award back home to her mother in Malaysia and reminding women not to believe that they were ever past their prime (Yeoh turned 60 last year).
Indian presence at the Oscars are growing every year. While Daniel Roher’s documentary on the poisoning of a Russian opposition leader, Navalny, got the Best Documentary award, crushing India’s hopes of Shaunak Sen’s brilliant documentary All That Breathes, in the short documentary category, Kartiki Gonsalves’ The Elephant Whisperer, produced by Guneet Monga, bagged the award. Deepika Padukone introduced Naatu Naatu at the ceremony which was followed by the most uninspired performance of the ceremony — it is anyway impossible, perhaps, to beat Rihanna when she sings Lift Me Up from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — the evening’s most soulful, transcendent moments.
Just a scripted presentation of a few seconds by Padukone preceded way too much hype, but Padukone lived up to it. In a classic Hollywood-style black Louis Vuitton gown and glowy, minimal make-up and accessory, she was elegance personified — a kind of a vintage, retro-Hollywood ambassador of luxury.
Every year, the Oscars are becoming more culturally-sensitive. That is never a bad thing given Hollywood’s influence the world over on what we watch, like and consider relevant. But it’s also just an award, and so a subjective choice. The award going to Gonsalves for The Elephant Whisperers, a sweet and sparse but emotionally rich story of an old Tamil couple saving elephant babies and rearing them for their natural habitat will likely, or at least hopefully, make producing non-fiction/documentary films market in India easier and more vibrant.
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