The way of MoonlightThe best Oscar image victory may have been weird and shocking, but by overthrowing the expected favorite La la LandBarry Jenkins' film has set a number of milestones. This is the lowest low budget film to win the award since Delbert Mann Marty in 1955; If it adjusted for inflation, it is the lowest of all time. It is the first film centered on an LGBTQ character to be named best film, and the first whose casting is entirely people of color. Beyond that, it's incredible that Moonlight beat La la Land Simply because the latter looked like a film for voters of the Academy – an original musical well made on Hollywood art and dreams, by the nostalgia for the golden age of industry.
But maybe it shouldn't be that surprising that Moonlight took the best photo. It is an amazing film, but also in some respects which corresponds to a mold towards which the Academy is looking in recent years. For decades, it was very unusual for the film with the most price of the night to lose the best image race. But in recent years is the norm. For decades, the divisions between the best film and the best director (as happened in the Oscars last night) were a relative rarity; In the past 20 years, it happened 8 times. Moonlight is a unique film, which tells the kind of story that the Oscars have largely ignored through its history, but it is also the kind of smaller and more intimate tale than the voters have started to warm up.
Moonlight Won three Oscars this year: the best film, the best support actor (Mahershala Ali) and the best scenario suitable for Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney. Winner of the best film of last year Highlight only took two trophies and in 2015, Bird won four. The previous year, 12 years of slave won three, as did Argo In 2013. In all cases, there was another more opulent production which won at least as many trophies, if not more: The ghost,, The Grand Budapest Hotel,, GravityAnd Pi liferespectively (with everything except Budapest Win the best director but not the best film). La la Land Seems to belong to this new standard that strikes tickets, where voters reduce a bunch of technical victories for the first favorite, but give the best film to more critical and more critical production.
Again, that should not put back MoonlightTriumph that changes the situation. Although films like Highlight And Bird were independent work, they were manufactured with a much larger budget and distributed by more established independent wings of large studios (MoonlightThe distributor was A24, a company founded only five years ago It quickly became one of the most respected names in American artistic cinema). However, only one big studio has won the best film in the last decade – Warner Bros. (For Argo And The deceased). While the main Hollywood production companies have moved away from prestigious films to focus more on franchises of large tents, the list of nominations of the best film Manchester by the sea).
If things had already preceded in this direction, then Moonlight This could be the start of an even greater sea change. On the nine nominees for the best image of this year, it is the lowest (having made $ 22 million during the fourth months since its release, behind the next Hell or high water with $ 27 million). The Oscars had a certain reverence for perfectly revised films that broke out in a major way. This is how consensus choices like A beautiful spirit,, Gladiator,, Brave heart, And Forrest Gump took the price on more acclaimed films. La la Land Suitable for this mold, but this mold may have been broken.
It helps Moonlight was universally announced, obtaining the kind of rave criticism that come once by generation, rather than once a year. It was also a beautifully made film at all levels, attracting the support of a wider band of the academy branches (it was nominated for his music, his cinematography and his editing with writing, theater and the realization of head signs). It is crucial for a victory on the best film, because the people of each branch of the Academy vote on the winners, and this is what had kept smaller, less impressive technically impressive films, to win in the past. Maybe next year, the trophy will go to a large epic that strikes the box office, like Christopher Nolan DunkirqueAnd this recent model will be upset. Anyway, MoonlightThe victory is shocking enough to be recalled forever. The thing to watch for the moment is if it is a magical anomaly of the Oscars, or a sign of deep change for the Academy.
