Oscar night climaxed with a metaphorical whiff of gunpowder and a defiant rebel yell as One Battle After Another broke late to claim the crowning best picture and director awards at the Dolby theatre in downtown Los Angeles. If it is true that Americans get the presidents they deserve, it follows that they should get the appropriate Academy Award winner as well.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s rambunctious counter-culture thriller is the perfect film for an imperfect USA, brilliantly reading the tea-leaves of Donald Trump’s second term with its tale of leftist activists in a proto-fascist California. One Battle After Another was the most overtly political of this year’s best picture nominees and that might have made the difference. But it was arguably the most ambitious, rousing and lip-smackingly satisfying too.
In honouring One Battle After Another, Academy voters were belatedly anointing its 55-year-old writer-director, who had previously suffered through 11 nominations without a single win. While Anderson – creator of the electrifying Boogie Nights, Magnolia and There Will Be Blood – has long been hailed as the finest American film-maker of his generation, his pictures proved too jagged and exotic for mainstream Oscar tastes. It is only now, in bespectacled, grey-haired middle-age, that Hollywood’s prodigal son has been fully welcomed into the fold.
In the event, Anderson went home with a trio of Academy Awards. He shared the top award for best film with his fellow producers, Sara Murphy and the late Adam Somner, while also winning for best direction and adapted screenplay. Accepting the screenplay prize, Anderson explained that he conceived the film for his children as a kind of generational mea-culpa. “I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” he said. “But also with the encouragement that they will hopefully be the generation that brings us some common sense and decency.”
The final minutes of the 98th Academy Awards provided the dramatic final flourish to the most closely fought heavyweight contest in years. It was the Oscars’ equivalent of the rumble in the jungle, pitting One Battle After Another against Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s sublime 30s-set Delta blues vampire story, having forced the two worthy contenders to knock themselves senseless through the long months of awards season. Sinners looked the freshest at the opening bell with a record-breaking 16 nominations, lost the momentum in the middle rounds and then seemed to rally near the end. Anderson’s picture, though, steered the more robust, solid course and finished with six Oscars against its rival’s total of four. It lost a couple of battles but wound up winning the war.
This defining air of uncertainty – even borderline panic – percolated through to the acting categories. Ireland’s Jessie Buckley was always the nailed-on certainty for best actress, thanks to her role as the bereaved mother in Hamnet, but elsewhere chaos reigned. Timothée Chalamet, who played a table-tennis hotshot in Marty Supreme, looked set fair for the best actor prize, but his awards campaign more ponged than pinged and the gong went instead to Michael B Jordan, who took it for the dual role of twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Sinners. The supporting actor Oscars were a crapshoot. The absent Sean Penn was honoured for his turn as the bumptious Colonel Lockjaw in One Battle After Another, while 75-year-old Amy Madigan emerged from the fringes – a full 40 years after her last nomination – to win for her role as the childcatching witch in Zach Cregger’s Weapons.
While Anderson was the night’s top-billed poster boy, the big behind-the-scenes winner was Warner Bros, the Hollywood studio which bankrolled and promoted both Oscar frontrunners and finished the evening with a record-equalling haul of 11 Oscars. The fact that this grand triumph came just ahead of the company’s imminent takeover by Trump-friendly Paramount Skydance only added to the sense of this year’s Oscars being a rebellious last stand. Rivals in the race but kindred spirits on the screen, One Battle After Another and Sinners showed that it’s still possible to make radical, whip-smart mid-budget pictures within the old-school Hollywood system – at least for the time being – before the lights go out for good.
