In a stunning move, the Oscars did not reward the late Chadwick Boseman for his performance in the Pittsburgh-filmed “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” at the Academy Awards on Sunday night.
It was quite a surprise when best picture was actually presented before best actor and actress in a break from the traditional order in which the awards are usually distributed. Best picture went to “Nomadland,” which stars Monessen High School graduate and best actress winner Frances McDormand.
It would have been fair to assume that this was done to spotlight Boseman, who died in August at age 43 after being diagnosed with colon cancer four years earlier. And the stage was set perfectly for it, with best actor being read last.
Instead, Joaquin Phoenix, who won last year’s best actor trophy for “Joker,” revealed that it was instead Anthony Hopkins who won for “The Father.” Hopkins wasn’t even available to accept the award himself or didn’t have anyone make a speech on his behalf.
While that was certainly a massive Academy curveball, the whole affair wasn’t a complete loss for “Ma Rainey.” It may have been snubbed for best picture, but it did take home two Oscars: best makeup and hairstyling and best costume design. In fact, “Ma Rainey” hairstylists Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson are now the first Black women to win in makeup and hairstyling.
Ann Roth, an 89-year-old Hanover, Pa., native and Carnegie Mellon University graduate, became the oldest woman to ever win an Oscar and the second-oldest person ever behind James Ivory and his 2018 victory for writing the “Call Me by Your Name” screenplay.
McDormand had two Oscars speeches to give Sunday night after “Nomadland” won for best picture and she emerged victorious in a contentious best actress field, beating out “Ma Rainey” star Viola Davis. It was her third best actress Oscar after wins for “Fargo” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and gave her the second-most best actress awards ever behind Katherine Hepburn’s four.
She used the first speech opportunity to urge everyone to “watch our movie on the largest screen possible” and then proceeded to howl like a wolf. Her best actress speech was short and sweet.
“The voice is in my sword,” McDormand said. “We know the sword is in our work. And I like work.”
McDormand’s “Nomadland” director, Chloe Zhao, won in her category as well and became only the second woman ever to receive a best director prize.
The “Nomadland” victory, while widely expected, nevertheless capped the extraordinary rise of Zhao, a lyrical filmmaker whose winning film is just her third, and which — with a budget less than $5 million and featuring a cast populated by nonprofessional actors — ranks as one of the most modest-sized movies to win Hollywood’s top honor. Zhao’s next film, Marvel’s “Eternals,” has a budget approximately 40 times that of “Nomadland.” Only Kathryn Bigelow, 11 years ago for “The Hurt Locker,” had previously won best director.
But “Nomadland,” as a plain-spoken meditation on solitude, grief and grit, stuck a chord in a pandemic-ravaged year. It made for an unlikely Oscar champ: a film about people who gravitate to the margins took center stage.
“I have always found goodness in the people I’ve met everywhere I went in the world,” said Zhao when accepting best director. “This is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on the goodness in other no matter how difficult it is to do that.”
Elsewhere, Diana Stoughton, 60, of Bloomfield, had a chance to earn a best production design award for her work on “Ma Rainey.” However, that Oscar went to “Mank” and its set decorator, Beechview native Jan Pascale. “Mank” — which came in the lead nominee with 10 nods — also pulled out a surprise win for its cinematography.
CMU alumnus Leslie Odom Jr. had a shot at winning two awards, including best supporting actor for his turn as crooner Sam Cooke in “One Night in Miami” and original song for “Speak Now.” He lost both categories, though, to “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the former for Daniel Kaluuya’s towering performance as Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton and the latter to the H.E.R.-performed “Fight For You” from that film.
Rounding out the Oscars’ Pittsburgh connections was Trent Reznor, who was born in New Castle and grew up in Mercer. He was nominated for original score twice thanks to the musical acumen he displayed on “Soul” and “Mank,” and he was rewarded for his score on Pixar’s latest. (Reznor shared the award with Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste, who became the second Black composer to win the award.)
