Oscars 2020 Recap: Not Quite Out of Sight

Well, that was… different.

Look, I don’t envy Steven Soderbergh and the other producers tasked with running the 93rd Academy Awards. The ceremony was doomed to fall under the giant shadow cast by the COVID-19 pandemic—not just because it presented an enormous logistical challenge in the era of masks and social distancing, but because the show itself was celebrating a year’s 14 months worth of films that were released during a time when virtually nobody was going to the movies. The result was a telecast that needed to be fluid and innovative in an industry that prizes consistency and tradition.

Soderbergh’s team tried. Even with nominees spread across the globe rather than packed into the Dolby Theatre, they attempted to mount a more intimate-feeling gathering, one reliant on conversation and eye contact as opposed to engineering and bombast. As the capper to an absurdly lengthy awards season, the Oscars are typically meant to feel gigantic, but here they aimed to be small, even cozy.

Parts of it worked quite nicely. The opener, featuring Regina King confidently striding to the stage while the names of future presenters appeared in brightly colored font, felt like the breezy introduction to a very Soderberghian production. Some of the rambling acceptance speeches, liberated from the task-mastering of an impatient orchestra conductor, meandered their way into genuinely interesting territory. Bong Joon-ho showed up, along with his trusty interpreter, Sharon Choi. Glenn Close did “Da Butt”.

But on the whole, the show was crippled by a lack of visual imagination. The decision not to incorporate performance clips for the acting categories was puzzling enough, but doing the same for all of the technical fields was ruinous. There’s something to be said for putting a face to the names of the artisans competing for Oscar glory, but in insisting on keeping the camera in the room, the producers failed to connect those artists to their work. The result was tentative, stiff, and awkward. Watching this year’s Oscars felt like eavesdropping on a hastily assembled party where none of the guests really knew how to talk to each other.

And then there was the atrocious ending, which scarcely requires further litigation. Suffice it to say that airing the award for Best Picture third-to-last, ahead of the lead acting categories, would be a dubious decision in any year; in a ceremony that concluded with a recipient who wasn’t even present, it was disastrous. The 2016 awards—the year of the Moonlight/La La Land mix-up—were infamous in their own way, but they at least wrapped up with a sense of rescued finality. This year’s Oscars simply fizzled into nothingness.

So it goes. Just as I refuse to get especially upset about the Academy’s particular choices, I can’t be all that mad about a clunky and uneven telecast. The Oscars will be back, and they’ll learn their lesson, likely by reverting to a safer and more familiar setup, which will in turn produce a new chorus of complaints and another round of adjustments. The show will still go on; it always does.

And this one certainly had its share of surprises. Per tradition, let’s run through the feature awards, in order of their presentation:

Best Original Screenplay
Predicted winner: Promising Young Woman—Emerald Fennell (confidence: 2/5)
Preferred winner: The Trial of the Chicago 7—Aaron Sorkin
Actual winner: Promising Young Woman—Emerald Fennell

As expected, this was Promising Young Woman’s only win of the night. Fennell will surely be back.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Predicted winner: Nomadland—Chloé Zhao (confidence: 2/5)
Preferred winner: The Father—Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller
Actual winner: The Father—Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller

Nomadland hardly cleaned up tonight, though in the end it fared quite well. I was pleased to see The Father bring this one home, though Zeller’s lengthy speech (and Parisian location) sadly prevented Hampton from making any remarks. (Hampton wrote the screenplay for a little movie called Atonement, which I rather like.)

Best International Feature Film
Predicted winner: Another Round (Denmark) (confidence: 4/5)
Preferred winner: Quo Vadis, Aida (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Actual winner: Another Round (Denmark)

No surprise here. Thomas Vinterberg delivered the night’s most memorable speech, when he declared that he dedicated the film to his daughter, who was killed in a car crash four days into shooting. In a typical telecast, he surely would’ve been cut off long before that point.

Best Supporting Actor
Predicted winner: Daniel Kaluuya—Judas and the Black Messiah (confidence: 5/5)
Preferred winner: Sacha Baron Cohen—The Trial of the Chicago 7
Actual winner: Daniel Kaluuya—Judas and the Black Messiah

Kaluuya supplied the first viral moment of the night when he acknowledged that the miracle of his existence stemmed from his mother and father having sex, followed by a lightning-quick cut to his perplexed mother and horrified sister. TV is weird, man.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Predicted winner: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (confidence: 3/5)
Preferred winner: Emma
Actual winner: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Bummer, but I can’t really begrudge Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson, who became the first Black women to win this award.

Best Costume Design
Predicted winner: Emma (confidence: 1/5)
Preferred winner: Emma
Actual winner: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Well, given that Emma didn’t win any Oscars, I guess I need to reassess its quality wait no I don’t it still totally rules.

This was followed by Bryan Cranston presenting a humanitarian award to the Motion Picture Television Fund, a nice gesture that certainly didn’t make the telecast any shorter. (Soderbergh & Co. did shunt all of the Best Original Song performances to the pre-show, a time-saving move that nonetheless robbed me of an opportunity to watch another rendition of “Husavik”.)

Best Director
Predicted winner: Chloé Zhao—Nomadland (confidence: 5/5)
Preferred winner: Emerald Fennell—Promising Young Woman
Actual winner: Chloé Zhao—Nomadland

This was the best presentation of the night, with Bong narrating remarks from the various nominees over still photographs of their work, then playfully switching roles with Choi as she said “And the Oscar goes to” in Korean before he translated it into English.

Best Sound
Predicted winner: Sound of Metal (confidence: 5/5)
Preferred winner: Sound of Metal
Actual winner: Sound of Metal

I’m always happy to see Riz Ahmed, but having him present an award where one of the nominees featured him in a starring role was, to say the least, peculiar.

