Oscar Sunday is arguably the most high-stakes night of the awards show season because everyone gets so passionate about who they want to see win the big trophies. And, with the stumbles of Oscars past (we all remember the terrible La La Land/Moonlight mixup of 2017), there’s no guarantee that your faves will walk away a winner. However, it seems like 2023 is the year that we peasants and the Academy finally came to an agreement because Everything Everywhere All at Once completely dominated this year’s Oscars with an astounding seven wins.
To start off the night, the adorably charming Ke Huy Quan won the award for Best Supporting Actor, which was completely well-deserved as he’s been acting in phenomenal movies since the ’80s and delivered the single most romantic line in cinema from the last decade. Next, Jamie Lee Curtis won her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and, while I think the honor should’ve gone to Stephanie Hsu for her heartbreaking portrayal of Joy, it was still a win for EEAAO, so I’ll take it.
Next, the film won the Oscar for Best Editing where I learned that this was only the second film Paul Rogers ever edited, which is absolutely mind-blowing, and then the Daniels (Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan) won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, an award so deserved that I can’t stop smiling as I type this. Scheinert used his speech to graciously shouted out a list of his former teachers who “inspired [him] and taught [him] to be less of a butt-head” while Kwan thanked his mother and wife for “protecting his inner storyteller.” The Daniels then took to the stage again to accept the award for Best Directing and Scheinert made a point to highlight the ongoing battle of drag performances being banned across the country by saying it’s a “threat to no one” after revealing that he would dress in drag to make movies when he was younger.
Finally, the two biggest awards for EEAAO occurred at the end of the evening with Michelle Yeoh being nominated for Best Actress and the film as a whole being nominated for Best Picture. And, in a history-making win, Yeoh clinched her first Oscar after decades of working in the industry. She’s the first Asian woman to win this award in 95 years and only the second woman of color ever to win in that category after Halle Berry took home the award in 2002. And, to everyone’s delight, EEAAO won the coveted award for Best Picture and cemented itself as the most-awarded film of all time.
I hope that the historic sweep EEAAO had this awards season is a real wake-up call for Hollywood. We need more creativity and originality in our movies, and we need it desperately. This movie was weird, out-of-the-box, heartbreaking, triumphant, and nothing that we’ve ever seen before. Taking risks and breaking the mold is scary, I know, but it’s something we need to do if we want our media to continue to keep up with our changing world. You truly don’t know whose life you could change with just one film. And Everything Everywhere All at Once proves that.
Congrats to the cast and crew of EEAAO!
(featured image: A24)
