In so many ways, against all the odds, this year’s Oscars were a largely heartening affair. Despite being delayed due to Covid, beaming live from a handful of different venues, and featuring a bunch of films that never actually made it into cinemas, there were plenty of exciting wins to make up for it – from Chloé Zhao’s history-making Nomadland sweep, to the early success of Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman, and Daniel Kaluuya bagging Best Supporting Actor. But as anyone who watched the live broadcast will tell you, the whole thing ended on a deeply weird note. Rather than closing out on Best Picture as usual, the Actor In A Leading Role award was shuffled around to be the final gong of the night – a strange choice that perhaps nodded to the ceremony finishing on a bittersweet posthumous win for the late, great Chadwick Boseman.
Except, Chadwick Boseman didn’t win Actor In A Leading Role. His searing performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom lost out to the legendary Anthony Hopkins in The Father (yet to reach UK screens), and since Hopkins wasn’t able to collect his statue in person (it was nearly 5am in the UK, and at 83 he’s the oldest actor ever to win the award), the show simply… fizzled out. What seemed to be a decision designed to pay pertinent tribute to the incredible career of a newly-forged Hollywood legend gone tragically too soon suddenly became an anticlimax almost as awkward as the whole La La Land/Moonlight snafu.
Aside from his inclusion at the end of the rather rushed ‘In Memoriam’ round-up, there was no moment dedicated to looking at his legacy.
Beneath the strangeness of it all, there was a sadness – it was hard not to feel that Boseman deserved better from the ceremony. Not that Hopkins didn’t deserve the Best Actor award – by all accounts he gives an astonishing performance in The Father – but the unusual restructuring of the night only served to heighten the feeling of Boseman’s absence, particularly on seeing his face flash up alongside his fellow nominees.
Aside from his inclusion at the end of the rather rushed ‘In Memoriam’ round-up, there was no moment dedicated to looking at his legacy, no pausing to reflect on a screen icon who achieved the near-impossible: becoming a box office-conquering A-lister in a matter of years, before leaving us far sooner than anyone ever expected. Boseman’s achievements – including his incredible, perhaps career-best turn as Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom – certainly would have merited his own tribute in the show. But a posthumous award was never guaranteed, and instead the show ended with a gut-wrenching reminder of his life and career cut tragically short, followed by the bitter realisation that he wasn’t going to be rewarded for his stellar final role.
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There was plenty more that the Academy could have done, while still ultimately giving that award to Hopkins. For one, they could have actually finished the show on Best Picture as per usual, sending everyone out on the joy of Nomadland’s success. But beyond that, in a ceremony where there was an awkward five-minute music quiz featuring Glenn Close twerking to ‘Da Butt’, there was inarguably time for a special remembrance of Boseman – an actor whose work feels so current and alive that to think of it in the past tense feels utterly alien, and who seemed destined to continue reshaping Hollywood for decades to come. To not pay special respects to him was disappointing enough. But to rejig the show and then end on him not winning a posthumous Oscar was a baffling bummer.
It happens. Making strange choices is nothing new to the Academy – there are always upsets on the night, and not everyone gets their moment. But if anyone deserved one this year – via an awards win or something else – it was Chadwick. One thing’s for sure, at least. Between his multiple appearances as T’Challa in the MCU, his ethereal presence in Da 5 Bloods, his brilliant biopic performances in 42, Marshall, and Get On Up, and his heartbreaking, livewire embodiment of Levee in Ma Rainey, the memory of his work will live far longer than any ill-judged Oscars screw-up.