Beyond the triumph of “Oppenheimer”, the 96th Oscars ceremony also offered a series of serious or offbeat moments on Sunday, between jokes about Donald Trump, mention of the war in Gaza and the inevitable “Barbie”.
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“Barbie” still had its moment
“Oppenheimer” won seven statuettes but the ceremony highlighted the other essential 2023 box office success, “Barbie”. Promised and highly anticipated moment of the evening, Ryan Gosling performed, in a pink sequined suit, a flamboyant “I’m just Ken”, taken from the soundtrack and a narcissistic song which implicitly mocks toxic masculinity.
- Listen to a look back at the Oscars with journalists Max-Émile Sawyer and Maxime Demers on Richard Martineau’s show via QUB :
And that’s another title from the movie, “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell, who won the Oscar for Best Original Song. With this piano ballad, performed on Sunday by Billie Eilish in a deliberately fragile voice, almost a whisper, they had already won the Grammy Awards for best song of the year. And this is already their second Oscar, after “No Time to Die” from the eponymous film in the James Bond series (2022).
When Jimmy Kimmel pays Donald Trump
The host of the evening Jimmy Kimmel peppered the ceremony with well-felt jokes, for example mocking the Academy for the criticized absence of Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”) among the nominees for the Oscar for best director. “You applaud, but it’s you who didn’t vote for her,” he said to Hollywood’s elite.
Kimmel also had fun reading a message that the very likely Republican candidate for the American presidential election, Donald Trump, had just published on his Truth social network to castigate the presenter, “a below average person”. In a very polarized America, Hollywood is generally seen as too progressive by conservatives. “Thank you, President Trump. I’m surprised you’re still here, isn’t it time to go to jail?” Jimmy Kimmel retorted at the end of the ceremony, in a play on words combining Trump’s legal setbacks and the fact of go to bed given the late hour.
Gaza, Ukraine and Navalny
AFP
The evening became more serious when the British Jewish director Jonathan Glazer, winner of the Oscar for best foreign film for “The Area of Interest”, about the horror of the Holocaust, delivered a few words of plea against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. “We refuse to allow our Jewishness and the Holocaust to be misused for an occupation that has caused so much suffering for so many innocent people,” he said. “Whether it is the victims in Israel on October 7, or the ongoing attack in Gaza, they are all victims of dehumanization,” the theme of his film, he added. More discreetly, certain stars, like Mark Ruffalo or Billie Eilish, wore a red badge calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Then it was “20 Days in Mariupol”, a film about the siege of the Ukrainian city during the Russian invasion, which won the Oscar for best documentary. “I am probably the first director on this stage to say that I would have preferred never to make this film, if in return Russia had not attacked Ukraine, nor occupied our cities,” said the journalist from the Associated Press Mstyslav Chernov.
As for the traditional tribute to deceased stars, it began with Alexeï Navalny. Opponent N.1 to Vladimir Putin, who died on February 16 in detention in Siberia, was at the center of the film “Navalny”, winner of the 2023 Oscar for best documentary.
A naked wrestler for the Oscar for best costumes
Photo Getty Images via AFP
Among the crazy moments of the evening, wrestler and actor John Cena appeared naked, with his muscles bulging and abundant, and in sandals, to present the Oscar for best costumes. He hid the most intimate parts of his anatomy with the envelope containing the name of the winner, before donning a toga to award the reward to “Poor Creatures”.
Scorsese still empty-handed
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Nominated for 10 Oscars, Martin Scorsese’s historical thriller “Killers of the Flower Moon,” about the silent 1920s murders of members of the oil-rich Osage tribe, walked away empty-handed. It has become a habit for the 81-year-old director, who however no longer has anything to prove. He had already experienced this scenario with “The Irishman” and “Gangs of New York”.
The film at least got a good joke from Jimmy Kimmel, who joked about its length, more than 3 hours 20 minutes: “In the time you watch the film, you could drive to Oklahoma and solve the murders you -themselves”.