Tony vs Chad

Illustration/Uday Mohite

On the face of it, this wasn't the most inspiring Academy Awards years-no glitzy showbiz night, no wise-cracking show host, no hordes of luminaries, a lacklustre red carpet, even the media build up, tepid at best.

And yet, it's the Best Actor category that had me hooked like no Oscar before, with Anthony Hopkins, Chadwick Boseman and Riz Ahmed, all good enough to win the top honours-The Father vs Ma Rainey's Black Bottom vs Sound of Metal-three great characters pitted against each other. A man suffering from dementia vs a trumpeter who's dreams are shattered vs a drummer who's hit by deafness.

Chadwick tragically passed away last year, throwing this year into that delicate posthumous area, the judges' ultimate conflict-"an actor has died, his performance is phenomenal, but do we give him the award because he deserves it or he's deceased"-further complications, the other nominees are pretty darn good.

This year, the show had its share of red face moments.

The producers paid the price for their ‘extra cleverness'- so definite were they of Boseman winning, they decided to keep the Best Actor award for the end, post Best Picture-the thinking being, "Let's give Chad a fitting end". Well, nobody had bargained for the members of the Academy choosing Anthony Hopkins, who was at this time fast asleep in his farmhouse in Wales, so sure was he of losing!

But all that is behind the scenes, on the screen three men brought acting its highest honours, Tony Hopkins, Riz Ahmed, and Chad Boseman were all phenomenal. Frankly, any of them could have won, each one giving fragility and fury new expression.

The jury is out on Hopkins vs Boseman: Whose performance was better? Should they have given the award to Chad? How will Hopkins feel knowing that as good as he was, Chad should have got it? Well, we'll never know.

But, that aside, there was one driving reason that fascinated me about both The Father and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom-their screenplays are adapted from stage plays, both of them being largely single location dramas. The directors Florian Zeller and George C Wolfe didn't really expand the visual scope of either world, no massively extended casts, not too many additional locations. They have remained true to the stage-The Father's closeted living room, and Ma Rainey's claustrophobic recording studio, retained for 80 per cent of the dramatic action.

Hopkins' Anthony all of 84, imagining people, mixing them up, driving both himself and those around him, crazy.

Boseman's Levee is a black trumpeter, in the 1920s, desperate to reach for a future that feeds from a toxic past.

The camera dwells on Hopkins and Boseman, following both these men around, pausing on them, soaking in their silences, watching their seething anger, allowing for their confusions, their conflicts-the camera waits for them to make up their minds, the close ups trollying into their heads.

Most plays that are made into films, transcend the medium. In the transfer from the verbal to the visual, very little is left of the stage craft, of the dialogue. In these two screenplays, Zeller and Wolfe stayed true to the original work, leaving the verbosity intact, adding uncomfortable silences, the cinematic experience never extending too far from the boundaries of theatre.

These were two plays on screen, two stage performances shot on celluloid.

My verdict on Tony vs Chad: it's a pity someone had to lose.

Rahul daCunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahul.dacunha@mid-day.com