The most ambitious award show held during the pandemic, the Oscars rolled out a red carpet and restored some glamour to the nearly century-old movie institution, but with a much transformed — and in some ways downsized — telecast. It was a year when, to paraphrase Norma Desmond, the pictures got smaller were overwhelmingly seen in the home, not in the big screen, during a pandemic year that forced theaters close and prompted radical change in Hollywood.
It was also perhaps the diverse Academy Awards ever, with more women and more actors of color nominated than ever before — and Sunday brought a litany of records and firsts across many categories, spanning everything from hairstyling to composing to acting. It was, some observers said, a sea change for an awards harshly criticized as “OscarsSoWhite” in recent years, leading the film academy to greatly expand membership.
The ceremony — fashioned as a movie of its own and styled as a laidback party — kicked off with opening credits and a slinky Regina King entrance, as the camera followed the actress and “One Night in Miami” director in one take as she strode with an Oscar in hand into Los Angeles’ Union Station and onto the stage. Inside the transit hub (trains kept running), nominees sat at cozy, lamp-lit tables around an intimate amphitheater. Some moments — like Glenn Close getting down to “Da Butt” — were more relaxed, but the ceremony couldn’t just shake off the past 14 months.
“It has been quite a year, and we are still smack dab in the middle of it,” King said.
With the awards capping a year of national reckoning on race and coming days after former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd, police brutality was on the minds of many attendees. King said that if the verdict had been different, she might have traded her heels for marching boots.
Best supporting actress went to Yuh-Jung Youn for the matriarch of Lee Isaac Chung’s tender Korean-American family drama “Minari.” The 72-year-old Youn, a well-known actress in her native South Korea, is the first Asian actress to win an Oscar since 1957 and the second in history. She accepted the award from Brad Pitt, an executive producer on “Minari.” “Mr. Brad Pitt, finally,” said Youn. “Nice to meet you.”
The night’s first award went to Emerald Fennell, the writer-director of the provocative revenge thriller “Promising Young Woman,” for best screenplay. Fennell, winning for her feature debut, is the first woman win solo in the category since Diablo Cody (“Juno”) in 2007.
Pixar notched its 11th best animated feature Oscar with “Soul,” the studio’s first feature with a Black protagonist. Peter Docter’s film, about a middle-school music teacher (Jamie Foxx), was one of the few big-budget movies in the running at the Academy Awards.
Also, Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” which last September attempted to resuscitate moviegoing during the pandemic, took best visual effects.
Best adapted screenplay went to the dementia drama “The Father.”
The broadcast instantly looked different. It was shot in 24 frames-per-second and in more widescreen format. In a more intimate show without an audience beyond nominees, winners were given wider latitude in their speeches.
The telecast, produced by a team led by filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, moved out of the awards’ usual home, the Dolby Theatre, for Union Station. With Zoom ruled out for nominees, the telecast included satellite feeds from around the world. Performances of the song nominees were prerecorded and aired during the preshow. “Husavik (My Hometown)” from “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.,” was preformed from the Iceland town’s harbor. Others were sung from atop of the academy’s new $500 million film museum.
The red carpet was back Sunday, minus the throngs of onlookers and with socially distanced interviews. Only a handful of media outlets were allowed on site, behind a velvet rope and some distance from the nominees. Casual wear, the academy warned nominees early on, was a no-no. Stars, limited to a plus-one, went without their usual battalions of publicists.
Sunday’s pandemic-delayed Oscars bring to a close the longest awards season ever — one that turned the season’s industrial complex of cocktail parties and screenings virtual. Eligibility was extended into February of this year, and for the first time, a theatrical run wasn’t a requirement of nominees. Some films — like “Sound of Metal” — premiered all the way back in September 2019. The biggest ticket-seller of the best picture nominees is “Promising Young Woman,” with $6.4 million in box office.
Joshua Axelrod: jaxelrod@post-gazette.com and Twitter @jaxelburgh. The Associated Press contributed.
First Published: April 26, 2021, 12:28 a.m.
Updated: April 26, 2021, 1:28 p.m.