What Did That Oscars Show Say About Movies? Our Critics Puzzle It Out.

The anticlimactic night was in many ways not too different from previous Academy Awards, and it showed the organization was willing to change only so much.

On the morning after a very odd Oscars, we asked A.O. Scott, co-chief film critic, and Wesley Morris, critic at large, to discuss what they made of it all. The ceremony was always going to be unusual because of pandemic-related limitations, but it ended in one of the biggest letdowns in memory: when best actor, not best picture, was the final award of the night, and the winner was an absent Anthony Hopkins, not the expected Chadwick Boseman. Here’s what our critics said: A.O. SCOTT I’m trying to remember how I felt during most of the show, which was like a long, awkward but not entirely unenjoyable dinner party that I wasn’t sure I’d actually been invited to. But we have to start at the end. The only explanation is that Steven Soderbergh and the other producers of the telecast were, like many of us, confident that Chadwick Boseman would take best actor, and envisioned a concluding tableau of pride and pathos, combining grief and celebration. Even Joaquin Phoenix’s terse introductions of the best-actor nominees, after Renée Zellweger’s prose paeans to the best-actress contenders, seemed to set up a somber, sublime moment. What happened was more than just anticlimactic. Hopkins’s award and the best-actress Oscar for Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”), while both entirely defensible on the merits, also sent a message. The academy is only willing to go so far in the direction of the new. And apart from the “Nomadland” triumph for best picture (which we’ll get to), this seemed like a pretty standard Oscars, notwithstanding the weird format. The “edgy” movie (“Promising Young Woman”) gets a screenplay consolation prize, actors of color (Daniel Kaluuya, Yuh-Jung Youn) get supporting wins, but for the most part I’m reminded of the lyric to a song that Billie Holiday used to sing. “Them that’s got shall have. Them that’s not shall lose.” I guess that still is news.