Everything Oscars All At Once

Sebastian Havira ’23 Arts & Entertainment Editor

In my last article, I made multiple predictions of who would reach the stage and cheerfully accept each Academy Award. After watching the televised program, I was not only displeased with the in accuracy of my predictions, but also by the official winners of a long and tense year of exceptional motion picture art. At a striking view count of 18.7 million, the Academy Awards was an overall success; some offensive jokes here and there (by comedic expert and host Jimmy Kimmel), winners stuttered through their speeches, and of course, a reminder to the audience that at no time will violence be condoned—a dig at Will Smith’s defensive outburst which caused him a ten year ban from attending the Academy. Although some jokes caused discomfort in the crowd, the majority of the audience responded lightly to Kimmel’s verbal capers. The comedic timing, social awareness, and the short, yet sharp, comedic liners were a vast improvement to the messy quad that attempted to create the same reaction at least year’s show, or even “comedian” Jerrod Carmichael at the 2023 Golden Globes ceremony. Aside from Kimmel’s appearance, I can assure you that most people were pleased with the lucky winners of the night, especially The Whale (a slow and at times stretched plotline of a morbidly obese English teacher), and of course, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Many LM students know my opinion on Daniel Kwan’s fey of a film, which (is subjective) did not deserve all of the positive reception nor the Oscar wins. I will continue to stand by my opinion when I strongly announce that Michelle Yeoh did not deserve the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Cate Blanchett should have been the lucky lady of the night to shed her tears in the spotlight). As for Brendan Fraser, his performance was convincing, but was it enough to win an Academy Award? I don’t think so. Austin Butler’s portrayal of the drug-addicted yet endlessly talented Elvis Presley was superior to Fraser’s gloom character searching for what? A relationship with his daughter? Instead, he should have invested his time and money in getting a pacemaker (this would have made the story more interesting at least).

The peak of my heart throbbing in pain was when Everything Everywhere all at Once won Best Picture. If I had the privilege of deciding who would win the highest award of the night, I would have given it to Ruben Östuland’s social comedy-drama, Triangle of Sadness, or Steven Speilberg’s coming-of-age drama, The Fabelman’s. Although my opinions clearly do not align with those judging the pieces, I cannot deny the historical significance an Asian actress winning Best Actress in a Leading Role has on our societal norms and how we perceive non-white races in the entertainment industries. Yeoh has opened endless doors for minorities by representing them in her work. If anything were to be recognized during that night, Yeoh’s win would be the headlining feature—continuing the strand of historical wins (Parasite being the first international film to win Best Picture, Ariana Debose being the first openly queer woman to win Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Troy Kotsur being the first deaf man to win Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and now Michelle Yeoh being the first Asian woman to win Best Actress in a Leading Role).

It was a clean sweep for Everything Everywhere All at Once, winning seven of the eleven Oscars it was nominated for, however, I would have preferred to see more diversity in the winners for each category. The only thing that keeps most viewers engaged while watching the program is knowing that each film has an equal chance of being the final winner of that category, however, many nominees were unfortunately shadowed by the abstruse Everything Everywhere All at Once (which had to be the nadir of my entire night). Hopefully, the nominees next year are more diverse and less prosaic.