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The 93rd Academy Awards can be described as nothing less than revolutionary.
Director Steven Soderbergh, who acted as producer, has turned the most sacred traditions upside down - first and foremost, the iron rule that everything comes to a climax, "Best Picture of the Year".
This time, too, there was a “Best Film”, it was the drama “Nomadland”, which had been the favorite since the beginning of the year.
But it wasn't the last announcement of the evening.
It was the third from last.
Then Soderbergh put the envelope for best actress: for the third time in her career, Frances McDormand, for her role as a trailer nomad in "Nomadland";
now all she needs is a statuette for Katharine Hepburn's record.
Peter Spears, Frances McDormand, Chloé Zhao and Mollye Asher, winners of the trophy for best film, "Nomadland"
Source: REUTERS
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And as the final highlight, Sir Anthony Hopkins received the award as best actor for his father with dementia in "The Father";
There has seldom been an Oscar more deserving than this.
Nevertheless, he was in doubt because Chadwick Boseman, the early deceased black icon, was with his last film "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" in the race;
posthumous winners are popular for sentimental reasons.
If you do the usual math, "Nomadland" with three statues is a pretty poor winner;
Gone are the days when “Titanic” or “Lord of the Rings” took away eleven Oscars.
But at least “Nomadland” won the three most important prizes, for best film, for director (director Chloe Zhao) and for best actress.
Among the double winners, “The Father” (actor and adapted screenplay) is the strongest, while “Mank”, nominated ten times, was fobbed off with two statues for equipment and camera.
"Mank" was the greatest hope for Netflix, which for another year missed the greatest trophy that would mean final acceptance into the studio's elite club for the upstart of the film business.
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2020/21 must be viewed as an exceptional year. More important than prices are the tectonic changes between cinema and streaming services; Also more important is the question of whether the Oscars were able to reform decisively or not. Soderbergh started the biggest revolution ever at the Oscars. He not only mixed up the order of the prizes, he also transformed the pompous event in front of 3,000 spectators into an almost intimate club evening, without lighting effects, without a big show number, without a joke-making presenter.
The main goal seems to have been to make the event more emotional.
If most viewers don't know the films they are talking about because of the pandemic, then at least they know the actors, was Soderbergh's argument.
In this respect, it was logical to put the actor awards as the climax at the end.
Hopkins eluded the event completely
Whether this will remain the formula for the upcoming Oscars, however, must be doubted.
Because the emotionalization did not work at the last award because Sir Anthony Hopkins completely withdrew from the event;
he was neither in Los Angeles, nor in the Oscar branch in London, nor from his living room in Wales.
Even the - in theory - correct idea of using the acceptance speeches of the winners to further emotionalise them did not really catch on. Either the speeches were on the verge of embarrassment, because one noticed the pressure on the tear glands, or the winners fell back into the “I thank my mother and father” mode. The honored one for the best song thanked God “for the twelve notes that he gave the people”.