The fading of a pandemic is such a slow-motion process that it’s easy to miss the landmarks.

For example, theScreen Actors Guild Awardstook place Sunday, Feb. 27, marking the first normal awards ceremony since 2020, or at least something that looked normal by 2022 standards. It was hosted in an airplane hangar — the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica — a place with 40-foot-high ceilings at the center, and the actors sat at tables that were fairly spread out from each other. Viewers were also assured, in a kind of “don’t try this at home” warning, that all the participants had been vaccinated, boosted and tested. But that only made it even more like a dinner with friends, 2022-style.

The virus has impacted everybody’s life for the past two years, and in that way, it has also been a great equalizer. At one point, after a short film showing excerpts of all the best TV and movie performances of 2021,Jessica Chastainsaid that the montage looked like “every night of my life this past year, minus the occasional box of wine.”

The “box of wine” line was funny. I can’t imagine that’s the kind of wine Chastain’s been drinking, but the joke was a reminder that so far in this new decade, all of us, including some of the most glamorous people in the world, have been getting by in similar ways: a little more alcohol, a lot more TV.

That the pandemic period now finally seems to be slowly liftingshouldhave injected a note of joy into the night. But no sooner does one crisis start to fade than another looms — the war in Ukraine hung over the proceedings, making it yet another celebration in a time of peril and uncertainty.

The whole world, courtesy of COVID-19, has gotten an education in how a problem can start in one place, on the other side of the planet, and end up in your living room. We’ve gotten an education into how the world is small enough that one problem can touch every human being at once. People in 2022 have not stopped smiling, but it will be a while before we can smile with the certitude of 2019 and assume that the ground is solid and that things are OK.

Brian Cox was one of several participants to mention that the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is an actor. What he might have also noted is that Zelenskyy’s acting abilities have been serving him well. A very good and underrated actor by the name of Ronald Reagan once said that he couldn’t imagine how anyone could be presidentwithout作为一个演员。这是误解,who don’t understand acting, to think that he was talking about being phony. Acting is the opposite — it’s about taking real emotion and projecting it so that others feel it, too. Zelenskyy’srealemotion andrealacting ability amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict has inspired and galvanized the world.

On a more prosaic level, the night was also just a regular awards show; more significant than most, in that screen actors make up the largest block of Oscar voters.

Will Smithwon best actor for“King Richard”and seems headed for his first Academy Award. Best actor tends to go to men between the ages of 40 and 60, who have been nominated previously, and who play real-life and/or sick people that are very different from themselves. Smith checks all those boxes.

Best actress is going to be a little more interesting. Chastain won the SAG award for“The Eyes of Tammy Faye,”and this may set her up well going into the Oscars. Best actress usually goes to a woman 35 or younger, who has not previously been nominated and who plays a real-life and/or sick person very different from herself. That’s a description ofKristen Stewart, who isOscar-nominated for playing Princess Dianain“Spencer,”but Chastain may have just emerged as her chief competition.

Chastain is 44, but 44 may be the new 35. And shehasbeen nominated previously, which doesn’t help. On the other hand, she played Tammy Faye Bakker, who couldn’t be more different from herself, and Bakker was a real-life personandnot well, so Chastain may have a chance. (Only incidentally, I should mention that she was great in the movie and actually deserves an Oscar, but we’ll see if that matters this time.)

Finally, as in all awards shows, the best moments were when the script dropped and people said the unexpected.Helen Mirrenwon a life achievement award and referred to the gathering as “S-A-G” rather than “sag,” as it’s commonly called, because “I hate to say ‘sag’ at my age.” She’s 76. She topped that with a comment about the stresses of acting — “We throw up and we suffer diarrhea, don’t you? I do” — leaving us all with a visual we’d never previously considered.

Still, it was a pleasure to be distracted from bigger concerns by questions about Mirren’s digestion. The Screen Actors Guild Awards gave hope that maybe, just maybe, things were returning to normal.