Last night’s Oscar winners were sort of predictable, which is a good thing, because it means the awards went to the right people. The only widespread prediction that didn’t pan out was “La La Land” for Best Picture, which surprised even the guy reading the envelope. The award instead went to racially-charged drama “Moonlight,” which also took home the Best Picture precursor, the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Drama).
Some of the competition in the category for the Best Picture Oscar made for a worthy adversary as similarly touching and emotionally driven and powerful films, like “Fences” and “Hacksaw Ridge.” Some, however, were overrated and blown out of proportion, like “Arrival” and “Hell or High Water.” And some were a desperate plea for Academy voters who wanted diversity, like “Hidden Figures.”
The acting awards
The Oscar for Best Actor went to Casey Affleck for “Manchester by the Sea,” which critics called “the performance of a lifetime.” He beat Ryan Gosling’s two-sided coin comedic/dramatic “La La Land” performance, which showed great range but may have been let down by his singing, Denzel Washington’s calm, nuanced portrayal of Troy in “Fences,” and Andrew Garfield’s solemn, emotional performance in “Hacksaw Ridge.”
Emma Stone’s amazing performance in “La La Land” won her the Oscar for Best Actress, young blood beating out twenty-time nominee Meryl Streep and Natalie Portman’s standard Oscar bait biopic “Jackie.” Mahershala Ali won Best Supporting Actor for “Moonlight,” becoming the first Muslim to win an Oscar in an age where the Muslim community needed a win, and Viola Davis won Best Supporting Actress for “Fences,” in which she stole the show in an emotional portrait of life as a working class black woman.
Davis becomes the first black performer to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony for acting. Whoopi Goldberg has a similar achievement, but her Tony is for producing.
The creative, behind-the-camera awards
As predicted, Damien Chazelle took home the Best Director Oscar for his beautifully realised passion project “La La Land,” beating visionaries such as Barry Jenkins and Denis Villeneuve to the punch, as well as Mel Gibson, who say what you will about his personal life, has serious talent.
As for the screenplay Oscars, Best Original Screenplay went to Kenneth Lonergan’s heartstring-tugging script for “Manchester by the Sea.” One might say Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou’s absurdist, oddball, brilliant screenplay for “The Lobster” was more deserving of the award as it masterfully mixed the mundane with the ridiculous, the dark with the cute, but as long as Taylor Sheridan’s awful “Hell or High Water” script didn’t win, that’s the main thing.
The Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay was awarded, like Best Picture, to “Moonlight.” The screenplay for “Moonlight” is adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s semi-autobiographical play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” and deserved to win purely because of how touchingly personal it is. While a posthumous win for August Wilson for his adaptation of his own play “Fences” would’ve been a wonderful tribute to a great writer, it can be argued that “Moonlight” is the stronger screenplay, and that’s what the award is for.
Now for all the others
“Zootopia,” Disney’s allegorical tale of race in a world populated by animals, took home the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. Iran’s “The Salesman” won Best Foreign Language Film, “OJ: Made in America” won Best Documentary Feature, and “La La Land” and its song “City of Stars” won Best Original Score and Best Original Song respectively, and rightly so.
