Here’s hoping that your Valentine looks at you the way Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-Ho looks at his Oscar statue. If you’re unfamiliar, Bong is the director and co-screenwriter of Parasite, the history-making South Korean social satire that struck Oscars gold at the 92nd Academy Awards on Sunday Feb. 9.
Sunday’s ceremony was full of typical Oscars nonsense. In theory, the Oscars fill an important role in society—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences serves as a representative cultural taste-making institution that essentially sets the public film historic record by rewarding the best movies and filmmaking craftwork each year. In practice, however, the award show tends to amount to a self-congratulatory display of white male hegemony that steadfastly refuses to reflect the slate of films people actually went to see in a given year.
The Academy’s laundry list of issues includes—but is certainly not limited to—diminishing interest in moviegoing, record-low ratings and a growing cacophony of marginalized voices that constantly calls the institution out on its bullshit.
A brief and Academy-effacing opening monologue by Steve Martin and an unapologetic Chris Rock showed the organization is aware of the narratives surrounding its prestigious celebration. In the wake of a less-than-progressive slate of nominations, the bit may have rung hollow and insincere. Yet, against all odds, a predictable ceremony turned into an emphatic and historic celebration of the types of film and filmmakers typically dismissed by the academy and the resulting awards paint an optimistic picture for the future of the struggling Academy. 2020 Oscars, WTF?
Sunday’s first award presentation was for Best Supporting Actor—who else but Brad Pitt for his role as Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. The inevitability of Pitt winning an acting Oscar this year was as undeniable as his 55-year-old abs, but that made it no less exhilarating when he and his golden locks took the Dolby stage and gave one of the night’s best acceptance speeches. He thanked his movie’s creator and his co-star, he used the word “gobsmacked” and appreciated his own good fortune before finally choking back tears and dedicating his award to his children saying, “This is for my kids who color everything I do. I adore you.”
The overdue recognition of a Hollywood all-timer was a heartening start to a ceremony that ultimately proved why investing in something as seemingly immaterial as the Academy Awards can pay off.
Part of the fun of watching the ceremony is becoming indoctrinated to unavoidable feelings of frustration and disappointment when the Academy’s judgment inevitably falters each year. For every landmark win, like when 2016’s Moonlight took home Best Picture, there’s a 2019 Green Book coronation to remind you it’s still cathartic to complain about things on Twitter. Emotionally investing in something as objectively trivial as the Oscars may seem like lunacy, but it also creates at least half a year of spirited discourse surrounding something all Oscar viewers are passionate about—movies.
The months of frustration and debate culminate in the one night every year where the wider culture thinks about and celebrates what cinephiles spend the whole year going rabid over. On nights like Sunday, all of that angst, vexation and emotional investment are worth it when, once in a blue moon, the Academy gets it right and you get to watch a deserving movie win the night’s biggest prizes.
Oscar night truly belonged to director Bong Joon-Ho—who America wishes was its sweetheart—and Parasite, whose award season momentum was realized in full. In an October Vulture article, Bong now-famously said, “the Oscars are not an international film festival. They’re very local,” yet the South Korean filmmaker proceeded to flex on the entire local award show and took home more statues than anyone else Sunday night.
Bong’s long night began when he and co-writer Han Jin-won became the first Asian nominees to win Best Original Screenplay. This first award also marked the start of Bong winning the hearts of movie fans around the world—if you haven’t already, look up the GIF of Bong, on stage, giggling at his Oscar because it is the most wholesome thing in the world. Next, Parasite unsurprisingly won the newly-named Best International Feature category, and everyone assumed the South Korean Cinderella story was over.
The clock had not struck midnight, however, as Bong unexpectedly won Best Director—his third award of the night—over movie legends like Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Parasite’s magical run concluded with its most surprising moment; Parasite became the first ever non-English-language film to take home the Oscar for Best Picture.
Parasite’s Best Picture win marks a surprising shift in an Academy that neglected to nominate any of the film’s cast for its acting awards. Perhaps the international film overcoming its inherent otherness will open the door for more diverse films to be seriously considered for major Academy awards in the future. The progress toward consistently recognizing all kinds of good art will continue to be slow and incremental, but that shouldn’t take away from the fact that, at least for one year, Parasite accomplished something extraordinary.