Ahmed also presented the award for Best Live Action Short, and there the lack of visual accompaniment to his listing of the nominees was especially vexing. That’s because I haven’t seen the shorts, and I always like watching a quick-hitting montage of each nominee’s overall aesthetic. So if you’re one of those “casual viewers” who had limited familiarity with most of the movies contending at this year’s Oscars, you likely experienced that sense of frustrating bafflement for most of the night. (Also, there was some major unintentional comedy here, when one of the directors of the winner used his speech to make an impassioned plea against police brutality, and the other immediately chimed in with, “We’d like to thank Netflix!”)

Best Animated Feature
Predicted winner: Soul (confidence: 5/5)
Preferred winner: Soul
Actual winner: Soul

Good movie, Soul. Also, I like to think that Soderbergh telepathically heard all of my carping about the lack of clips, then vengefully delivered a “Be careful what you wish for” moment by revealing the climactic scene from Onward. (This was one of the four categories where the ceremony actually did use clips, along with International Feature, Documentary, and Best Picture.)

Then, in perhaps the most mystifying decision of the night, the show brought on Marlee Matlin to present the award for Best Documentary Short Subject, only to cut away from her as she was signing her descriptions of the various nominees; instead, all we heard was the voice of her translator. If you’re going to use Marlee Matlin, we need to fucking see Marlee Matlin!

Best Documentary Feature
Predicted winner: Collective (confidence: 1/5)
Actual winner: My Octopus Teacher

Well, I told you I had no idea.

Best Visual Effects
Predicted winner: Tenet (confidence: 3/5)
Preferred winner: Tenet
Actual winner: Tenet

I should bloody well hope so.

Best Supporting Actress
Predicted winner: Youn Yuh-jung—Minari (confidence: 3/5)
Preferred winner: Amanda Seyfried—Mank
Actual winner: Youn Yuh-jung—Minari

I was rooting for either Seyfried or Maria Bakalova in this category, but Youn’s speech—a combination of self-deprecating jokes, sincere admiration, grandmotherly scolding, and flirting with Brad Pitt—was simply delightful.

Best Production Design
Predicted winner: Mank (confidence: 4/5)
Preferred winner: Tenet
Actual winner: Mank

Old Hollywood rides again!

Best Cinematography
Predicted winner: Mank—Erik Messerschmidt (confidence: 2/5)
Preferred winner: Mank—Erik Messerschmidt
Actual winner: Mank—Erik Messerschmidt

This was apparently my best call of the night, as prognosticators were leaning toward Nomadland. This makes me wonder how many of them actually watched Mank, but no matter. (As for my predictions themselves, they turned south in a hurry; I finished the night an ugly 13-for-20.)

Best Film Editing
Predicted winner: The Trial of the Chicago 7—Alan Baumgarten (confidence: 1/5)
Preferred winner: The Father—Yorgos Lamprinos
Actual winner: Sound of Metal— Mikkel E.G. Nielsen

As I said. I’m not crazy about this choice, but Sound of Metal is a terrific film, so I’m happy to see it land multiple Oscars.

Best Original Score
Predicted winner: Soul—Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste (confidence: 4/5)
Preferred winner: News of the World—James Newton Howard
Actual winner: Soul—Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste

No surprise here, unlike…

Best Original Song
Predicted winner: “Speak Now”—Sam Ashworth and Leslie Odom Jr. (from One Night in Miami) (confidence: 2/5)
Preferred winner: “Husavik”—Rickard Göransson, Fat Max Gsus, and Savan Kotecha (from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga)
Actual winner: “Fight for You”—D’Mile, H.E.R., and Tiara Thomas (from Judas and the Black Messiah)

Now this, I did not see coming. Also, just a reminder that the Academy should change the rules for this category and require a song to be played in the actual movie—and not just over the closing credits—for it to be nominated.

This was followed by a deeply misguided “trivia game” from Questlove and Lil Rey Howery, which was partially redeemed by Close’s aforementioned dancing. Kudos to her for maintaining high spirits following her eighth Oscar loss earlier in the night.

After that came the “In Memoriam” montage, which was bizarre for its upbeat music and lightning-fast pace. Every year, people grumble about artists who were excluded from the segment, so the quantity-over-quality approach makes a certain sense, but it felt like the sped-up closing credits at the end of a cable TV movie, and it prevented the moment from achieving any resonance.

Best Picture
Predicted winner: Nomadland (confidence: 4/5)
Preferred winner: Promising Young Woman
Actual winner: Nomadland

Wait, sorry, did we skip a few categories? I hate the “That’s just the way it’s done!” argument, but some traditions are rooted in logic, and there’s a reason Best Picture is always announced last. This year’s show proved that all too well. Also, it bears noting that of the eight Best Picture nominees, The Trial of the Chicago 7 was the only one to come away empty-handed; I pretty much adore that movie, and when Rita Moreno didn’t call its name here, I heaved a sigh of relief. Let it rest as the effortlessly entertaining courtroom drama it is, and not as the endlessly ridiculed Oscar winner it would have been.

Best Actress
Predicted winner: Viola Davis—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (confidence: 1/5)
Preferred winner: Frances McDormand—Nomadland
Actual winner: Frances McDormand—Nomadland

So much for that Three Billboards backlash. McDormand seemed spent after her wolf howl from the prior category, but maybe she recognized that the show just needed to end already.

Best Actor
Predicted winner: Chadwick Boseman—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (confidence: 3/5)
Preferred winner: Chadwick Boseman—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Actual winner: Anthony Hopkins—The Father

Whoops. Presumably, the producers elected to announce Best Actor last in order to finish with a posthumous award for Boseman; if that was the logic, it backfired spectacularly—a weirdly fitting end to a weirdly chaotic and ill-conceived Oscars.

Till next year, folks.