Oscars bowed four times for The King’s Speech

It was just fitting that the 83rd Annual Academy Awards this year paid obeisance to history, dreams and reality. In the debut year for 10 best picture nominees none made an overwhelming sweep — history meets dreams meets the reality of dance and deceit .

The King’s Speech, a period drama about King George VI who is unsure about making a speech a day before the second World War, won four awards — best film, best direction (a surprise), best actor and best original screenplay.

The multiple directions that the awards took saw Inception, the sci-fi thriller about dream raiders, getting four, but technical ones.

The award for best documentary went to Charles Ferguson’s banker expose Inside Job, resonating the thoughts of the voters for the last two years: the economy. “Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong,” Ferguson said.

Colin Firth won the best actor award while Natalie Portman took the best actress award. Christian Bale and Melissa Leo took the best supporting actor and actress awards (The Fighter).

Indians couldn’t make any mark this time — Tariq Anwar nominated for The King’s Speech (editing) or AR Rahman (two nominations for 127 Hours). But Rahman made up for the miss.

In a ceremony that lasted only 3 hrs 12 min, he performed his Oscar-nominated song If I Rise with singer Florence Welch to a loud applause. 127 Hours didn’t get any. Nor did True Grit. Danny Boyle and the Coen brothers were given a royal ignore by the voters.