The Oscars on Sunday night were a bland, unimpassioned, rhythmless, endless show that should put to shame all of us who have spent the past four months speculating about who would or wouldn’t win, what the Oscars mean and don’t mean, and so on, not excluding me. Why do we do it? Why do we go on about the Academy Awards for so long? Oscar night should have taken place five weeks ago—before the Olympics—when people still cared a little bit and the entire thing didn’t feel like a hugely pointless anticlimax. The reason for the crazy prolongation, of course, is that so many people make money from the Oscars; after the various guilds have their say, the winners are mostly a foregone conclusion, anyway. This year, the self-surpassing commercial exploitation of the Academy Awards far outran the world’s interest in them. At some point, people will say, “This isn’t worth the money—or the time—that we’re spending on it,” and the awards season may shrink a bit.
I’m sorry that my beloved “American Hustle” won nothing, but the movie is well liked, it grossed $240 million worldwide, and it enhanced the reputation of everyone involved. The members of the Academy vote their conscience, not their pleasure, and “12 Years a Slave”—beautiful and punitive, even sadistic (does anyone really want to see it again?)—was a strong, obvious choice for Best Picture in what turned out to be a remarkable year. Or, I should say, a remarkable autumn. There were good movies from earlier in 2013 (“Mud,” “Before Midnight,” “Blue Jasmine”), but the autumn-leaves season was the strongest in a long time. Yet, last night, apart from Jared Leto’s stirring comments about AIDS and gay people, and Lupita Nyong’o’s acknowledgment of the suffering of her character in “12 Years a Slave,” I didn’t hear the slightest recognition that 2013 was anything special in the movies—any recognition that the movies, in their dramatization of loneliness and social separation, might actually have something extraordinary to say to the republic.
There was also no mention of the fact that such producers as Scott Rudin and Megan Ellison, a millionaire with superb judgment, have played a significant role in the revival of American filmmaking even as the studios remain sunk in cynicism and big-picture, digital-spectacle production and marketing. Of the nine Best Picture nominees, only “Gravity” was a studio product from start to finish. The others were initiated by smaller companies and then picked up by a studio for distribution. Each, in its way, was an anomaly. The obvious retort to this is, “As long as good movies get made, what’s the difference how it happens?” Well, the unfortunate counter-retort is that the studios still control most of the capital in Hollywood, and there’s no structure in place to guarantee that this many good pictures will be made in upcoming years. For the record, “Gravity” was a monster hit; “The Wolf of Wall Street,” thanks to the overseas box office, was a serious hit; “American Hustle” and “Captain Phillips” were solid successes; “Philomena” did only all right; and “Her” and “Nebraska” will not earn back their costs. (Neither will the sullen “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which the Academy spurned.)
Ellen DeGeneres started the night crisply and well, dispensing with sour memories of Seth MacFarlane. But, after the first hour or so, she fell into her daytime-TV-show-host casualness. She lost all sense of occasion, malingered among the celebrities in the first few rows, as if she couldn’t bear to be alone onstage, and hit bottom with a thrice-repeated joke about delivering pizza to the starving stars. The pizza arrived. She handed it out. When she went to collect some money, Kevin Spacey threw in some bills and said, with more than a trace of contempt, “This is a tip for you.”
OBVIOUS FASHION NOTE: Amy Adams’s disappearing necklines in “American Hustle” set the style last night. Lupita Nyong’o, Kate Hudson, and Charlize Theron all took the plunge, while Adams, displaying an incredible canniness that has marked her entire career, came dressed in a handsome, fitted strapless dress.
ODDITIES: Zac Efron’s high, wedged hairdo. John Travolta’s eyes retreating into his forehead (one popped open for a second, then closed again). Benedict Cumberbatch and Jennifer Garner looking elongated together. Matthew McConaughey’s comment about God: “He has shown me that it’s a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates.” McConaughey winning the Best Actor award for his work in “Dallas Buyers Club” and not mentioning the men and women who have died of AIDS. Somehow, I don’t think that God told him to not reciprocate.
Read Sasha Weiss on Oscar fashion and Richard Brody on the ceremony.
Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty
