“You know what, Conan? I like the way I look cause I’m a good person. I don’t care about what I wear or I don’t wear.”
This line, uttered by American actor and comedian Adam Sandler wearing an inappropriate outfit and being cheeky while at it, may become one of the most memorable at last night’s Oscar ceremony.
Dressed to impress, hundreds of Hollywood’s crème de la crème gathered in bespoke suits and glittery gowns to harvest awards for what the Film Academy believes to be the best cinematic experience of the year.
Unlike in 2024, when Mstylav Chernov won an award for his documentary “100 Days in Mariupol,” which showed Russian war crimes in the now-occupied city in south-eastern Ukraine to the full, including it being turned into ashes, Ukrainians were not represented at this year’s ceremony.
Still, the embattled country, which has entered into its third year of standoff with Russia, was mentioned several times in contexts, both subtle and not so subtle.
Take actress Daryl Hannah, best known for her performance in Wall Street and Kill Bill. When she walked down the stage and approached the microphone, she showed the victory sign with her fingers before saying loud and clear, “Slava Ukraine.”
Applause ensued.
Meanwhile, the ceremony’s host Conan O’Brien, an iconic American TV figure and host of Late Night Show with Conan O’Brien, appeared to take a swipe at US President Donald Trump by saying on stage, “I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.”
This reference was made to the movie Anora, directed by Sean Baker, which tells the story of an American sex worker marrying the son of a Russian oligarch.
The movie, despite not being a box office hit, has managed to attract considerable praise from the critics and received the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last spring, making Russian actors Yuriy Borisov and Mark Eydelshtein, who plays the Russian oligarchic brat marrying the American sex worker, stars overnight.
Both of them appeared on the red carpet last night and have been in the limelight for several months now, posing for magazine front covers.
While the motion picture did not win any awards at the prestigious BAFTA ceremony in London held in mid-February, with British actor David Tennant who also hosted the ceremony mocking the movie’s premise by asking whether the two met via “Putin-der” (a joke that was reportedly not too well received by some in the star-studded crowd), it won five gongs including Best Picture at the Oscar’s.
Turning a blind eye
Hollywood’s admiration for Russian celebrities, regardless of their track record, is anything but new.
In 2023, the documentary about late Russian Putin critic Alexey Navalny, who has a mixed track record on Ukraine’s sovereignty, “Navalny,” won an Oscar. It was received by his wife, Yuliya Navalnaya, and their two children while Navalny was still imprisoned and alive.
Three years into the full-scale Russo-Ukraine war, it appears that no dose of reality has managed to shift the minds of the Western elite. While Eydelshtein conveniently avoids the topic of war and is part of the Russian elite, Borisov, who traveled to Russian-annexed Crimea and starred in Russian propagandistic movies, was nominated for the best supporting actor.
He, however, failed to clinch it.
The award was bagged by Kieran Culkin, the brother of Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone (ironically, featuring Donald Trump), for his performance in Real Pain. Jesse Eisenberg’s story is about two Jewish cousins who travel to Poland to experience the remnants of the Holocaust and try to cope with it.
In one of the scenes filmed in Warsaw, the Ukrainian flag appears on one of the balconies, showing Poland’s support for the attacked neighbor.
It is against this backdrop of the trite desire of the West to ignore the inconvenient truths of Russian society, actors included, both implicit and explicit support for the Russo-Ukraine war, that Sandler’s mentioned performance was so refreshing.
Though he made no mention of Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Ukraine directly in his pre-mediated performance, which started out with O’Brien saying how paramount it is that everyone dress appropriately at the ceremony – alluding to now the almost meme-like question of “Do you own a suit?” that was posed to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his meeting with Trump and his administration at the Oval Office last Friday – the scene was refreshing.
His kissing actor Timothee Chalamet, dressed in an all-yellow suit, on the head was only more so given that the “inappropriate hoodie” he was wearing was blue.
