As of: March 11, 2024, 6:30 a.m
By: Katja Kraft
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Radiant – even without an Oscar: Sandra Hülser.
©Richard Shotwell
The 96th Academy Awards were a solid, no-fuss show.
The German Oscar hope Sandra Hülser didn't win any prizes - and yet she won so much.
As simply as Al Pacino announced the winner of the most important category “Best Film” at the very end – “I see it says 'Oppenheimer'” – the entire evening was so unspectacular.
The 96th Academy Awards ceremony on the night of Sunday to Monday is harmlessly nice entertainment.
And the big winner was, unsurprisingly, the work that was most popular with the bookmakers in advance.
The drama about the “father of the atomic bomb”, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, has won seven times.
As reported, director Christopher Nolan had struck out the best conditions in negotiations with possible studios: a production budget of 100 million US dollars and a corresponding marketing budget, as well as a theatrical run time of at least 100 days and that the distribution would be three weeks before and three weeks after the release of “Oppenheimer” does not release another film.
Universal stuck to everything - and was now richly rewarded with the coveted gold men.
(Read here: Our review of “Oppenheimer”.)
Self-ironic: Bodybuilder John Cena announced the winner in the “Best Costume” category.
© CAROLINE BREHMAN
In the face of such top dogs, one would like to applaud Cord Jefferson, who used his acceptance speech for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay to encourage the studio bosses to be more courageous: “Instead of making one 200 million dollar film, make ten 20 million dollar films -Movies!
Or 50 four million dollar film!” His socially critical, darkly humorous comedy “American Fiction” proves that great films can be made even with a budget of less than ten million dollars.
The Frenchwoman Justine Triet also achieved this.
Her legal drama “Anatomy of a Case” is an unforgettable masterpiece.
Because of the phenomenal screenplay that Triet wrote together with her husband Arthur Harari and for which they are both now quite rightly rewarded with the Oscar;
and because of Sandra Hülser's engaging performance in the role of a woman suspected of having murdered her husband.
The 45-year-old is the first German in 86 years to be nominated for an Oscar as best actress - and is thus in a short row with Luise Rainer (1938) and Marlene Dietrich (1931).
Actress Michelle Yeoh praises Hülser's haunting performance, which leaves the viewer constantly uncertain whether she is the perpetrator or the innocently grieving widow - "and here we are, on Oscar night - and I still don't know whether she did it or not not."
He's Kenough: The rose-colored highlight of the evening was Ryan Gosling's performance as Ken.
In a pink glitter suit, the actor performed the song “I'm Just Ken” from the film “Barbie” with dozens of dancing men.
And proved that presenter Jimmy Kimmel's consolation was true: "If you don't win best supporting actor today, don't be sad: you've already won the most important competition: the genetic lottery." © PATRICK T. FALLON
In the end, Emma Stone wins for her rousing performance in Giorgos Lanthimos' crazy emancipation spectacle “Poor Things”.
Earned.
For Sandra Hülser it is still a tremendous success.
In the truest sense: not only the film dog Messi, who is sitting in the audience, claps his paws vigorously.
The fact that presenter Jimmy Kimmel explicitly addresses Sandra “Huuler” (difficult to pronounce for Americans), while at the same time she shines in the second nominated film “The Zone of Interest”, is the best international advertising for her and her great acting skills.
Only one joke goes badly wrong.
Kimmel sums up Hülser's current films flatly: "In 'Anatomy of a Case' she plays a woman who is on trial for the murder of her husband, and in 'The Zone of Interest' she plays a Nazi housewife who lives near Auschwitz .
While these are very difficult topics for American moviegoers, in Sandra's home country of Germany they are called romantic comedies."
Hülser takes it professionally.
And shows real feelings among all the serene show faces in the audience.
The way she sheds tears of emotion, joy and pain in the face of the harsh subject matter and repeating history when she won the Best Foreign Language Film category for “The Zone of Interest” is touching.
And shows the great magic that lies in cinema.
Very simple, very unspectacular – so effective.