Crashing the party

In one of the most stunning upsets in Oscar history, ''Crash," Paul Haggis' multi-character tale of modern angst in Los Angeles, won best picture at the 78th Academy Awards last night, beating out the odds-on favorite, ''Brokeback Mountain."

Ang Lee's romantic drama about two western ranch hands in love, ''Brokeback" was the subject of much water-cooler controversy, and it had won so many prizes leading up to the Oscars that its victory lap was all but assured.

Was the film's best picture loss the result of awards fatigue? Were its talking points all talked out? Perhaps. More likely ''Crash" simply struck closer to home for Academy voters distressed by what they saw out the windows of their Lexuses.

When best picture presenter Jack Nicholson called out ''Crash" for the top award, audible gasps broke out in the Kodak Theatre as Haggis and co-producer Cathy Schulman headed to the stage to collect their statues. Despite a large cast of well-known actors, ''Crash" represents the longest of Oscar long shots and something of a Hollywood miracle: a $6.5-million production that was independently produced and distributed and that was released in May, well before the traditional awards season.

While ''Brokeback" was foiled, other awards magnets continued their golden runs, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won best actor for his portrayal of Truman Capote in ''Capote," and Reese Witherspoon, who took the best actress Oscar for playing June Carter Cash in ''Walk the Line."

''Brokeback" didn't go home empty handed: Lee won best director, and the film also won for best adapted screenplay and score. But it was shut out in the acting categories: Hoffman won over Heath Ledger's lovelorn cowpoke, and Rachel Weisz, the agonized activist conscience of ''The Constant Gardener," bested Michelle Williams.

The first Oscar of the evening, for best supporting actor, went to George Clooney as the disaffected CIA agent in ''Syriana" rather than Jake Gyllenhaal of ''Brokeback," and if the evening seemed to belong to anybody, it belonged to the one-time TV doctor who must now be considered one of the film industry's ruling figures. Not for nothing was Clooney chosen to introduce the annual clip reel honoring Hollywood's recently deceased.

No single film swept the evening: ''Brokeback" and ''Crash" each won three awards, as did ''Memoirs of a Geisha" and ''King Kong," though in the far less important technical categories. Winning prizes for ''Brokeback" were Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, who adapted Annie Proulx's short story, and Gustavo Santaolalla for his mournful score. In addition to the top award, ''Crash" won best original screenplay and best editing.

Accepting the screenplay award, Haggis quoted Bertolt Brecht's dictum that ''art is not a mirror but a hammer," underscoring the seriousness of this year's nominees, so different from two years ago, when Peter Jackson's effects-heavy ''Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" won best picture.

Somber films with small budgets and often small box-office returns dominated the nominations. While both winning lead actors played real-life figures, both supporting acting awards went to performers playing fictional characters who agitate for truth and justice.

By contrast, the ceremony generally combined playful humor and old-style Hollywood class. The gowns were elegant and unfussy, the acceptance speeches were from the heart -- Witherspoon's dedication of her award to her grandmother was touchingly unstudied -- and if Jon Stewart didn't hit all his comedic marks, the ''Daily Show" host successfully brought a touch of satiric lightness that deflated much of the evening's pomposity.

Mock-castigating ''Brokeback" for ''tarnishing the noble western tradition," Stewart introduced clips of classic western-movie moments edited for maximum suggestiveness, and in one fell swoop took out all the hot air surrounding the Lee movie.

England's Nick Park won his fourth career Oscar, with co-director Steve Box, when ''Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" won the award for best animated feature.

The venerated animator and teacher John Canemaker won the best animated short Oscar for ''The Moon and the Son."

''Tsotsi," the South African drama about a street criminal who finds himself caring for an infant, won best foreign language film; it opens locally Friday.

An hour and a half into the show the ceremonies were stricken with a startling attack of bad taste. ''March of the Penguins" won best documentary feature -- no surprise there, but the stuffed penguins brought onstage by the four French filmmakers were on the overly cute side.

Then Kathleen ''Bird" York sang the Oscar-nominated song from ''Crash," ''In the Deep," while surrounded by slow-motion dancers and onstage burning cars. It was a throwback to the days of Rob Lowe cavorting onstage with Snow White in the infamous Allan Carr Oscars of 1989.

The ceremony quickly righted itself with montages directed by Chuck Workman dedicated to epics, film noirs, bio-pics, and movies dealing with topical subjects. Cracked Stewart as that last came to an end, ''and none of those issues were ever a problem again."

Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep introduced the honorary Oscar for Robert Altman by delightfully imitating the legendary director's hesitant, overlapping dialogue. For a brief moment, the spirit of the ''New Hollywood" of the 1970s blew through the theatre, and the ensuing retrospective of Altman moments had the unintended effect of making this year's nominated films look like a group of poseurs.

Ever the maverick, the 81-year-old Altman took the stage to a standing ovation, thanked his doctor in lieu of everyone else and likened filmmaking to building a sand castle on the beach: ''You invite all your friends and then you sit back and watch the ocean take it away."

In the evening's only other unexpected turn -- and easily the most high-energy moment in the entire telecast -- ''It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from ''Hustle & Flow," won best song after the Kodak stage had been transformed into a hip-hop club hosted by Three 6 Mafia and actress Taraji P. Henson. The latter had a major Shirley Bassey moment at the end of the song and took the number all the way through kitsch into demented Oscar glory.

But it was the ''Crash" upset that made the evening memorable and best made the case for topical films that reflect the current national mood. Unlike the other best picture nominees, the Haggis movie is an urgent essay about events in America right now -- not in 1950s television, 1960s Wyoming, or 1970s Munich.

Some audiences have found ''Crash" overwrought, others have found it trenchant and unforgettable, and certainly the voting members of the Academy saw their own concerns mirrored in the film's tormented Los Angelenos.

This was the year the best movies were supposed to speak to the way we live. The Oscar voters chose the one that, for them, did just that.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com