No Country for Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen’s chilling confrontation of a desperate man with a relentless killer, won the Academy Award for best picture on Sunday night, providing a more-than-satisfying ending for the makers of a film that many believed lacked one.
The Coens, who live in New York and remain aloof from the Hollywood establishment, also shared the directing and adapted screenplay awards. Joel Coen thanked the academy members for “letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox”.
No film ran away with the night, however, as the 80th annual Academy Awards gave a bruised movie industry a chance to refocus its ever-inward gaze on laurels instead of labour strife.
Daniel Day-Lewis won best actor for his portrayal of a ruthless oil tycoon’s rise from the sweat and sludge of wildcatting to wealth, power and madness in There Will Be Blood.
And Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for best actress for her incarnation of the tormented chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.
“Thank you life, thank you love,” an elated Ms Cotillard said. “It is true there are some angels in this city.”
None of the best picture nominees went home empty-handed; all picked off a significant win in one category or another.
Javier Bardem won a fourth Oscar for No Country..., capturing the best supporting actor for his role as the cattlegun-wielding, pageboy-wearing serial killer. He thanked the Coens, saying they “put one of the most horrible haircuts in history over my head”.
The Oscar for No Country... was a long-sought triumph for Scott Rudin, a prolific producer who has specialised in movies on the smarter end of the spectrum, but only once before received a best-picture nomination, for The Hours in 2003.
Tilda Swinton took best supporting actress for playing a nervous wreck of a corporate lawyer who throws morality under the bus of her ambition in Michael Clayton.
The indie delight Juno, about a pregnant teenager with a mouth on her, won for best original screenplay, by Diablo Cody, who once worked as a stripper. She tearfully thanked her family for “loving me for who I am”.
With all four top acting prizes going to Europeans and the New York-based Coen brothers’ film in contention for several others, it was a night when Hollywood’s glittery establishment came out to honour what was essentially a gaggle of outsiders.
Atonement, nominated for seven awards, won for best original score. The awards were otherwise all over the map, with the first nine going to different films, leaving the show’s host, Jon Stewart, to set the tone with a riff on the three-month writers’ strike that had threatened to turn the Oscars itself into a marathon of montages.
