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It’s a measure of how desperately this year’s Oscar needed some kind of surprise that the closest thing to a thrill all evening was Meryl Streep’s win as Best Actress. Streep has been winning Academy Awards since 1979, and she’d been touted for her performance as Margaret Thatcher since months before THE IRON LADY even opened. By virtually every measure, she’d been a close 2d to Viola Davis as favorite all along. One could even make the argument that choosing Streep over Davis was actually the more conservative move in the category. (And a bittersweet one, because although Streep–despite her protestations–will almost certainly have more chances at the prize before she’s done, it might not be so easy for Davis to climb that hill again.) And yet, when Streep’s name was announced, it was the night’s only jolt of electricity: Something Finally Happened!Streep’s victory also underscored, for anyone who doubted, that Harvey Weinstein is the master of his era’s (maybe any era’s) Oscar gamesmanship. Streep had been a strong contender for THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and for JULIE AND JULIA, and both times she’d been denied. Iron Lady was the least successful, least-seen and least-liked of Streep’s recent vehicles, but Weinstein’s absolutely unapologetic willingness to play the card of “winning 29 years ago is like not winning at all,” stressed in every Streep-for-Best-Actress ad, did the trick.
Weinstein was also behind another surprise, the victory of UNDEFEATED for Best Feature Documentary over the favored PINA and PARADISE LOST 3. (He can’t claim the night’s below-the-line shocker when THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO took Best Editing.) And of course, he was the architect of the night’s most inevitable set of victories, as THE ARTIST marched to the podium every time it really counted.
Apart from the Weinstein brigade, the Oscars were mostly widely scattered, as THE DESCENDANTS, THE HELP and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS each won a single award, Christopher Plummer took his unofficial lifetime achievement prize, and HUGO went home with all the awards no one cares about.
Ironically, 2012 will probably be the wrong year to be Harvey Weinstein’s touted entry for Best Picture: after THE KING’S SPEECH and The Artist in consecutive years, the Academy may go out of its way to show its independence from his hegemony. But if there’s any certainty in the Oscar universe, it’s that he’ll be back.
Here’s your complete set of Oscar winners:
BEST PICTURE: THE ARTIST
BEST DIRECTOR: MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS, “THE ARTIST”
BEST ACTOR: JEAN DUJARDIN, “THE ARTIST”
BEST ACTRESS: MERYL STREEP, “THE IRON LADY”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, “BEGINNERS”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: OCTAVIA SPENCER, “THE HELP”
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: WOODY ALLEN, “MIDNIGHT IN PARIS”
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: ALEXANDER PAYNE, JIM RASH and NAT FAXON, “THE DESCENDANTS”
BEST ANIMATED FILM: “RANGO”
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: “A SEPARATION”
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: “UNDEFEATED”
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: “HUGO”
BEST FILM EDITING: “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: “THE ARTIST”
BEST ORIGINAL SONG: MAN OR MUPPET, “THE MUPPETS”
BEST ART DIRECTION: “HUGO”
BEST COSTUME DESIGN: “THE ARTIST”
BEST MAKE-UP: “THE IRON LADY”
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS: “HUGO”
BEST SOUND EDITING: “HUGO”
BEST SOUND MIXING: “HUGO”
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT: “THE SHORE”
BEST ANIMATED SHORT: “THE FANTASTIC FLYING BOOKS OF MR. MORRIS LESSMORE”
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT: “SAVING FACE”
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