The film “Everything Everywhere and At Once” became the winner of the “Oscar”: each according to the “version of your life”

On March 13, by half past six in the morning Moscow time, the Oscar winners were already known. The 95th Academy Awards was held in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theater. The main award for the best film was predictably received by the picture “Everything, Everywhere,” directed by the duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who began with the creation of clips. Their triumph can probably be explained by the fact that anyone would like to be reborn in another universe, since the existing “version of your life” does not bring much happiness.

The 95th ceremony was preceded by a star track not red, as usual, but light, the color of champagne. The innovation is explained not only by aesthetic considerations, that this color looks better under awnings built because of fear of bad weather. Rather, the point here is the desire to cheer up a potential audience, since the last difficult years for the whole world, primarily related to the pandemic, have noticeably reduced the audience’s interest in the Oscar ceremony. Instead of more than 50 million fans, it is watched by only about 9-10 million movie and spectacle lovers.

For the sake of reviving the former interest, they are unsuccessfully trying to make the ceremony shorter and more energetic, taking out the awards in technical categories, but there is little sense. And it’s not about boredom and lengthiness, but about the fact that the world has changed a lot. Even last year’s scandal involving Will Smith hitting a colleague for disrespecting his wife had little effect. This year, it was reported in advance that at the upcoming ceremony to return to this story again, they will beat it. But who cares today? Even the news that Lady Gaga would not be able to take part in the Oscars because she was busy filming Joker 2 did not change anything. And although the actress nevertheless appeared at the ceremony, there was no furore. And the authors of the film “Banshee of Inisherina” brought the donkey Jenny, who took part in the filming, to the star track, but the picture, which was considered the leader in terms of artistic level, ended up without any awards, which does not testify in favor of American film academics.

But at least one record was reached this year. This has never happened before, so that one of the nominee films – “Everything is everywhere and at once” – received one and a half hundred awards even before the main film event of the year. And now at the Oscars, out of 11 nominations, he won 7. In addition to the main prize for best film, these are figurines for best director, original screenplay, camera work (James Friend), editing (Paul Rogers) and three acting works.

“Everything Everywhere” by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert is a kind of apotheosis of cinema, where styles and genres are intertwined from a fantastic action comedy to an action movie. And the main character Evelyn – the most ordinary woman, all of whose worries are concentrated around the laundry – lives several lives, changes her appearance, becoming either a popular actress, then a singer, then a martial arts master. Every now and then she turns off from her reality with tax problems, a sick father and finds herself in an alternate reality. The lead actress is 60-year-old Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh, born in Malaysia. She is already a movie veteran, known for the films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tomorrow Never Dies, Memoirs of a Geisha. And now, having a Golden Globe behind her for the role of Evelyn, she also received an Oscar. The awards for supporting roles in “Everything Anywhere at Once” went to Jamie Lee Curtis, who played an employee of the tax office, and Ke Huy Kuan, known for the film “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, almost forgotten due to many years of absence from Hollywood projects. He played Evelyn’s husband, who actually transfers his wife to other universes. He tells her, “I am not your husband. I’m from a different version of your life, from a different universe.”

With the same success, Devil Lynch could have been nominated, who played the crazy role of the legendary cinematographer John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s Fabelmans much better. And it is simply impossible to compare Ke Hui Kuan with the virtuoso Brandon Gleeson in Banshee Inishenin (he was nominated). Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” brought variety to the acting layout, thanks to which the prize for best male role was given to an actor with a dramatic fate, Brendar Fraser, who had been absent from work due to illness for many years. He played an obese professor of literature, whose weight reaches 270 kg. No wonder the picture was awarded the Oscar for best makeup, because the masters who made it achieved a miracle by turning Fraser into a fat man with the help of silicone overlays. Brave make-up artists worked during the pandemic. They had to take measurements from the actor at a distance using special technologies, scan his body in order to create the desired image later. It’s all about weight here.

“Best Adapted Screenplay” was awarded to the feminist film “The Women Talk” by Sarah Polley, based on the novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. It describes the real events of the early 2000s in Bolivia, where women of all ages and any degree of kinship were massively raped in the colony of Manitoba. They were forced to remain silent in order to save lives. Brad Pitt co-produced the film and co-produced the gorgeous actress Frances McDormand (Nomad Land, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), appearing in the frame as a majestic ancient Greek goddess.

In “Banshee Inisherin” by Martin McDonagh and “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Edward Berger, based on the novel of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque about the hell of the First World War. These are the most serious pictures of the current Oscar. But the first did not receive anything, and the second received four awards: as the best foreign film (the film was shot in German), for the best original soundtrack (German pianist and musician Volker Bertelmann), camera work and production designer.

The Fabelmans by Steven Spielberg were completely ignored, although the chances were great (7 nominations). This is an autobiographical film about a childhood passion for cinema that broke out at the age of 12, when young Spielberg made a film about a toy train crash under the impression of going to the cinema. This is a story about the difficult relationship of parents, where everything is shown without embellishment, which was the reason for the delay in work on the picture. Pi life parents Spielberg did not dare to create it. It’s funny that children with their parents sing “Kalinka-Malinka”, and this is not surprising, since Spielberg’s paternal grandparents emigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire.

There is also a Russian trace in the film “Tar” by Todd Field about the conductor of the Berlin Orchestra Lydia Tar. He, too, remained an outsider. It talks about Rostropovich, and one of the heroines, cellist Olga Metkina, graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. American film academics also ignored the “Triangle of Sorrow” by Swedish director Ruben Ostlund, who won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was a favorite of the European Film Academy.

“Pinocchio Guillermo del Toro” – an unbanal version of a wooden man, which was made in memory of the carpenter Gepetto’s son who died in the First World War – became the best animated film. Avatar: Path of the Water was awarded for its visual effects.

The best feature documentary was “Navalny” by Canadian director Daniel Roer, filmed in December 2020, when Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was undergoing treatment in a German clinic after a mysterious poisoning. The picture was a discovery for a part of the foreign audience and film academics, who knew little about Alexei Navalny. His family attended the Oscar ceremony. Alexei’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, received the award along with the director of the film.

In the Short Documentary category, Kartika Gonzalez’s debut film, The Elephant Whisperers, about an orphaned baby elephant cared for by a married couple, won. Among the nominees in this category was the 25-minute “Exit” by Yakut directors, brother and sister Maxim and Evgenia Arbugaev. Created in the UK, where Evgenia lives for several years, the film was shot in Russia. The film is about global warming. Biologist Maxim Chakilev is alone among tens of thousands of walruses, lives on the shores of the Chukchi Sea in a dilapidated shack and monitors marine animals. Somewhere on the 43rd day of observation, he sees a stampede of walruses, injured animals that, like a barometer, feel the ongoing climate changes. The dead female lies like a huge stone, and next to her is her “one-year-old”, fortunately alive, but left an orphan ..

Maxim and Evgenia Arbugaev were born and raised in Yakutia in the family of a biologist and a professional traveler. Maxim graduated from VGIK, Sergei Miroshnichenko’s directing studio. Evgenia studied in Moscow, and then at the International Center for Photography in the USA, lives and works in London, and since 2012 has been collaborating with National Geographic. Evgenia and Maxim took part in the Oscar ceremony, walked along the starry path in elegant black suits, gave a great interview about how they worked. We have something to be proud of: the picture is powerful, and the very fact of its nomination for an Oscar is a big event.