A Change Has Come

Talk about a Hollywood ending.

By the time the 74th Academy Awards telecast had hit the three-hour mark, “A Beautiful Mind” had won only one Oscar out of the five for which it had been nominated: Jennifer Connelly’s victory for best supporting actress, which had just about opened the program. Archrival “Lord of the Rings,” meanwhile, was already holding four.

But “A Beautiful Mind,” as befits a film that was the most classically Hollywood of all the nominees, came roaring back like the cavalry in a John Ford western. It took best adapted screenplay, best director for Ron Howard and, finally, best picture as well.

But, to be frank, not only wasn’t “Beautiful Mind’s” victory the only Hollywood finish of the evening, it wasn’t the most memorable either.

For after an awards campaign season universally acknowledged to be the most petty and mean-spirited in memory, the entire Academy Awards process also got a heartening, emotionally stirring Hollywood ending. With Sidney Poitier’s special Oscar, Halle Berry’s best actress triumph and Denzel Washington’s best actor nod, the Oscar ceremony touched chords of genuine feeling you would have sworn were beyond the grasp of this often derided ceremony.

Yes, this was also one of the longest Oscar shows of all time, clocking in at well more than four hours, but that seemed a small price to pay to witness significant dreams become real in ways they rarely do, in the movie business or outside of it.

For Oscar night is the night when Hollywood traditionally embraces the fantasy, or, to be more accurate, several kinds of fantasies. First is the fantasy of gowns and glamour, of the most recognizable faces on the planet gathering in one place and giving the impression we all want to believe, that Hollywood is like the old MGM back lot, an alluring small town populated by beautiful people who hang out together and dress grandly.

The second fantasy is that Hollywood can be a place of significance, that it doesn’t just turn out women-in-jeopardy slasher movies or painful farces for the teenage set. No, Hollywood likes to insist, we do serious movies that go to bat for social change, Oscar-winning movies like “Gandhi” and “Driving Miss Daisy”--films that, any studio executive will tell you, have nothing to do with the movie business’ bread and butter.

But sometimes, on rare occasions, what happens on Oscar night actually goes beyond pretense, actually seems to say and do something that is genuinely moving and perhaps--even if only in a small and not necessarily lasting way--significant. Sunday night was one of those nights, an evening when the best picture winner was fated to be overshadowed by issues larger and more deeply felt than Oscar business as usual.

It started with Poitier’s honorary Oscar, a tribute to a man who was, to quote presenter Washington, “the first solo, above-the-title, African American movie star.”

“We have all been led by Sidney,” Washington added, a sentiment amplified by a marvelous series of clips and interviews done by director Kasi Lemmons in which any number of prominent African American actors and directors paid tribute to Poitier’s importance.

The man himself, when he came out, made such an eloquent speech, to such an extended standing ovation, that it seemed nothing could top that moment. But something did.

When Berry won the best actress award, the first African American ever to take that prize, she almost literally melted away, her emotions were so strong. Repeating “Oh my God, oh my God” through tears, she talked about how “this moment is so much bigger than me,” listing the women who had gone before and her peers today.

When she refused to be rushed, saying “it’s taken 74 years to get here, I’ve got to take this time,” when she talked eloquently about “every nameless, faceless woman of color now has a chance,” the depth of her feelings was breathtaking.

Then it was Washington’s turn, besting Russell Crowe and taking the only one of the five top awards “A Beautiful Mind” was up for that it didn’t get. Washington, already an Oscar winner for supporting actor--for “Glory,” in 1990--shook his head and said, “Forty years I’ve been chasing Sidney, and they give it to me the same night.”

Holding up his statuette in salute at Poitier in his box, with Poitier returning the gesture, he finished with a graceful, heartfelt, “I’ll always be chasing you, and there’s nothing I’d rather do.”

Even in Hollywood, they don’t write them like that anymore.

In addition to being long and emotional, Sunday’s ceremony was also the year Oscar, in any number of ways, got smart.

Asking writers like the Coen brothers and David Mamet to explain what below-the-line professionals do was a fine idea. The inevitable best picture segments were improved by commentary by the filmmakers involved. The also-inevitable Oscar montages, like Lemmons’ for Poitier and Nora Ephron’s of New York City moments, benefited by using talent that the academy has not often involved before.

The documentary history montage was put together by director Penelope Spheeris, whose remarkable “Decline of Western Civilization” rock documentaries likely have never been even close to nominated.

And the show’s marvelous “what do the movies mean to you” opening segment was done by director Errol Morris, whose groundbreaking work, from “Thin Blue Line” through “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,” has also been criminally neglected.

It was bracing to see people from Laura Bush to Jerry Brown to Mikhail Gorbachev interviewed, and mind-bending to hear film titles such as Russ Meyer’s “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill” and William Castle’s “The Tingler” mentioned on usually sacrosanct Oscar airspace.

As always, the best parts of the show were the human moments, when the winners were just themselves. Moments like “Lord of the Rings” makeup winner Peter Owen saying, “I don’t know why anyone gave me the job in the first place”; often-nominated, first-time winner Randy Newman thanking the music branch for “giving me so many chances to be humiliated over the years”; and live-action short director Ray McKinnon talking about how great and dreamy it was “to be standing here at the good-God-almighty Academy Awards.”

Especially on a night like last night.

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MOVIE SCORECARD

BEST PICTURE NOMNINEES: Oscars

“A Beautiful Mind”: 4

“The Lord of the Rings”: 4

“Moulin Rouge”: 2

“Gosford Park”: 1

“In the Bedroom”: 0