By Don Hall

The Academy Awards is not a competition based on merit. It couldn't be. It's a pageant, a game show, an example of an industry celebrating itself. The idea that anyone winning an Oscar has created some sort of objective standard of excellence in art is on its face silly.

Is Dancing with Wolves an objectively better film than Goodfellas? Was Grace Kelly’s performance in A Country Girl superior to Judy Garland’s in A Star is Born? Was Art Carney better in Harry and Tonto than either Al Pacino (The Godfather Part II) or Jack Nicholson (Chinatown)?

The Oscars is a popularity contest based on votes influenced by money spent convincing the voters that a specific movie or performance deserves recognition. The Oscars are a marketing exercise. It’s a three-and-a-half hour commercial for Hollywood.

Our (the audience) investment in each of these films promoted to promote themselves is the few dollars spent and a few hours. For some of us, the investment goes into discussing these works of commercial art in detail. None of this is even close to the amount of time, money, and energy it takes to create one of these entertainments. A commentator mentioned during the broadcast that the costume designer for Elvis researched and designed thousands of costumes for the film. Thousands. Each film requires the labor of hundreds of people and, in Todd Field’s case, sixteen years to birth the subjectively brilliant Tár.

As an event planner, the sheer effort it takes to simply put together the spectacle of the Oscar ceremony is mind boggling.

I recall, back in the days when I ran a theater in Chicago, snubbing the Jeff Awards—an art contest in the same vein as the Academy Awards but for local Chicago theatre. At the time, in order to even be considered for the awards, a theater had to gift a large number of free tickets to the committee so their judges could attend performances without paying. For our tiny theater, the possibility of being able to print on a poster “Jeff Nominated” or “Jeff Award Winning” was not financially possible. Sure, the prestige involved might be worth it in the long run but the tiniest were scraping by show-to-show, weekend-to-weekend. So I openly denigrated the exercise as vapid self-congratulation. I was right but I was also dead wrong.

I stopped watching the Oscars in 1999 when Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan. I felt that the horse race was fundamentally unfair, that the voting was skewed, that obviously my opinion of the art on display was correct and the Academy had thoroughly fucked it. I was finished with the disappointment, the surface-level politics, the focus on clothing on the red carpet, the silly banter. I caught the slap aftermath last year at my buddy Eric’s house in Henderson, NV. We were hanging out, eating, and talking about movies rather than watching the ceremony when another friend texted me that Will Smith had beaten Chris Rock up on international TV. We leapt up and switched the broadcast on. It was gossipy and incredibly sad to see but we were floored that they allowed Smith to give a winning speech as a follow-up to assault.

Then came COVID. I found that I missed sitting in the movie theater. I missed the communal feel of talking about the films. I watched a lot of streamed television but the movies weren’t the same. When my life imploded and I came back to Kansas, going to the movie theater with my mom was the best part about any weekend. All of a sudden, mom and I were getting invested. We saw a movie a week plus movies that didn’t make it to Wichita via streaming and rentals.

When the nominations landed I was a bit shocked that I had seen six of the ten Best Picture nominees. It felt like I was involved on some level. I rented Triangle of Sadness. I rented Tár and watched it four times in the 48-hour rental window. We went and saw The Fabelmans and Women Talking. I was caught up! I had some more time so I dove into Aftersun, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Fire of Love, Close, The Whale, and Babylon. Now I wanted to watch the Oscars for the first time in thirteen years.

Leading up to it, I felt that the following Will Win/Should Win predictions were solid:

Best Supporting Actor:
Will Win: Ke Huy Quan
Should Win: Ke Huy Quan

Best Supporting Actress:
Will Win: Angela Bassett
Should Win: Hong Chau

Best Leading Actor:
Will Win: Austin Butler
Should Win: Brendan Fraser

Best Leading Actress:
Will Win: Michelle Yeoh
Should Win: Cate Blanchett

Best Director:
Will Win: Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan
Should Win: Todd Field

Best Picture:
Will Win: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Should Win: Tár

Was Brendan Fraser objectively better than Austin Butler? Was Jamie Lee Curtis superior in Everything Everywhere All at Once than Angela Bassett in Wakanda Forever or Hong Chau in The Whale? Was Everything Everywhere All at Once really the Best Picture or just the one voters liked more in the moment?

What was different this time was I didn’t really care who won. For there to be a winner, there likewise must then be losers. Otherwise the prize has no meaning or value. I saw so much of the work this time around and was so impressed and thrilled with so much of it, it no longer mattered. I loved Top Gun: Maverick and I loved Elvis. All Quiet on the Western Front was an achievement of epic proportions but I missed the less spectacle-oriented philosophisizing of the book. I enjoyed ‌Everything Everywhere All at Once but felt it was a bit too goofy in the face of Tár, which I thought and think will be one of those films referred back to and pondered decades from now when the children of your children are wondering what all the fuss was about with this ‘cancel culture’ bullshit. I had such a grand time watching the movies that my reward was already received.

Jimmy Kimmel was blandly appealing and the jokes were both safe and stale. So what? Watching Hugh Grant effectively tell the world how little value he placed on the show was far funnier. Hearing Scheinert and Kwan speechify the most Millennial speeches ever and the Germans who made All Quiet… keep coming up to the thrumming non-melody was kind of annoying but I bawled like a child in need of Bactine watching Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michelle Yeoh accept their awards.

It was odd that Disney and Warner Bros. both got serious ad time in the midst but at least the commercials throughout the breaks were entertaining and vastly superior to the commercials for the Super Bowl. And Rihanna actually seemed conscious for her performance. What made it work for me was that so many first time nominees had their dreams realized. That was lovely.

I’m not sure I have any more big dreams in my life. Time will tell, I suppose. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the dreams of others coming to fruition. The Oscars, for all of its flaws, is exactly that.