Michael B. Jordan’s Best Actor Oscar Triumph Is One For The Ages

When Adrien Brody called Michael B. Jordan’s name as Best Actor Oscar winner for his performances as twins Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a weird, almost straight-out-of-science-fiction thing occurred in a house in a garden square in East London, some 5,000 miles from the Dolby Theatre At Ovation Hollywood where the Academy Awards ceremony was taking place.

As Jordan sat, his mother by his side, overwhelmed by the magnitude of what had just happened, the roar of approval reverberating through the auditorium, my body, seemingly flooded with butterflies, appeared to dissolve into the screen.

Weird! I had the strange sensation of feeling I was inside the Dolby. Stranger things have surely happened in Mile End?

Apparently it’s called mirror-touch synesthesia, others say it’s something to do with narrative transportation where your empathetic neurons get a bit whacky. If symptoms persist, mental health therapy is available. You’ll know where to find me.

Meryl Streep put it best when she won the Best Actress Oscar for Sophie’s Choice in 1983. She said that her parents watching at home just went “completely berserk,” adding that this “incredibly thrilling“ reaction “goes right down to your toes.”

Yeah, but what about leaping out of a chair, sending a cherished ‘World of the Dog’ bone china mug – full of tea! – flying across the table. (Miraculously, it didn’t break, but friggin’ Fortnum & Mason orange pekoe went everywhere.)

How did this odd disembodied experience happen in the first place? Let me ponder…

A huge fan of Michael B. Jordan? Yes. Same goes for Ryan Coogler. Admiration for the originality of Sinners? Affirmative. 

Coogler, using vampire lore as a way of suggesting the blood, from bullets and culture – stolen – or, more politely, appropriated from Blacks by Caucasians, was mind-bogglingly smart. I admire the film tremendously.

Yet, for whatever reason, I have not been emotionally close to the film since its release last April. 

There are usually movies that one follows all through awards season. This time around it was mainly the international films that got my vote: Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, It Was Just An Accident, Sirat and The Voice of Hind Rajab. Can’t deny that I was pretty bloody happy when Joachim Trier’s Norwegian Sentimental Value took the Best International Film statuette.

Sinners, One Battle After Another and Hamnet didn’t need me on their journey, so there had been distance.That all changed when Jordan won the SAG-AFTRA Actor Award. I was bowled over, but the anterior insular cortex that handles emotional resonance, didn’t, at that juncture, overload.

Oscar night was different. This particular evening was an oddity because I was at home, something that has not occurred, aside from the Covid year in 2021, in nearly 40 years. Pauline Kael once wrote something about losing ourselves watching old films on TV at home “because of the fascination of our own movie past.” 

Did I lose myself because of my fascination with Michael B. Jordans movie past? Perhaps. And, as I’ve tried to reflect on my reaction, everything I’ve seen him in since The Wire, including his collaboration with Coogler that began with 2013’s Fruitvale Station, and on to Creed, Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, has flooded my head.

I’ve realized that it had everything to do with the fact that Michael B. Jordan is Black. It had to do with the fact that out of the 98 statuettes awarded to date for Best Actor, just six have gone to Black leading male thespians.

Emil Jannings won the inaugural Best Actor prize in 1929 for roles in two films, The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command. It was to be 35 years before Sidney Poitier broke through at the 1964 show, winning the top male acting trophy for 1963’s Lillies of the Field. It was close to another four decades before Denzel Washington took Best Actor gold for Training Day in 2002.

Blessedly, Washington’s triumph was on the same night the Academy bestowed Poitier with an Honorary Award – presented by Washington himself.

In relatively quick succession, Best Actor accolades went to Jamie Foxx for Ray in 2005 and Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland two years later. Will Smith won for King Richard on that infamous slap night in 2022. 

I was in the room for Washington, Foxx, Whitaker and Smith, and each time it rocked. Ordinarily, sitting in my kitchen after midnight does not rock.

Watching ITV’s Oscar coverage, hosted by Jonathan Ross from a set that had as much glamor as a bingo hall in Clacton-on Sea, was not my idea of a good time. Sipping tea and chomping on hot-cross buns from Gail’s, toasted with butter – luverly – certainly helped, though.

