Should Acceptance Speeches Reflect the Achievements They're Honored For?
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 at 2:40PM 
How an Oscar winner accepts their award often becomes just as imprinted in the minds of movie fans as the performance or project itself. Roberto Benigni memorably leapt over chairs to gleefully accept his Oscar for Life is Beautiful, a questionable move given the fact that he was being honored for a Holocaust movie (even if it was a lighter one than virtually all over films of its genre). James Cameron shouted “I’m the king of the world!” when claiming his Best Director prize for Titanic, which was famously just a quote from his own film but which likely sounded considerably cockier than he meant to.
Now, there's no rule that says that an Oscar winner needs to match the tone of what their prize is meant to reward. Many winners – even actors accustomed to public performance – don’t deliver particularly put-together speeches, and the shock factor can affect composure and coherence. Nevertheless, here’s a look at this year’s telecast speeches in terms of how well they reflected the achievement they were being honored for...
Best: Olivia Colman, The Favourite
The bewilderment Colman expressed matched the way her character operated and dealt with every situation, embracing her bizarre power and saying whatever it is she felt. The night’s most hilarious and stream-of-consciousness speech felt entirely fitting from the portrayer of the eccentric monarch.
Worst: Live Action Short, Skin
The team behind the winner for Best Live Action Short was easily the most excited bunch of the night, triumphantly and joyfully celebrating their achievement. It’s as if they thought they made Green Book rather than the most brutal, disturbing, and violent entry competing in any category. It might be worthy of praise, but the glee they exuded about such an upsetting film was in poor taste.
Best: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Like her character, King was eloquent and to the point. Both King and the woman she played, Sharon Rivers, understand that the world is the way it is, and even if they can’t make a giant impact, they’re going to do as much as they possibly can to gracefully communicate the way they see it and where change might be possible.
Worst: Free Solo
Married couple Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin weren’t daunted by the notion of shooting a documentary where their subject could literally fall to his death during filming. Yet their reaction to winning an Oscar and their inability to competently complete sentences didn’t track at all with the focused way in which they dealt with far less predictable situations from behind the camera.
Best: Period. End of Sentence.
Director Rayka Zehtabchi’s comment that she wasn’t crying because she was on her period when she took the stage to accept this award may have seemed inappropriate to those unfamiliar with her winning short, but for those in the know, her attitude jives completely with the optimistic and humorous angle her film, available to screen on Netflix, takes in its approach to society's discomfort and ignorance about menstruation.
Reader Comments (10)
I love FREE SOLO and would've totally voted for it to win if I had a ballot and was ECSTATIC to see it win on Sunday. But I don't disagree with your take here regarding their speech. Especially giving Sanni the girlfriend more props than their focal character, Alex. It was a little hilarious that they remembered him in the end "Oh and of course Alex..." He only did the impossible after all.
As for Colman, I still can't get over it. Still buzzing from the perfection of her speech.
Btw, bonus points to Colman for subtly denouncing category fraud in her red carpet interview.
Free Solo is a superficial documentary because it normalizes an obsession and doesn't really explore the fact that Alex is in the spectrum and how that relates to his lack of emotion and the "activity" at hand. The fact he never felt loved or embraced by his family is only mentioned once. To glorify something just because it's "a first" is a questionable and obvious path to take when the documentarian's job is to investigate. If it were about a person's obsession over eating Tide pods and they were just observing it and not questioning the root of the obsession or whether they should be documenting it at all and just watch the person eat Tide pods until they accidentally go too far and die or almost die, we would all be questioning the ethics involved in it. It's a documentary so blinded by reaching heights that it forgets to reach deeper.
Would be better if the presenter matched the tone of the category. Didn’t need Regina King’s achievement minimized by 3 SNL mockers. Those alienated by previous Oscar ceremonies and bravely tuned in anyway, would’ve missed Regina’s victory if they shut the TV off for good after Maya Rudolph’s political ‘joke.’
Regina King looked every inch a movie star
Watching Team Skin I finally understood why the short is so shallow.
Olivia always gives the same kind of speech. Charming, sure, but always the same. Just check her Bafta speeches on Youtube.
Peggy Sue, consistency when giving a speech is pretty common, what with accepting awards for the same achievement and having a continuous sense of self.
Lizzy -- She gave the same speech when she won for Broadchurch five years ago. Just check it out.
Jimmy Chin is SO HOT!
Othiefia Stoleman is the representation of category fraud so can everyone stop praising that bitch?
Spoiler alert from Free Solo speech: He survived!