I’d love not to join the stockpile of day-after Oscars news reports, giving you instead some sort of subversive *hot take*, but, like everyone else, I cannot feel anything but sincerely happy for Bong Joon-ho and his cast and crew.
With three Oscar wins, last night was theirs and rightly so. The only thing one must question about their wins is – why has it taken 92 years for this to happen?
This is an obvious step in the right direction and couldn’t be awarded to a more deserving recipient. But, as Phoenix said in his speech after winning the Best Actor award, and as we all seem to say every year, we must do better.
Other highlights include Renee Zellweger’s Leading Actress award for her role in Judy, followed by a speech in which she seemed to thank everyone she’d ever met, and an award to 1917 for its achievement in cinematography commending Mendes’s use of his ‘single-shot’ film technique.
In the less accoladed but truly interesting behind the scenes world of film making, the brilliant Jaqueline Durran won for her achievement in costume design for her excellent (and gratefully corsetless) work in Little Women, making her accolades include a total of two Oscars and three BAFTAs for her detail-oriented approach to period-piece costume.
I would also like to give a shout out to (and a shameless recommendation of) Marshall Curry’s The Neighbours’ Window, an incredible piece of short cinema about the interaction between one middle-aged woman and the couple which moves in across the street; well deserved of its award for best live-action short film.
Between the heartwarming tribute to Kobe Bryant and the ‘battle of the lights’ in which audience applause forced the technicians to turn the lights back on, letting the producers of Parasite finish their speeches, this Academy Awards proved highly engaging and one of my favourites yet, I for one cannot wait until next year.