Going in, there’d been little expectation of really experiencing a memorable moment, aside, that is, from the extended memoriam featuring Billy Crystal and Barbra ‘Babs’ Streisand. That was in a class all by its beautiful self.

Then Adrien Brody called Michael B. Jordan’s name and I lost my silly mind.

There will, hopefully, come a time when such a win won’t require a note clarifying racial identity. You wouldn’t be termed a Black actor on the continent of Africa, right?

Over the past few days, as I was musing about what I might focus on in this space, I penned a brief memo to self relating to Jordan should he prevail. He was way down my list of possible topics, yet he was to become the only winner that made me unravel into a state of heightened giddiness that teleported me into my television. Yeah, I will seek treatment.

Rewatching clips of Jordan’s triumph, I see the moment the thunderbolt struck for me. It was when he grabbed his mother’s hand, then nestled his face on her neck. As he rose from his seat, he stumbled slightly, bewildered as Coogler wrapped his arms around him, squeezing him for dear life. Delroy Lindo then enveloped him in a fatherly embrace.Those moments are indelibly downloaded to my box of rarities; my keepsakes.

Best Actress Oscar winner Jessie Buckley is there too. That time when she placed her hands across her face when Mickey Madison read out her name. She’d been the front runner for her transportive performance in Hamnet all season long, but the reality of actually winning the thing overwhelmed her. That’s a moment for me.

It must have been a special pleasure for Lindy King, the agent that discovered her and then advised her to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Buckley’s the first Oscar winner to emerge from her 2013 graduating class, thus far. (By the way, King also represents Olivia Colman, who received the Best Actress crown for her Queen Anne in The Favourite.)

My big brother watched the Oscars from his home in Nashville, Tennessee, and he definitely got the better deal. He got to watch the commercials during the breaks on ABC. Over here, on ITV, we were saddled with Ross during the advertisements. To fill the gaps, we had him joined by red-carpet presenter Elle Osili-Wood, Samson Kayo, an actor and director, and a bloke by the name of Fred Asquith who they flew down from Yorkshire. Why?

Nice people, but Jeezus, spare me.

Not that the ceremony itself was perfect. Great moments, to be sure, but the majority of the sketches went splat on arrival. The Timothée Chalamet ping-pong butt gag was juvenile. No class there.

The ruthlessness of the producers cutting folk off mid-speech or retracting the microphone and upping the music volume was belittling to those on stage. Atrocious, really.

On occasion, the greatest speeches have come from winners of the less spotlighted awards. Go find the video of when director Kary Antholis won the prize for his documentary short film, One Survivor Remembers, a harrowing account of Holocaust survivor Garda Weismann Klein’s incarceration by the Nazis.

Klein accompanied Antholis to the lectern where he spoke. As she advanced to the microphone, the familiar ‘get off’ chords blasted. Klein proceeded to speak anyway and told of being in a place for six years “where winning meant a crust of bread and to live another day.”

I was there that night, and we, all of us, listened to every word Klein uttered and then applauded our appreciation. On quiet, rainy Sunday afternoons, I check it out again and the sheer emotional power of that speech has not diminished.

So, Oscar show producers: Just relax a little. Otherwise, you’ll have winners blowing a raspberry, as Olivia Colman did… And rather magnificently, if I may be so bold. 

Technically, the show was sloppy; a camera was dropped, people out of shot and out of focus. Early on there were problems with the sound. Also, Conan O’Brien didn’t quite have the light touch that he proffered last year.

Look, these are quibbles. We’re not going to forget what happened at the Oscars on Sunday night. Big films won. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another marched to the top of the hill and won the campaign, but Ryan Coogler’s Sinners won hearts and minds.

For instance, Autumn Durand Arkpaw’s historic win for her cinematography on Sinners was another moment. Her graciousness in asking for the women in the room to stand up, and then hailing them, was another class act.

But, for me, Michael B. Jordan scored the gold star for being the very model of a 21st century Best Actor in a Leading Role.