2022 Oscar Awards

By now, “slap” discourse is all over the internet, and I’m well aware no one needs my “take.” All I’ll say on that front is that I wish neither the joke nor the slap had happened, and I wish more time was being spent on the cool things that happened last night.

Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall shared the hosting duties between them, and overall, I think they did a pretty good job. Their bits were generally funny—the opening monologue was fun, and I got a kick out of Sykes dressed as Richard Williams—and rarely outstayed their welcome.

What the show was not was shorter. Despite all the hubbub about presenting eight of the awards prior to the start of the ceremony, there was still plenty of padding, such as tributes to films celebrating significant anniversaries (including The Godfather and Juno) and the “fan favorite” movie montages. The Academy doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that, if you remove parts of the ceremony but that add different stuff in, you’re not actually saving time. And on a personal level, while it was fun to see a nice chunk of the cast of Encanto performing together, I can’t sanction calling it “the first live performance of ‘We Don’t Talk about Bruno.’” What we got was the first verse of “We Don’t Talk about Bruno,” followed by a rap that isn’t Dolores’s and an Oscar-themed parody of the first verse again. Unless you do all the sections of the song and layer them over one another at the end, it doesn’t count as “We Don’t Talk about Bruno.” (This has been a public service announcement.)

But the extra stuff is always just that to me anyway, extraneous. What I’m most interested in are the awards themselves. I remain thoroughly happy that it was CODA’s night, taking home Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. I loved everything about Troy Kotsur’s speech as the first Deaf actor to win an Oscar, right down to his Popeye impression and presenter Yuh-jung Youn holding his award so he could sign with both hands! It might seem like an easy bit of sentiment, but I did get choked up seeing the crowd doing ASL applause for Kotsur and for the Best Picture win.

Best Leading Actress was the only acting award that felt up in the air to me, but I was pleased to see Jessica Chastain take home the trophy for The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Her speech was lovely, as was Ariana DeBose’s for Best Supporting Actress in West Side Story. DeBose joined Kotsur in the “historic first” club, as she’s the first Afrolatina and the first openly queer actor of color to win an award. Very happy for her, although I wish West Side Story had won more than one trophy. And even though I was rooting for Andrew Garfield, I understand why Will Smith won Best Leading Actor for King Richard.

As expected, The Power of the Dog won Best Director, with Jane Campion bringing the total of female Best Director winners to a whopping three, and Dune swept most of the technical categories, picking up the awards for cinematography, editing, sound, and visual effects, along with Best Production Design and Best Score. I was glad to see Belfast win Best Original Screenplay, thrilled (but not surprised) for Encanto to win Best Animated Feature, and disappointed that Lin-Manuel Miranda still doesn’t have his EGOT (I know that “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” was the breakout hit, but “Dos Oruguitas” is still a breathtaking song.) Drive My Car quite understandably won Best International Feature, and I most definitely need to make time for Best Documentary Feature winner Summer of Soul.

I wouldn’t really call it a surprising night, outside of that one particular moment, but I still enjoyed myself. I was happy with quite a few of the awards, especially the historic wins, and there were some beautiful speeches.