Sean Baker’s Oscars Battle Cry (and Mine): Don’t Abandon the Big Screen

The director of the best picture winner, “Anora,” urged viewers to keep seeing films in theaters. Our critic hopes the industry listens, and that Baker keeps his independence.

Two minor quakes hit Los Angeles Sunday night, and I like to think that they were cosmically connected. The second earthquake was a small rattler (3.9) centered in the San Fernando Valley, just north of where the first quake hit inside the Dolby Theater when “Anora” won best picture. A pleasurable romp about an exotic dancer who runs off with the son of a Russian oligarch, “Anora” is the latest of several movies that its writer-director, Sean Baker, has made on sex industry workers. The first one that Baker did on the same topic was “Starlet,” a wistful, charming 2012 drama set in the Valley, long the center of the pornography industry.

It was gratifying to see Baker win for “Anora,” which is the kind of scrappy, low-budget, independent movie that has been making the Oscars more interesting for, well, decades. Each victory for “Anora” also underscored the industry’s existential problems, in part brought about by large companies, including the remaining legacy studios, that have embraced expensive franchises and sequels to the exclusion of art. In the past 10 years or so, some of the best picture winners — the ones that stir up excitement and headlines, and help justify the continued existence of the Academy Awards — have been low-budget features that, like “Anora,” were bankrolled for $20 million or far less, including “Moonlight” and “Parasite.”

There’s a romantic and comforting underdog narrative that accompanies the success of these movies, though as Baker recently pointed out at the Independent Spirit Awards, the economics of indie filmmaking are unsustainable. During the Oscars, Baker again turned the awards circuit into a bully pulpit on behalf of the movies, urging viewers to see films in theaters. “This is my battle cry,” Baker said as he held his best director award. “Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen.” At that point, the show cut to a wider shot that encompassed the award presenter Quentin Tarantino, another big-screen advocate. I wish they had cut to Ted Sarandos, the chief executive of Netflix, who recently told CBS News that he doesn’t “think it’s sacrilege for someone to watch a great movie on their phone.”

The Academy Awards of course reflect what Academy voters like, but they also reveal what kind of story the voters want to tell about themselves. That story on Sunday was somewhat melancholic; among other things, one of the giants of cinema — Gene Hackman — recently died. But the entire industry feels bruised partly because of the lingering trauma of the conflagrations that roared through Los Angeles County in January. The show referenced the fires repeatedly, most movingly when the host Conan O’Brien introduced a group of firefighting personnel who were rightly cheered by the audience. Along with the pandemic and the 2023 labor strikes, it’s been a very rough interlude with no end in sight. Never mind that the worst issue remains the creative timorousness of the industry’s power brokers.

As to the show itself, as a piece of television it was, well, fine; I didn’t yell at my set once, though I rolled my eyes during the two lengthy musical numbers that were effectively advertisements for those money-printing behemoths “Wicked” and James Bond. O’Brien was innocuous enough to get the job done, tossing out jokes that landed and others that didn’t, with very little overt reference to the reality that has filled headlines since President Trump was sworn in. The actress Daryl Hannah gave a shout-out to Ukraine before handing the best editing award to Baker, his second Oscar of the night (following best original screenplay). “I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian,” O’Brien said later, earning startled oohs from the audience as well as applause.

The most memorable moments were rightly provided by some of the winners, including the Palestinian activist Basel Adra and the Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they accepted the award for best documentary feature for “No Other Land,” which they collectively made with Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. Abraham pointedly called for “national rights for both our people” and called out American foreign policy for “helping to block” this path forward. The Oscar was just the latest accolade this deeply affecting, critically lauded movie has earned since its world premiere last year at the Berlin International Film Festival. It has yet to be picked up by an American distributor, which, in part, reflects anxiety about topical nonfiction work being able to find an audience.

That “No Other Land” doesn’t have American distribution may seem strange, but it also reflects a cultural conservatism that has always run through the movie industry. I get that may seem preposterous to outsiders, though a scan of Hollywood history, from its antilabor initiatives — one reason the old studio bosses created the Academy itself was to handle agitating workers — to the Red Scare and Harvey Weinstein, easily makes my point. It’s one reason that I was happy to cheer for Baker, even while I’m sorry that the night’s best nominee, RaMell Ross’s “Nickel Boys,” walked away with nothing. Like Tarantino, like Martin Scorsese and a handful of other vocal champions of the art, Baker is on the side of the movies, not the bosses, a David among the Goliaths. I just hope that when Baker looks toward his future and what comes next for him, he doesn’t sign a deal with Disney — or with Netflix.