Oscars 2021: A Big Night for ‘Nomadland’ as Anthony Hopkins, in Upset, Wins Best Acto…

Nonetheless, Yuh-Jung Youn became the first Korean woman in Oscar history to win best supporting actress for her role in “Minari,” and Daniel Kaluuya won best supporting actor for “Judas and the Black Messiah.”

The Oscars ceremony, which typically takes place in February, was delayed this year in hopes of outrunning the pandemic. It worked to some degree. Some winners accepted in person, and there was a live audience. There was even a socially distant red (or pink) carpet. It all had to be radically downsized, though, and as for the usually extravagant parties — not this year.

And while a sweep of the acting categories by people of color did not materialize, there were plenty of other firsts:

A Korean first: Yuh-Jung Youn is the first Korean actor to win an Oscar. It was the first nomination for the performer, whose turn as the wry grandmother in “Minari” also earned her SAG and BAFTA awards this season. “Maybe,” she said Sunday in her speech, “it’s American hospitality for the Korean actor.”

Honors for aging winners: Anthony Hopkins, at 83, became the oldest actor to win best actor. He won for his performance as a man suffering from dementia in “The Father.” With Ann Roth’s victory for the costume designs in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” she has become the oldest woman to ever an Oscar. She is 89.

A directing breakthrough: Chloé Zhao, the filmmaker behind “Nomadland,” is the first woman of color to win — and to be nominated — for best director. She is just the second woman to win the category, following Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker.” ”

A makeup and hairstyling breakthrough: Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson, who worked on “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” are the first Black women to win this award (and to be nominated for it). “I know that one day it won’t be unusual or groundbreaking,” Neal said in her acceptance speech. “It will just be normal.”

And finally, a losing streak: Glenn Close, nominated for supporting actress for “Hillbilly Elegy,” hit a less exciting milestone: After eight fruitless nods, she has tied the record held by Peter O’Toole for most acting nominations without a win.

In ways big and small, America’s continued reckoning with racial justice reverberated throughout Sunday’s Oscars.

“I know that a lot of you people at home want to reach for your remote when you feel like Hollywood is preaching to you,” King said to start the show.

But almost three hours later, performers and others given a chance to speak on broadcast viewed by millions of Americans had managed to get a message across anyway during an Oscars that featured one of the most diverse slate of contenders ever.

“In 2020, we were united by loss,” Bassett said in her remarks, which preceded the “In Memoriam” segment. “As of April 25, 2021, there were recorded over 3 million souls lost around the world to Covid alone.”

“Considering the enormity of our collective loss, and the often incomprehensible times we’re living through, we wish to also acknowledge those precious lives lost to the violence of inequality, injustice, hatred, racism and poverty,” she continued. “To all of those who left our lives too soon, we cherish the moments that we had the honor of having with you.”

The film was directed by the Chinese-born filmmaker Chloé Zhao, who earlier in the evening was named best director. It is only the second movie from a female director to take Hollywood’s top trophy (the first was Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” in 2010). “Nomadland” is also the first best-picture winner directed by a woman of color.

Accepting the award, Zhao thanked “all the people we met on the road,” and added, “Thank you for teaching us the power of resilience and hope and for reminding us what true kindness looks like.”

Hopkins, 83, was rewarded for his towering performance as a London patriarch struggling with dementia in the drama “The Father,” which appeared to gain momentum with voters down the homestretch of awards season. He is now the oldest actor to ever win an Oscar.

“It was easy,” he told The New York Times about playing the role. “Just so easy.”

In a review for The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote, “Hopkins has never been an especially physical actor — most of the magic happens above the neck — but here he pushes his capacity for small, telling gestures and stillness to distressing limits.” She added, “It’s an astonishing, devilish performance.”

Hopkins won the Oscar for best actor in 1992 for his performance in “The Silence of the Lambs”; he was nominated two more times in the category, in 1994 (“The Remains of the Day”) and 1996 (“Nixon”). He has also been nominated for best supporting actor twice, though has never won.

Boseman won the Golden Globe for best actor earlier this season for his performance in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” one of dozens of awards he garnered for the Netflix adaptation. But Boseman never got to see the film; he died of colon cancer at age 43 three months before “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” was released.

With “Nomadland,” McDormand wasn’t initially focused on the role when she met with the director, Chloé Zhao. The actress told our columnist, Kyle Buchanan, that she was entering her 60s and “I was like, ‘Man, I just want to be relevant. Do you think I’m relevant?’”

She would end up putting a lot of herself in the role. Her sister in the film is played by one of her oldest friends. But when Zhao wanted to include McDormand’s husband (the director Joel Coen) and her son in the cast, the star drew the line.

The movie is based on Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book of the same title and some of the people in the book appear in the movie. Our critic A.O. Scott praised McDormand, saying “A lot of what McDormand does is listen, giving moral and emotional support to the nonprofessional actors as they tell their stories.” He added: “Her skill and sensitivity help persuade you that what you are seeing isn’t just realistic, but true.”

The academy sometimes uses them to right wrongs, as when Debbie Reynolds was awarded one in 2015. She was ostensibly recognized for founding a mental-health charity. But it was also a way for the academy to apologize for ignoring her pleas for help in preserving costumes from Hollywood’s golden age. She also never won a competitive Oscar despite appearing in films for seven decades.

Since the #OscarsSoWhite debacles of 2015 and 2016, honorary Oscars have gone to Spike Lee, Cicely Tyson, Jackie Chan, the Indigenous actor Wes Studi and other people of color. Geena Davis was recognized in 2019 for her continuing effort to correct gender inequality in Hollywood.

In selecting Tyler Perry to receive a special-achievement Oscar this year, the academy cited a “cultural influence extending far beyond his work as a filmmaker.” Some people saw the academy’s move as a corrective — a tacit apology for looking down its nose all those years at the lowbrow Madea and thus, Perry’s fan base.

No matter. Perry spoke movingly in his speech on Sunday night, saying, “When I set out to help someone, it is my intention to do just that. I’m not trying to do anything other than meet somebody at their humanity.”

He continued:

“My mother taught me to refuse hate. She taught me to refuse blanket judgment. And in this time, and with all of the internet and social media and algorithms and everything that wants us to think a certain way, the 24-hour news cycle, it is my hope that all of us will teach our kids … just refuse hate. Don’t hate anybody.

“I refuse to hate someone because they are Mexican or because they are Black or white or LGBTQ. I refuse to hate someone because they are a police officer. I refuse to hate someone because they are Asian. I would hope that we would refuse hate.

“And I want to take this Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and dedicate it to anyone who wants to stand in the middle, no matter what’s around the walls. Stand in the middle, because that’s where healing happens. That’s where conversation happens. That’s where change happens. It happens in the middle So anyone who wants to meet me in the middle, to refuse hate, to refuse blanket judgment, and to help lift someone’s feet off the ground, this one is for you, too.

“God bless you, and thank you, academy. I appreciate it, thank you.”

Perry started his entertainment career as a playwright. Since ending his popular “Madea” film series in 2019, Perry has focused on making television shows like “Bruh,” “Sistahs” and “The Oval” for BET. He owns a studio in Atlanta. He is also developing a “Madea” prequel for Showtime called “Mabel” that is set in the 1970s.

Youn triumphed as the grandmother in Lee Isaac Chung’s film about a family from South Korea who takes up farming near the Ozarks. The film is named for the leafy green vegetable popular in Korean cooking. Our critic A.O. Scott called it “in its circumspect, gentle way, moving and downright revelatory.” Scott classed Youn as a sly scene-stealer but noted that is “also true of her character, who infuses her daughter’s home with mischief, folk wisdom and mostly unspoken memories of war, poverty and other hardship.”

She also thanked her two grown sons, who she said “make me go out and work. … This is the result, because mommy worked so hard.”

This was Youn’s first nomination, and, until recent weeks, an invite to speechify on the film industry’s biggest stage was far from a sure thing. One of her biggest foes might have been the 74-year-old Glenn Close, who’s now been nominated eight times without a single statuette (can we give her an honorary Oscar yet?). But after Youn’s SAG Award win and smile-inducing BAFTA speech earlier this month that thanked British voters — whom she labeled “very snobbish” people — for selecting her, the race was hers to lose.

She didn’t repeat her BAFTA roast, but she did offer a kindly zinger Sunday night.

“As you know, I’m from Korea, and my name is Yuh-Jung Youn — most of European people call me Yuh Youn and some call me Yuh-Jung,” she said. “But tonight, you are all forgiven.”

That’s due in part to the gorgeous visuals, which may have felt especially welcome mid-pandemic. But it’s also because it doesn’t feel of a piece with other animal documentaries. “My Octopus Teacher” is part of a growing trend in nature films to “present animals as beings apart from us, not just objects of wonder or scientific study, and with qualities that are all their own, not shadows of human emotions,” as a New York Times article put it last year.

The movie is notable for a number of reasons: It’s Pixar’s first movie with a Black protagonist (the pianist and music teacher Joe, voiced by Jamie Foxx), and the creative team includes the company’s first Black co-director, Kemp Powers.

Docter, accepting the Oscar, thanked music and art teachers, including his parents, and said: “You make the world a better place.”

He added, “My wish for all of us tonight is that we could follow the example of jazz musicians: that wherever we are, whatever we have, we turn it into something beautiful.”

“I have always found goodness in the people I met everywhere I went in the world,” she said. “So this is for anyone who has the faith and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves. And to hold on to the goodness in each other, no matter how difficult it is to do that. And this is for you, you inspire me to keep going.”

This year’s Oscars marked the first time in its history that more than one female filmmaker was nominated for the best director in a single year. In addition to Zhao, Emerald Fennell scored a nomination for “Promising Young Woman.”

Before this year, only five female filmmakers had been recognized in the director category. In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow became the first and only woman to be named best director until Zhao won the category on Sunday.

Earlier in the awards season, Zhao took home the top directing prize at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards and the Directors Guild Awards and she has won similar accolades from several other groups.

“Nomadland” has also garnered wide praise and several honors. The movie tells the story of a widow who travels the country in a van and joins the itinerant work force while connecting with other Americans she meets along the way. Zhao adapted the movie from Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book of the same name and used several nonprofessionals in the cast, including people featured in Bruder’s book.

Zhao, who adapted and helped produce “Nomadland,” was nominated for four Oscars in all: directing, adapted screenplay (which she lost to Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller of “The Father”), editing and best picture.

Neal and Wilson, who were honored for the film’s hairstyles (Sergio Lopez-Rivera was cited for the film’s makeup) were also the first Black women ever nominated in the category. The award was added in 1981 after the 1980 drama “The Elephant Man” was not recognized.

The film, adapted from August Wilson’s play and directed by George C. Wolfe, is set during a recording session in 1920s Chicago. It tells the story of Rainey, a pioneering blues singer played by Viola Davis, and her battle to protect her gift from exploitation by a white-owned record label. When Chadwick Boseman’s musician, an ambitious upstart named Levee, wants to play a song his way, a clash of egos ensues.

The film is “a powerful and pungent reminder of the necessity of art, of its sometimes terrible costs and of the preciousness of the people, living and dead, with whom we share it,” The New York Times co-chief film critic A.O. Scott wrote in his review.

The category has often been a place where big-budget fare like war sagas (“1917,” “Dunkirk”) or space movies (“Arrival,” “Gravity”) have shined. This year’s nominations for “Greyhound” and “News of the World” seem in step with that trend.

And yet, the award has gone this year to a smaller film, “Sound of Metal,” which benefited from a unique sound design that put audiences into the aural perspective of the punk-metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) as he experienced hearing loss. The film may not have had a chance in a year with more Dolby Digital-friendly blockbusters. But then again, since the plot hinges on the movie’s audio approach, it may have always had what it took to win Oscar gold.

The release date was pushed back a year because of the pandemic, to Dec. 10, but the film is ideal fare to be appreciated on an oversized screen.

Ansel Elgort stars as the streetwise Tony and Rachel Zegler as the pure-hearted Maria, two teenagers who fall in love despite their connections to rival street gangs in 1950s New York City.

The film is the latest iteration of the classic 1957 musical, which is itself a loose retelling of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” The musical, with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents, came to the silver screen in 1961, in a film adaptation that won 10 Academy Awards, including best picture and best supporting actress for Rita Moreno, who also appears in a supporting role in the new film. A Broadway revival directed by Ivo Van Hove opened last February, but it ran for only a few weeks before being shut down by the pandemic.

Even if you’ve never seen the musical on the stage or screen, you’ve probably heard one of its iconic tracks, whether that’s “Maria,” “Tonight” or “I Feel Pretty” (spoofed by Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer on “Saturday Night Live”).

But if the trailer is any indication, Spielberg’s approach will hew closer to the show that rattled Broadway when it opened in 1957 than the high school theater staple whose songs have since become sentimental standards.

The new film boasts a screenplay by Tony Kushner, the “Angels in America” playwright, and choreography by Justin Peck of New York City Ballet. It was originally scheduled to be released last December but was pushed back a year to Dec. 10, 2021 — which now coincides with the 60th anniversary of the original film’s release.

The nonprofit Motion Picture & Television Fund, which underwrites a nursing home and retirement village for aging and ailing “industry” people (actors, executives, choreographers, lighting technicians, camera operators), received one of two honorary Academy Awards. The organization, founded in 1921 by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and other stars, also provides a wide range of other services to Hollywood seniors.

The 48-acre campus in Woodland Hills, a community on the northwest edge of Los Angeles, has been home over the years to Oscar-winning actresses (Hattie McDaniel, Mary Astor); career assistants (Leah Bernstein, who tended to Stanley Kramer’s professional needs on 28 films); television stars (Katherine MacGregor, known as Harriet Oleson on “Little House on the Prairie”); and studio moguls (Terry Semel, the former Warner Bros. chief). Residents must be 70 years or older and have worked in Hollywood for more than two decades. Spouses and life partners are also eligible.

Challenges over the years have included severe financial hardship, a deadly 2001 fire and the coronavirus. Leading fund-raising efforts for decades has been Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former DreamWorks Animation executive.

When the academy announced in January that the M.P.T.F., as it is known, would get an honorary Oscar, some of Hollywood’s cattier eyebrows arched in response: Was this a way to burnish Katzenberg after his latest business endeavor, the Quibi streaming service, crashed in epic fashion?

But Katzenberg, who raised $2 million for the fund at a virtual event on Saturday, did not accept the award. Instead, more than 70 health professionals who work for the nonprofit — coronavirus frontline workers, all of them — were invited to come onto the telecast as a group.