Mostly, though, it was Chris Rock’s night.
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The salvos actually started earlier Oscar Sunday.
But Rock is arguably America’s most incisive commentator on racial issues, which is why he was the ideal host for a year in which Hollywood’s diversity issues sucked most of the rest of the Oscars oxygen out of the room. It’s about three hours and 25 minutes more than some hosts would have paid before moving on to something else, and if it was uncomfortable at times, then perhaps that’s the downside of coming to the end of the era in which you could nominate 20 actors, have all of them be white, and expect that not to make your ceremony uncomfortable.
Thought of as the top honour handed out by the Academy, Spotlight was not widely expected to win best picture and the film won only one other award on the night, taking the gong for best original screenplay.
For once, this ABC broadcast needed to strike a balance between its usual bounty of self-aggrandizement and a rare show of remorse for Hollywood’s glaring lack of inclusion.
If the pressure weighed upon him, he didn’t let on.
Yes, Hollywood is racist, he declared, but not the usual brand. “It’s like, ‘We like you, Rhonda, but you’re not a Kappa'”.
Leonardo finally delivers a Best Actor speech. They were, he said, “too busy being raped and lynched to care who won best cinematography”. “In the In Memorial package, its just going to be black people killed by the cops on their way to the movies”, he announced.
Aside from pleading for more opportunity for black actors, Rock also sought to add perspective to the turmoil, which included a protest outside the Dolby on Sunday led by the Rev. Al Sharpton. Rock asked one moviegoer. You have to go at it the right way.
But apart from Rock and the message he drove home, the Oscarcast was a humdrum affair. This was followed by a “Black History Month Minute” segment hosted by Angela Bassett, which ended up being a joke tribute to Jack Black. And it’s surprising to hear any particularly affecting staging of a nominated song given how lackluster they often are, but Lady Gaga’s performance of “Til It Happens To You” from the documentary The Hunting Ground – a performance introduced by Vice President Joe Biden – got instant praise.
But mostly when Rock was absent, languor prevailed. But this only served to backload, even more than usual, the major awards.
Costume Design: “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
One other beef: The attempt to banish the names of those thanked by winners to a text crawl at the bottom of the screen. On that latter topic, the introductory blather with which multiple pairs of presenters stepped to the podium seemed lamer than ever, though that might have had something to do with the seriousness of objective elsewhere: at no point, for instance, did Rock do the usual thing of pausing to identify and congratulate the various nominees scattered around the house. He nailed it, presiding with saucy finesse. “We have a great film to look back on for years to come”.
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In case you didn’t get it from the monologue, the Oscars race issue was brought up in no less than three filmed segments, each of which was amusing on its own, but maybe went in the direction of overkill, stretched across a telecast that ran long. Noticeably in abeyance was the self-congratulatory tone of many an Academy love-in, replaced as was surely inevitable by industry self-laceration at the expense, it must be said, of fun. He dealt with it gleefully. “We must take action”. The Oscarcast left viewers with those movie cliffhangers.
