After four acting nominations and four loses, Leonardo DiCaprio has won a Best Actor Oscar for his role as fur trapper Hugh Glass in the frontier thriller “The Revenant”.
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Instead, the academy awarded its top prize to the actual Best Picture of the year, “Spotlight” – which soberly, and with great skill, chronicled how journalists exposed the Catholic Church’s cover-up of a more intimate kind of violation.
But toward the end, “The Revenant” with victories for Alejandro G. Iñárritu for director and Leonardo DiCaprio for lead actor, added Emmanuel Lubezki’s record third straight cinematography Oscar, appeared to pull away.
“I am very lucky to be here tonight, but unfortunately many others haven’t had the same luck”, Inarritu said on stage.
Racial themes and barbs about the selection of an all-white acting nominee line-up for a second year ran throughout the evening as black comedian Rock opened the show that he called “the white People’s Choice awards”. The Revenant also picked up best picture at the Baftas, with Brooklyn being awarded the prize for best British film.
At the Oscars, he was nominated for best actor along with Bryan Cranston (‘Trumbo’), Michael Fassbender (‘Steve Jobs’), Eddie Redmayne (‘The Danish Girl’) and Matt Damon (‘The Martian’).
Among the winners for Mad Max: Fury Road – which had been nominated for 10 Oscars – was British designer Jenny Beavan, for best costume design. Rylance saluted his fellow nominees and subtly alluded to the current controversy by saying, “I don’t know how they separated the five of us from all the other supporting actors who are making films at the moment”.
DiCaprio spoke out about climate change as he took home his first Academy Award.
Gasps went around the Dolby when Mark Rylance won best supporting actor for Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies” over Sylvester Stallone.
The night was overshadowed by a simmering race row, addressed head-on by black host Chris Rock, who delivered a series of caustic jokes targeting the Academy’s overwhelmingly white male membership.
The 88th Academy Awards honour the best films of 2015.
His Oscars nominations have included Best Suporting Actor in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, and Best Actor for The Aviator, Blood Diamond and The Wolf of Wall Street.
Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele lead the red carpet dressing Tom Hardy, Ryan Gosling, actress Brie Larson and Jared Leto – who attended the ceremony with the designer in a black-and-red tuxedo, teamed up with a bold flower tie.
Adam McKay, who shared an Oscar for his screenplay for “The Big Short”, gave an election-year warning to the power of “big money” and “weirdo billionaires” in the presidential campaign. Asif Kapadia’s Amy Winehouse portrait, “Amy”, took best documentary.
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Best animated feature film went to “Inside Out”, Pixar’s eighth win in the category. Hungary’s concentration camp drama “Son of Saul” won best foreign language film.
