All their feats are paved with gold
Zellweger, Dern, Phoenix and Pitt take acting honours as ‘Parasite’ named Best Picture.
South Korean class satire “Parasite” won Best Picture Sunday night at the 92nd Academy Awards, making history as the first foreign-language movie to win the most coveted prize in filmdom.
Bong Joon-ho’s dark saga of a poor family infiltrating a rich family’s home and lives also took the prize for Best Director, Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay, the most wins of the night — and all were firsts, not only for Bong but also his homeland.
The rise of “Parasite” to Best Picture glory, beating eight other challengers including Sam Mendes’ heavily favoured First World War thriller “1917” and Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist fable “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood,” began with a Palme d’Or win at Cannes last May.
“Parasite” is only the third movie in history to win both the top prize at the Oscars and also at Cannes, the two biggest prizes in all of film. The previous double winners were decades ago: “Marty” in 1955 and “The Lost Weekend” in 1946.
The Best Director win by Bong inspired him to heap praise on the other four directors nominated in the category.
“The most personal is the most creative,” he said, quoting his hero Martin Scorsese, who went 0-for-10 in his own Oscar bid for the gangland opus “The Irishman.” The Dolby Theatre audience gave Scorsese a standing ovation, and also applauded when Bong also cited Tarantino as an influence, while also voicing admiration for Mendes and Todd Phillips (“Joker”).
Speaking in Korean with an interpreter, Bong said he wished he could get a saw and chop his Oscar into five pieces to share with his fellow nominees. But he had something else in mind first. “I will drink until the next morning!” Joaquin Phoenix, 45, scored for Best Actor, finally getting his first Oscar in four attempts and 38 years as an actor, for playing the dangerously unhinged title character in the genre drama “Joker,” which led all films with 11 nominations but only struck gold twice. (The other win was for Best Original Score, which went to first-time nominee Hildur Gudnadottir, a composer from Iceland.)
Activist/actor Phoenix seemed near tears as he railed against many social ills, racism, sexism and homophobia among them. But he was most passionate when decrying the harm humans have done to the planet.
“I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world,” he said.
Renée Zellweger, 50, took her second Oscar, this time for Best Actress, for summoning the magic of the late diva Judy Garland in the biopic “Judy.” Zellweger, 28 years in acting, previously won Best Supporting Actress, for the Civil War drama “Cold Mountain” in 2003.
Zellweger gave a more conventional acceptance speech, thanking the many people who helped her bring Garland’s legacy alive. And she also spoke of how playing a legend reminded her that “our heroes unite us” as people.
Brad Pitt’s well-received win as Best Supporting Actor for “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” helped get the night off to a rousing start.
It was the first Oscar success in four nominations and 33 years as an actor for the 56-year-old Pitt, who had previously won as a producer for “12 Years a Slave.” One of the most popular actors in Hollywood, and also the world, he took the stage to wild applause from his fellow Tinseltown denizens.
He declared himself “gobsmacked” to have won for the role of Cliff Booth, loyal stuntman to Rick Dalton, the fading cowboy star played by Leonardo DiCaprio, whom Pitt hugged after hearing his name called.
He thanked Tarantino for casting him in the movie, a revisionist fable set in 1969 where Hollywood actors collide with the murderous hippies of the Manson Family.
Another popular Oscar champ was Laura Dern for Best Supporting Actress, her first win in three attempts and an astonishing 47 years on the screen — she began as a child actress in 1973. Dern won for playing a rapacious lawyer in Noah Baumbach’s divorce drama “Marriage Story,” another win that had been anticipated through multiple advance awards.
“This is the best birthday present ever!” said Dern, who will turn 53 on Monday. She comes from acting royalty, as the daughter of actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, both multiple Oscar nominees in years past.
But the night truly belonged to Bong, the shy auteur from South Korea, who had the best trophy haul of the evening with four wins from six nominations.
He won early for Best Original Screenplay, a prize he shared with co-writer Han Jin-won. It was a historic moment, not only for first-time Oscar winners Bong and Han but also their homeland, a fact Bong was proud to note.
“Writing a script is always such a lonely process,” Bong said. “We never write to represent our countries, but this is the very first Oscar to South Korea.”
Then “Parasite” won for Best International Feature Film, the new name for the category that used to be called Best Foreign Language Film. Bong asked the audience to stand and applaud the cast of “Parasite,” many of them in attendance — although not nominated for Oscars of their own — and he also allowed them time to speak on stage after the film won Best Picture.
New Zealand writer/director/actor Taika Waititi also gained his first Oscar, Best Adapted Screenplay for “Jojo Rabbit,” his “anti-hate satire,” set in the Germany of the Second World War, in which he plays a parody of Hitler in the imagination of a naive young Nazi.
It was the second Oscars in a row to proceed without a host — although previous Oscar hosts Steve Martin and Chris Rock made a surprise appearance to joke about that very fact.
On a night of many firsts, a notable one was for Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s songwriter partner of 53 years, who finally grasped Oscar gold for (“I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” the Best Original Song winner from the Elton John biopic “Rocketman.” Elton has previously won an Oscar, but not since the “The Lion King” in 1994.