Spotlight also won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy); Revenant is acclaimed for Best Director (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) and Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki). Best Leading Actress is Brie Larson (Room), Best Supporting Actress – Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), Best Supporting Actor – Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies). The jury preferred a biopic Amy as Best Documentary Feature Film over the masterpiece by Joshua Oppenheimer The Look of Silence. The award for Best Foreign Language Film was predictably won the by Hungarian WW2 drama Son of Saul. Bright and cheerful Inside Out triumphed as Best Animated Feature Film. The thriller Mad Max: Fury Road won the most Oscars: Best Costume Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design. The Oscar for Best Original Score was awarded to Ennio Morricone, whom Tarantino asked to write “ten minutes of music about snow” for The Hateful Eight; eventually, the master of film soundtracks has created half an hour’s worth of top-notch tunes.
Certainly, the most interesting tension of the ceremony had been whether or not the Oscar will be awarded to Leonardo DiCaprio, who had been nominated for the sixth time.
While sympathetic to everyone who was rooting for him, I can’t help making the observation that it was not DiCaprio as actor who claimed the victory. The award was won by advertisers, PR managers, producers; figuratively speaking, the victory was deserved by those five kilos of makeup, which is rumored to have been applied daily on the face of once the prettiest boy in Hollywood in order to transform him into a seasoned frontiersman. In my opinion, The Revenant offers the definitive proof that DiCaprio is a mediocre actor, who cannot play a role convincingly even with the help of kilos of make-up: unfortunately, whenever a profound dramatic experience is needed, he acts like in a TV melodrama, substituting the tragedy with sentiments.
The victory of Spotlight seems much more substantial to me. This is the case when an Oscar is awarded for the picture that consistently combines the relevance of the story with the artistic element.
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu / REUTERS photo
Spotlight is based on real events. In 2001, The Boston Globe, one of the most influential US newspapers, began the investigation of pedophilia cases among the city’s Catholic clergy. The investigation was led by a special group of journalists called Spotlight. After all, the journalists have uncovered a conspiracy of covering up child sexual abuse.
One of the film’s benefits is that it is not centered on a single hero or heroine: the movie features multiple different characters, played by a brilliant cast (Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton). The film deserves the prize for Best Director: despite the temptation, which the issue in question offers in terms of stirring up viewers’ emotions, Thomas McCarthy is not trying to put pressure on the audience. His work is a minimalist, even ascetic intellectual cinema, flavored with a necessary dose of melancholy. The result is very decent: it seems that it is the only way this awful story can be told in – with even voice and precise strokes.
