Hollywood is smarter than you thought. Whether by design or chance, the 87th Academy Awards elegantly and subtly shifted the tone of the season from a reductive fixation on snubs and fact-checking to a positive celebration of original filmmaking and purposeful advocacy for causes as diverse as immigration, suicide and equal rights.
The self-obsessed industry might have given its best picture and director prizes to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Birdman,” a trenchant examination of actorly narcissism, but the vanity seemed to stop with the opening of the envelopes. Even in their moments of singular glory, most of the winners chose to talk about something other than themselves.
The Mexican-born Inarritu, who’s “Birdman” also won for cinematography and original screenplay, said he prays his native country finds “a government we deserve” and that immigrants to the U.S. “can be treated with the same dignity and the respect of the ones who came before and (built) this incredible immigrant nation.”
