With Australia receiving a record 14 Academy Award nominations, 2017 was always going to be a special year at the Oscars. Not many Aussies walked out of Hollywood’s night of nights wielding golden statuettes (more on that in a moment) but nobody can say we didn’t occupy more spots on the ballot box – or take home more show bags worth $300,000 – than ever before.
Ordinarily this kind of “at least we kept lots of seats warm” observation might sound like loser talk. But it’s hard not to feel a twinge of national pride when, for the first time, two of the best picture nominees were Australian (Lion and Hacksaw Ridge) and – also for the first time – one of the nominees for best foreign language film was Australian too (Tanna).
Possibly another first was marked by an Australian being flown over to LA late last week to prepare Leonardo DiCaprio’s eyebrows — the work of Sydney “eyebrow artist” (whatever that means) Sharon-Lee Hamilton. Such decadence could be considered Gatsby-esque (“like my brow, old sport?”), which would make a fitting comparison given Hamilton also reportedly squeezed in a pre-ceremony eyebrow wax and trim for Tobey Maguire, DiCaprio’s friend and co-star in the most recent movie to bear the Gatsby name (Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation).
In terms of the evening itself, the first and only Aussies to win were Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie and Peter Grace. They – along with American colleague Kevin O’Connell – won best sound mixing for the superbly atmospheric Hacksaw Ridge.
Wright and Mackenzie, from the Australian post-production company Soundfirm, were also nominated (but didn’t win) in another category: best sound editing. What’s the difference between sound editing and sound mixing, I hear you ask? The former concerns the creation of an audio landscape; the latter how sounds within it are fitted and balanced. Bit of trivia for your next Oscars party.
The late and great Australian costume designer Norma Moriceau, who died last August, was honoured during the “In Memoriam” segment. Moriceau’s penchant for out there tribal wear reached a high water mark in the 80s with the post-punk, post-apocalytpic wardrobe of Mad Max 2 (released in the US as The Road Warrior) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Her work in these films was outrageous and inimitable: somewhere between expressionist and sex shop.
Tanna didn’t win best foreign language film (losing to director Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman) but the journey from Australia to a remote South Pacific island to the Dolby theatre in Hollywood has been a remarkable one for co-directors Bentley Dean and Martin Butler, and their cast of first-time actors. These actors – so vibrant, so charismatic – belong to the Yakel tribe, one of the South Pacific’s last traditional communities.
Not only had they never acted before, they had never seen a movie, let alone walked a red carpet. But the Yakel people were there, looking wonderful, in beautiful and culturally significant dress: a far cry from the tuxedo and gown-wearing, botox-injecting, eyebrow-manicuring crowd around them.
Host Jimmy Kimmel may have delivered an embarrassing gaffe, describing them on Twitter as “the Moana dancers”. But, not to be upstaged, Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty went above and beyond in outdoing Kimmel, delivering possibly the greatest blunder in the history of the event. By now we all know what that is.
So did Australia chalk up a win in only one category, or should we ask for all those envelopes to be re-examined? Ah well, never mind – it was still a vintage year for us. When it comes to Aussies at the Academy Awards ceremonies, losing never felt so sweet.
