"Life is full of surprises," is how Pawel Pawlikowski, the Polish-born director of Ida, put it at the Oscars on February 22. And he was one of them. Pawlikowski managed to keep talking over the wrap-it-up music, which usually ushers off long-winded or lesser-known nominees, and actually finished his acceptance speech for best foreign language film.
There weren't too many other surprises.
One of the less predictable turn of events was the bland performance by Neil Patrick Harris, a veteran M.C. of both the Tony Awards and the Emmys, who hosted the Oscars for the first time on Sunday. His one successful stretch was a parody of a scene from Birdman, in which Michael Keaton runs through Times Square in his underpants. Harris ran through backstage corridors and onto the stage in white briefs and his black socks and shoes. But because Harris is in good physical shape, there wasn't much humor or bravery to the sketch, just bravado.
Oscar nights almost always drag on too long, but this one was a slog almost from the very beginning. Harris dutifully did a song tribute to old Hollywood, and Jack Black ran up onstage to express the self-loathing of new Hollywood, ranting about an "industry in flux," big budget movies about superheroes and formulaic scripts.
That may have been a reaction to the best picture nominations - seven of the eight are not big studio films, but independent movies that found a niche audience. None of them made nearly as much money as American Sniper (or for that matter, The Lego Movie).
There were some moments that went against the usual Oscar formula of tears and gratitude. Patricia Arquette's feminist call to arms at the end of her acceptance speech for supporting actress was unexpected and fierce. "We have fought for everybody else's equal rights. It's our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America," she said as Meryl Streep and others roared their approval.
CitizenFour," about the National Security Agency leaker Edward J. Snowden, won best documentary, and its makers thanked Snowden, who is still in Russia, for his courage. Harris joked that Snowden "couldn't be here for some treason."
Oscar nights usually do have their share of political posturing, but this was a particularly passionate evening.
This year, in addition to Arquette's speech, the question of race in Hollywood was addressed with both humor - in his opening monologue, Harris made a barbed allusion to the lack of diversity among the Academy by saying, "Tonight we honor Hollywood's best and whitest, sorry, brightest" - and emotion. The latter came at the hands of actors, musicians and others who wanted to express indignation that the director of Selma, Ava DuVernay, wasn't nominated and neither was David Oyelowo, who played the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When the audience applauded Oyelowo, who participated in a bit with Harris, the host said with a smirk, "Oh sure, now you like him."
As John Legend and Common accepted the Oscar for their song, Glory, from Selma, Legend urged the audience to join the struggle to protect voting rights and called the United States "the most incarcerated country in the world," saying that there are now more "black men under correctional control than were under slavery in 1850."
The political speeches were somber, but they turned out to be more lively and bracing than any of Harris' skits.
