“There are two Yorgos nominated!” Jimmy Kimmel was amazed in his shaky opening monologue. He was referring to Yorgos Lanthimos, director of ‘Poor Creatures’, and the editor of his film, Yorgos Mavropsaridis. Kimmel used the information to make a rather silly joke with that Greek name, but the idea was palpable that the Yorgoses quota was being exceeded. The normal thing would have been one, just as there has only been one Native American actress in the entire history of the awards (Lily Gladstone, who ultimately lost to the other favorite, Emma Stone) and just as the dubious tradition of giving an Oscar for supporting acting to a racialized person and leaving the big prizes for white people.
“For the first time there are three non-English speaking films nominated,” Kimmel continued to admire, “and Sandra Hüller appears in two of them.” The German, dressed in a Schiaparelli as painted by Singer Sargent, has had the year of her life, with ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ and ‘The Zone of Interest’, and represented the European contingent better than anyone else at the ceremony, which always He goes to the Oscars as the poor but eccentric relative. Hollywood loves to have a few rotating Europeans do their European things (talk politics in speeches, smoke during breaks, exude threesome couple vibes). It was a Briton, Jonathan Glazer, who set the most explicitly militant note, in a speech of thanks, which he read with trembling hands, in which he recognized himself as a Jew who rejects the instrumentalization of the Holocaust. And a “proud Irishman”, as Cillian Murphy defined himself, dedicated his award, achieved for playing the father of the atomic bomb, to all those who work for peace, “peacemakers”, staying one step away from saying the other p, Palestine. Two French actors, the very young Milo Machado and Swann Arlaud, renamed on the Internet as a “sexy French lawyer” and gleefully objectified for his gray hair, wore pins with the flag of Palestine – many others, like Mark Ruffalo, wore the red symbol that calls for a ceasefire in the region – and Arlaud was also in one of the most memeified photos of the night, in which he appeared with a piti on his lips, along with his director, Justine Triet – as Macron tweeted: “Iconic. French!”–, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemmons.
But Hollywood is Hollywood, and in the end that is the only gala of all those held in which you can design a number like the one Ryan Gosling scored, playing Marilyn Monroe, and everything turns out well. As if apologizing that in the end it was his Ken who got all the love and not Barbie, Gosling went down to the seats and, popstar-style, gave the microphone to his friends to sing some of the best phrases from that memorable song: Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and Emma Stone gladly responded. Iconic. American!
