Crash Lands Shock Oscar Win

The 78th annual Academy Awards saved its biggest surprise for the dying seconds, when it anointed Crash as best film ahead of runaway favorite Brokeback Mountain. The best film and best director honors have been split only three times in the last 20 years.

Brokeback Mountain, a tale of two closeted gay ranch-hands in Wyoming, came into the night as the bookies’ firm favorite to scoop the two main awards. But although Taiwanese film-maker Ang Lee was duly honored with an Oscar, the film itself fell at the final hurdle. It finished the ceremony with a sum total of three awards, putting it in joint first place alongside Crash, Memoirs of a Geisha and King Kong.

Written and directed by Paul Haggis, Crash is an ensemble drama that spotlights the fraught state of race relations in Los Angeles. Although Haggis, who also wrote last year’s best film Oscar winner Million Dollar Baby, missed out on the director award, he did pick up the gong for best original screenplay.

There were fewer shocks in the acting categories. Philip Seymour Hoffman was named best actor for his pitch-perfect impersonation of the writer Truman Capote, while Reese Witherspoon took the best actress Oscar for her performance as June Carter Cash in James Mangold’s musical biopic Walk the Line.

George Clooney, who entered the contest with three nominations, came away with the best supporting actor Oscar for his role in Syriana. "I guess this means I’m not going to win best director," he ruefully acknowledged. Clooney had also been nominated for both his direction and writing on the McCarthy-era thriller Good Night, and Good Luck.

The South African drama Tsotsi won for best foreign language film, and March of the Penguins waddled away victorious in the best documentary category.

British success was provided by Rachel Weisz, who scooped the best supporting actress award for The Constant Gardener, and by Bristol-based Aardman Animations, which won the best animated film Oscar with Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh took the statue for best live action short for his film, Six Shooter.

This was, by and large, a sedate and politic affair. Host Jon Stewart’s monologue was gently satirical without ever straying into controversy, while the various winners seemed at pains to behave themselves. Even the distribution of awards proved to be unusually even-handed. There was no outright victor in the manner of a Titanic or a Lord of the Rings. Instead, Academy voters spread the riches between no fewer than four films. But when the dust has settled, it seems likely that the makers of Crash will be the most satisfied with the night’s result.