During Conan O’Brien’s opening monologue at the 97th Oscars, the host paused the funnies for once, and switched to a sombre tone. He spoke about how award nights can seem indulgent and superfluous with everything going on around us. And how so much of it is about seeing A-listers at their best dressed. However, he reminded the viewers, it’s as much about recognising the craftsperson, technician behind A-listers – who probably aren’t wealthy or glamorous. O’Brien indirectly told the viewers that we would have to persevere through ‘boring’ parts of the show.
The maxim turned out to be prophetic – as the world focused on Paul Tazewell, who became the first African-American person to win an Oscar for Best Costume Design for his work in Wicked. Similarly, Zoe Saldana became the first woman of Dominican origin to win the Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Perez. The evening saw films like Anora, The Brutalist, and Flow prevail over their well-heeled contemporaries like Dune: Part Two, Inside Out 2, and A Complete Unknown. Also, it feels surreal that days after the US president humiliated and bullied another world leader in full public view, a Palestinian journalist stood on American soil, denouncing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians while accepting his Oscar. His Israeli colleague accused the US of ‘helping block the path’ for a ‘political solution’ to the conflict.
The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) might be far from a perfect body, known for its fair share of ideological biases, blind spots, and favouritism. But as the 97th Oscars unfolded, it showed glimpses of how it could stand up for itself.
It’s almost unthinkable that a film like Anora would end up as the darling of the evening. It won five out of the six nominations, including – Best Editing, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Picture. Independently produced on a budget of $5 million, the film began its fairytale run after picking up the Palme D’Or at Cannes last year (beating All We Imagine As Light), to picking up Best Picture at the 97th Oscars. Director Sean Baker – an ‘Indie film lifer’ like he recently said in an awards acceptance speech – has hardly been a frontrunner in such evenings, for a career spanning over two decades. But here we are, where Baker is tied with Walt Disney for the record of picking up the most number of awards in a single evening.
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, made on a shoe-string budget of $7 million, picked up three awards in the night including Best Actor, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography. A passion project in the making for close to a decade, The Brutalist is just the kind of rigorous, ambitious indie film Hollywood studios have fully stopped making. By voting for it, the Academy members are probably trying to get the attention of the suits to bring back such films.
No Other Land, winner of Best Documentary, became the first Academy Award-winning film to still not have distribution in America. The film, archiving the filmmakers’ resistance against Israeli forces in a region of Masafer Yatta on the West Bank, has invited quite the furore at a bunch of film festivals.
#Oscars2025 🇵🇸 @basel_adra: “We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.” #NoOtherLand pic.twitter.com/2yVfryoAWC
— State of Palestine (@Palestine_UN) March 3, 2025
Given how the conflict has ideologically split Hollywood liberals down the middle, the documentary was always going to be the quintessential outsider, when it came to the Oscars. The fact that it has gone on to win should tell us about how a majority of Hollywood stars feel about the conflict, even if they might not be sporting pins on their coats like Guy Pearce today.
GUY PEARCE WEARING A PIN THAT ACTUALLY SAYS FREE PALESTINE AND NOT JUST A NEUTRAL CEASEFIRE PIN. IT WAS SO VISIBLE WHEN HE APPEARED ON SCREEN pic.twitter.com/QAraqvnR26
— ZAYNA🇵🇸 FREE PALESTINE (@HorrorHijabi) March 3, 2025
And while we bemoan the state of artistic liberty in Hollywood, a deeper examination of the circumstances also reveal it’s brave of the Academy members to not shy away from honouring such a film. AMPAS might be made of many different parts, but at least – in this case – empathy has triumphed over vindictiveness.
It’s a miracle that a film as stylistically radical as Nickel Boys (produced by Plan B, co-founded by Brad Pitt) was among contenders at the awards. Also, an unflattering film about the current US president, is nominated for two awards. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, have been hailed as two of the finest performances of the year. There could be questions about how No Other Land and The Apprentice were cast aside as ‘radioactive’ by the industry. Actors, reportedly, refused to interview Stan about his portrayal of Donald Trump in Variety’s Actors on Actors.
However, it’s also important to make a distinction between the business side of Hollywood, the talent management agencies and its artiste professionals. When the time came, the Academy members put their weight behind smaller films and new blood. It’s probably why a veteran like Demi Moore lost to Mikey Madison. It might be a flash in the pan for all we know, but these outsiders (who will hereon be referred to as Academy Award winners) have entered the bastion of the great Hollywood high-rise.
