The 2022 Academy Awards: an Oscars for the history books
By Lara Eastaugh
And just like that, in a Will Smith-esque flash, this year’s awards season ended with the beloved Academy Awards on 27 March. The annual Hollywood event is always home to some form of controversy, and this year most certainly did not disappoint. The Will Smith and Chris Rock showdown, which saw Will Smith step onstage to slap Chris Rock following a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith, has taken the internet by storm. It is arguably one of the most dramatic awards ceremony moments we have seen over the past decade, beaten only by the 2017 Best Picture debacle. Whether you’re Team Rock or Team Smith, the night was certainly one for the history books.
Whilst other aspects of the night were wildly unpredictable, this year’s winners were far from it. Arguably the most surprising win of the night was the success of Best Picture-winner CODA, the dark horse Sundance favourite based on the French-Belgian 2014 coming-of-age film La Famille Bélier. Despite only being nominated for three awards, CODA walked home with the total three wins, all whilst making Oscar history. The star of the film, Troy Kutsur, is the first deaf man to win an Academy Award for acting. His incredibly moving speech was rightly met with a standing ovation by the stars at the Dolby Theatre, making even his interpreter choke up halfway through.
The race for Best Actress was won by Jessica Chastain for her outstanding performance in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, beating out audience-favourite Kristen Stewart. Jane Campion unsurprisingly won Best Director for her beautiful work on The Power of the Dog, and Dune picked up several of the more production-based awards, such as Best Editing and Best Production Design (although, controversially, these were awarded off-air).
It was nice to see Kenneth Branagh pick up a long overdue Academy Award for his work on Belfast for Best Original Screenplay. After eight nominations over an iconic career spanning more than forty years, it was refreshing (and rewarding) for Branagh to move away from Shakespeare in his semi-autobiographical piece on his experience growing up in 1960s Northern Ireland.
The Oscars is an infamously hard event to host
What was also surprising was the dexterity with which the three hosts of the evening, Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanka Sykes, handled the room, both before and after ‘the slap’. The Oscars is an infamously hard event to host, with many previous stars having absolutely bombed on stage — you need only recall the disaster that was Anne Hathaway and James Franco hosting the ceremony in 2011. However, the three women faired extremely well, with the opening monologue striking the perfect balance between comedy and current affairs. Credit must be awarded to Schumer for her unscripted gag after the Smith-Rock dust-up, joking “I’ve been getting out of that Spider-Man costume. Did I miss anything? There’s, like, a different vibe in here.” Although a relatively minor moment during the awards, her comedic timing was well-executed and definitely encapsulated the ‘vibe’ of the room.
All in all, whilst there were plenty of small standout moments throughout the night, there is no doubt that this year’s Academy Awards will forever be defined by that slap. And if that alone wasn’t enough Will Smith-related chaos for one night, merely moments later he was called onstage to accept the Best Actor award for his performance in King Richard, in which he apologised to the Academy and his fellow nominees, proclaiming that “love will make you do crazy things”. Well, he wasn’t kidding. One can only hope some desperately needed time with his aunt and uncle in Bel-Air can sort him out.
Image: De’Andre Bush via Unsplash
