Chloe Zhao dominates Oscars with small-budget road movie
Chloe Zhao’s a wistful portrait of itinerant lives on open roads across the American West, won best picture yesterday at the 93rd Academy Awards, where the China-born Zhao also became just the second woman to win best director, and the first woman of colour.
The victory, while widely expected, nevertheless capped the extraordinary rise of Zhao, a lyrical filmmaker whose winning film is just her third, and which — with a budget less than US$5 million a(NZ$7 million) and featuring a cast populated by nonprofessional actors – ranks as one of the most modest-sized movies to win Hollywood’s top honour. Zhao’s next film, Marvel’s has a budget approximately times that of ‘‘Nomadland.’’ as a plainspoken meditation on solitude, grief and grit, stuck a chord in a pandemicravaged
40 year. It made for an unlikely Oscar champ: A film about people who gravitate to the margins took centre stage.
‘‘I have always found goodness in the people I’ve met everywhere I went in the world,’’ said Zhao when accepting best director. ‘‘This is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold on the goodness in others no matter how difficult it is to do that.’’
The most ambitious award show held during the pandemic, the Oscars rolled out a red carpet and restored some glamour to the nearly century-old movie institution, but with a much transformed — and in some ways downsized — telecast. It was a year when, to paraphrase Norma Desmond, the pictures got smaller were overwhelmingly seen in the home, not in the big screen, during a pandemic year that forced theatres to close and prompted radical change in Hollywood.
It was also perhaps the diverse Academy
Awards ever, with more women and more actors of colour nominated than ever before – and yesterday brought a litany of records and firsts across many categories, spanning everything from hairstyling to composing to acting. It was, some observers said, a sea change for an awards harshly criticised as ‘‘OscarsSoWhite’’ in recent years, leading the film academy to greatly expand membership.
Awards included: Best picture Best actress Frances Best actor
Original
McDormand,
Anthony Hopkins, screenplay
Emerald Fennell; Adapted screenplay Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton, ; International film
Denmark; Best supporting actor Daniel Kaluuya,
Best supporting actress Yuh-Jung Youn, Best director Chloe Zhao, Sound: