I Was Genuinely Moved by the Oscars This Year. Here’s Why.

It’s easy to feel a surge of cynicism when it comes to the Oscars. 

With so much truly terrible happening in the world, who has time to bother with celebrities and their outfits? But my job demands that I—along with 20 million or so of my fellow celebrity watchers—tune in to the Oscars. That’s how I found myself plunked down on the couch in front of the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday evening. 

Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much. I steeled myself for something long-winded and self-congratulatory (yawn). I also experienced my usual pang of jealousy that these stars who earn more per movie than most of us could ever dream of earning in a lifetime, who also happen to be better looking and better dressed than anyone I know—get to receive shining trophies for their achievements as well.

I don’t mean to sound like a whiner, but is that really fair?

And yet, and yet, and yet… By night’s end, as the Awards closed in just under four hours (earlier than scheduled—hooray!), after two major music-and-dance numbers (“I Lied to You” from “Sinners” and the ebullient performance of “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters”) after a 15-minute In Memoriam segment, not to mention the 24 awards themselves, I found myself feeling—how should I put this?—not awful. Possibly even positive. 

There were moments, truly there were! Moments for women, moments of humanity, moments marking this moment that itself feels desperately precarious.

Here are a few of those moments—the ones that packed an emotional wallop, or were profoundly important, or even just brought a smile.

A cinematography first

Autumn Durald Arkapaw made history as both the first woman and first woman of color to take home the Oscar in the category of Best Cinematography for her work on “Sinners.” In her acceptance speech, she instructed all the women in the room to stand up, “because I wouldn’t be here without you guys.” 

The daughter of a Filipina mother and a Black Creole father, Arkapaw is only the fourth woman to be nominated for the award in the category’s history. According to Variety, on Sunday night, backstage, she said, “Moments like this don’t happen without women standing up for you and advocating for you. I know that this happened because of that.”

And yet, Arkapaw is still among the very few Black women who have walked away with Academy Awards—only 11 Black women have been awarded the Oscar for acting in the 98-year history of the Oscars, and only three Black women for non-acting awards, now including Arkapaw. Change is happening, but it’s still glacially slow.  

Older women get credit

Like Arkapaw and some other winners, Amy Madigan, who won Best Supporting Actress for her role as the malevolent Aunt Gladys in the supernatural horror film “Weapons,” set a record this year: At 75, she was the oldest woman nominee in the acting categories, and the second oldest to receive the Best Supporting Actress honor. (At 77, Peggy Ashcroft was the oldest in this category for “A Passage to India” in 1985.) 

Madigan also deserves credit for being the winner with the longest gap between nominations before finally taking home an Oscar. (She was previously nominated in the same category in 1986.) Appropriately enough, given the witchy character she played, I loved that she let out a delighted, full-on cackle as she accepted her statuette.  

It also felt like a win to see Kate Hudson (“Song Sung Blue”) and Rose Byrne (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”) among this year’s nominees. Both are 46, and it’s good to see them landing meatier, more complex roles in the prime of their careers. While neither won this year, the oldest winner in the Best Actress category is Jessica Tandy, who was 80 when she took home the trophy for “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1990. So presumably, they’ve still got time.

And while she wasn’t a nominee or a presenter this year, the famously camera-shy, stage-fright-afflicted Barbra Streisand could have walked away with the award for “the bravest” after delivering a rare performance of “The Way We Were” in a moving tribute to the late Robert Redford. (It’s been more than a decade since Streisand last performed that song on TV at the 85th Academy Awards in 2013, when she sang it in tribute to the composer Marvin Hamlisch.) At 83, her voice is a bit huskier, but, by gosh, it still resonates. 

I also teared up during Rachel McAdams’s homage to the late Diane Keaton, her costar in 2005’s “The Family Stone.” Keaton “wore so many hats, literally and figuratively—actress, artist, author, activist,” McAdams said. In a sweet aside, McAdams recalled that Keaton had a habit of singing the Girl Scout song Make New Friends on set. That was “just so her,” McAdams said. “But no hat was more important to her than being a mother to her two children. She meant so much to so many of us.”

Tributes to moms

Also heart-wrenching: The brief speech by Gloria Cazares, whose 9-year-old-daughter Jackie was killed in the Uvalde school shooting. Jackie was memorialized along with other children lost in “All the Empty Rooms,” which won Best Documentary Short. “Gun violence is now the number-one cause of death in kids and teens,” Cazares, making a bold statement in a blood-red gown, said. “We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we'd be a different America.” 

Motherhood was also the focus of Jessie Buckley’s Best Actress acceptance speech. Buckley gave an extraordinarily raw, compelling performance in Chloe Zhao’s film adaptation of “Hamnet.” Visibly moved, she dedicated her win to the mothers out there. “To know this incandescent woman, and journey to understand the capacity of a mother's love is the greatest collision of my life.” Buckley, whose performance of a grief-stricken mother was a favorite for the award, is herself the mother of an eight-month-old baby girl. As a mom myself, her final words really struck me: “It's Mother's Day in the U.K. today, but I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart.” A pretty perfect description of motherhood, I think. (Shakespeare would have been proud!)

Another evening high: an appearance by most of the original cast members from the raunchy comedy “Bridesmaids,” which turned the concept of rom coms on its ear when it debuted 15 years ago. (The diarrhea scene still haunts me.) The castmates, including Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Ellie Kemper and Rose Byrne reunited to present the award for Best Musical Score. Only Wendi McLendon-Covey was noticeably absent. But, like the evening’s most raw, heartfelt speeches, her explanation for not showing up was a refreshing breath of fresh air in difficult times. “I had a neck lift last week because I’m tired of looking like a melting candle,” she wrote in an Instagram caption. “So I had to skip the Academy Awards. No drama. Everything is fine.” That’s just the kind of candor I hope for in Hollywood, on and off camera.