By Peter Sblendorio
New York Daily News
Now that’s an Oscars plot twist.
Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor at the 93rd Academy Awards for “The Father” in a stunning upset, receiving the honor over the late Chadwick Boseman in an anticlimactic moment Sunday at a ceremony that was otherwise dominated by “Nomadland,” which won three Oscars, including Best Picture.
Boseman, who was nominated for his portrayal of a headstrong horn player at a contentious recording session in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” was considered a heavy favorite to win Best Actor after winning equivalent honors at 2021 ceremonies such as the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards and NAACP Image Awards.
Best Actor was the last award announced Sunday, replacing the traditional finale of Best Picture, perhaps because Boseman was expected to be the winner and it would be an emotional ending to the night. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was the final film role for Boseman, who died last August at age 43 following a private four-year battle with colon cancer.
Hopkins, who played a man suffering from memory loss in “The Father,” did not attend Sunday’s award show at Union Station in Los Angeles, and no speech was given on his behalf as the show quickly ended after the announcement.
Earlier in the evening, “Nomadland” filmmaker Chloé Zhao made history as the first woman of color to win Best Director at the Oscars. She is only the second woman to win the award, following Kathryn Bigelow, who received the honor in 2010 for the war thriller “The Hurt Locker.”
“Nomadland” centers on a widow traveling the U.S. West by van after losing her job,
Zhao, 39, referenced a lesson she learned from a classic Chinese text during her stirring Best Director speech.
“People at birth are inherently good,” Zhao said as she cited the literature. “Those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid, and I still truly believe them today. Even though sometimes it may seem like the opposite is true, but I have always found goodness in the people I’ve met, everywhere I went in the world.”
Frances McDormand, who starred in the film, won Best Actress.
Also making history Sunday was Yuh-Jung Youn, who became the first Korean performer to win an Oscar when she was named Best Supporting Actress for “Minari.” She starred as the grandmother Soonja in the drama about a Korean-American family with big dreams.
“I’d like to thank my boys, who make me go out and work,” Youn said, earning a big laugh from the audience.
“This is the result, because Mommy worked so hard.”
Another big winner was Daniel Kaluuya, who was named Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton in the historical drama “Judas and the Black Messiah.”
He praised Hampton and his mission of unity during his acceptance speech, and told the audience “there’s so much work to do.”
“How blessed we are that have lived in a lifetime where he existed,” Kaluuya said of Hampton.
“Thank you for your light. He was on this earth for 21 years, 21 years, and he found a way to feed kids breakfast, educate kids, give free medical care.”
Kaluuya’s speech was one of several that referenced real-life issues during Hollywood’s biggest night. The Oscars began with a powerful opening segment in which Regina King addressed concerns facing the Black community.
King referred to the trial where fired Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murder in the 2020 death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, shortly after she arrived on the stage at Union Station.
“It has been quite a year, and we are still smack dab in the middle of it. We are mourning the loss of so many, and I have to be honest, if things had gone differently this past week in Minneapolis, I may have traded in my heels for marching boots,” King said before presenting the ceremony’s first award.
“Now, I know that a lot of you people at home want to reach for your remote when you feel like Hollywood is preaching to you, but as a mother of a Black son, I know the fear that so many live with, and no amount of fame or fortune changes that.”
Sunday’s broadcast, which aimed to resemble a movie in which the presenters are the stars, featured an in-person ceremony split between Union Station and the Dolby Theatre, with numerous COVID-19 safety protocols in place.
King said attendees had been vaccinated, tested and retested, and that the event was being treated like a movie set, where participants could only remove masks once the cameras were rolling.
Still, the glitzy event celebrating achievements in film made sure to incorporate Hollywood flair, with the show’s producers, including Steven Soderbergh, enlisting major stars including Harrison Ford, Halle Berry, Brad Pitt and Renée Zellweger to present honors.
Nominees and other attendees got the opportunity to show off their Oscar attire on a stripped-down, outdoor red carpet at Union Station ahead of the ceremony.
Attendance was reduced for safety, and for the third year in a row, the Oscars went without a host.
“Tonight, we are here to celebrate,” King said. “This was indeed a hard year for everyone, but our love of movies helped to get us through. It made us feel less isolated and connected us when we were apart.”
Other winners included the Disney and Pixar film “Soul,” about a middle school band teacher whose spirit was separated from his body, which was named Best Animated Feature.
Best Original Screenplay went to Emerald Fennell for the #MeToo revenge thriller “Promising Young Woman,” while Best Adapted Screenplay was awarded to Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller for “The Father,” a drama about a man, played by Anthony Hopkins, suffering from memory loss.
The ceremony was held nearly two months after its originally scheduled date of Feb. 28, with numerous nominees coming from streaming services following a year in which many movie theaters were closed due to the pandemic.
The Oscars were the last major ceremony of an award season that has seen ratings plummet during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Golden Globes and the Grammys both set record lows in viewership as they adopted new distancing guidelines in response to the virus.
Industry experts contended to the Daily News last week there are numerous potential factors to explain declining award show ratings, including that the 2021 nominees did not feature one specific film that got everyone talking, and that people have more options than ever for content to watch.
“It is kind of mystifying why we see it, and the only real (new) variable is that these award shows look differently than they did before because of COVID,” Robert Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture, told The News.
“I suppose that’s the closest we get to an answer,” he said. “Somehow, the solutions that these awards productions have come up with are not appealing to people.”
