February 26, 2017 was shaping up to be a perfectly fine Oscar night. The night unfolded with a series of predictable wins, from Viola Davis winning for Fences to Emma Stone’s victory for La La Land, moments that were highly telegraphed from the various award precursors leading up to the main event. Jimmy Kimmel’s bits were hit or miss, much like others in history that have taken on the thankless job of Oscar Host. Tears were shed, the stars shined bright, and digs were made at the new president.
The 2017 Oscars went down in such a predictable fashion that some of us didn’t even see its jarring conclusion play out live. I was holding an Oscar party that night and by the time Best Picture was finally announced it was midnight and everyone was ready to leave. Faye Dunaway read the name of the movie we all expected to hear as Best Picture, La La Land. My guests smiled, gave goodbye hugs, and left my apartment before the La La Land crew could give their speeches. Tired from a long Oscar season and what felt like an even longer night, I almost shut the TV off right then and there. Then, there was a change in body language onstage. The La La Land crew looked uneasy. Men in headsets were running around the stage. And as producer Fred Berger finished up his speech, he said those fateful words: “We lost, by the way.”
La La Land lost, by the way. The musical juggernaut that scored 14 nominations, tying the most for any film in Oscar history, that made $140 million by the time Oscar night rolled around, that featured movie stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling celebrating the magic of show business in a throwback to the glamour of old Hollywood cinema, had lost. This flew in the face of everything we thought the Oscars were and what they had become. After rewarding self-reflective films like The Artist, Argo, and Birdman in recent years, it seemed so clear that voters were never going to pass up a dazzling musical blockbuster like La La Land. Yet, they did. As chaos ensued on February 26, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz cleared the air and announced to the world, “There’s been a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture.”
The surreal presentation was almost a metaphor for just how significant it was that a movie like Moonlight had won Best Picture at the Oscars. The indie drama is the first film to win Best Picture that features an all-black cast in addition to being the first to center on LGBT themes. The movie was made for just $1.5 million and doesn’t have the benefit of expensive sets or a weighty, monologue-filled screenplay, like many Best Picture winners of the past. While the film packs major acting talent, there are no huge stars and its director has only made one film before.
So how did Moonlight defy the odds and win Best Picture? Let’s break down all of the factors and examine whether the film will stand the test of time.
The Socio-Political Climate
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was facing a PR nightmare. In both 2014 and 2015, Oscar voters did not nominate any actors of color and thus, a firestorm was created. Writer April Reign coined the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, which called out the organization’s complete lack of diversity and turned into a real movement, largely overshadowing any positive buzz for the films and performances that were nominated. It was a bad look for the Academy, especially because their voting membership was overwhelming white and male. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs soon announced an influx of minority and female members, to help diversify the group’s nearly singular taste. The Academy invited 683 new members into the exclusive club, 41 percent minority, 46 percent female.
Meanwhile, there was a grander struggle being played out in the United States. The nastiness of the 2016 presidential election led to more polarization than ever before as Hollywood was being branded as “elite” and “out of touch,” and those were some of the nicer phrases. As with other election years, everyone was a little more invested in the world around them, and feelings were much more raw. Donald Trump was elected President, and the many women and minorities who protested his candidacy felt silenced by the nearly 63 million voters who overlooked some of his nastier comments and chose to vote Republican. The Barack Obama legacy was over, and a new regime entered the public sphere.
The Campaign
Meanwhile, Moonlight debuted at the Telluride Film Festival without much pre-festival buzz outside of a strong teaser trailer, even with Brad Pitt’s Plan B attached, the production company that had previously won Best Picture Oscars for 2006’s The Departed and 2013’s 12 Years a Slave. Oscar bloggers were preoccupied with predicting glory for big films from high-profile directors like Martin Scorsese’s Silence and Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. La La Land soon took over as the one to beat after it screened at the Venice Film Festival, and maintained its buzz in Telluride. Meanwhile, Moonlight garnered huge acclaim from top critics, who praised the film’s open humanity, vulnerability, and nuance. Oscar buzz soon commenced, though a film as small as Moonlight seemed destined to take the critical darling slot reserved for bold indie films that aren’t able to fully connect with the middlebrow taste of the average Oscar voter, like Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Tree of Life, or A Serious Man.
As buzz started to pick up, it became a question of whether the film’s other production studio, A24, could propel it to victory. Despite earning three Oscars the previous year include Brie Larson’s Best Actress win for Room, the indie-friendly company still hadn’t really cemented itself as a major player in the awards circuit like Fox Searchlight, Paramount, or The Weinstein Company. Room was their only Best Picture nominee up to this point, and it was unclear if they had what it took to compete with the Harvey Weinsteins of the world. In the final months of 2016, though, there were many For Your Consideration screenings and events, star Mahershala Ali was on the cover of magazines, and many celebrities voiced their support for the little indie drama that could.
Moonlight earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali, Best Supporting Actress for Naomie Harris, Best Director for Barry Jenkins, Best Adapted Screenplay for Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Original Score.
The Other Nominees
The new membership of the Academy proved its effectiveness by nominating three excellent films with African Americans at the center: Moonlight, Fences, and Hidden Figures, plus a fourth centering on an Indian Australian, Lion. All four films were pushed heavily in the months leading up to the Oscar nominations, but none were positioned as filling any sort of quota for quota’s sake. Fences, Hidden Figures, and Lion were ultimately not strong enough to contend for the win, though any one of them could have emerged in a weaker year.
Older male-friendly dramas like Hacksaw Ridge and Hell or High Water were also represented, but like Fences, Hidden Figures, and Lion, were not able to gather enough of a voting coalition to be serious threats. Then there was Arrival, the sci-fi epic starring Amy Adams that, like many of its predecessors (Avatar, Gravity, Inception, The Martian), was not able to burst through possible genre bias to win the big prize.
One major competitor that had a shot of winning the top prize was Manchester by the Sea. The family drama, set in the titular Massachusetts town, earned numerous critics prizes throughout the year and star Casey Affleck picked up almost every Best Actor trophy, eventually including the Oscar. Manchester by the Sea also took home the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, for writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, but the film’s bleakness may have been a turnoff for Best Picture voters.
Then there was La La Land, which garnered a whopping 14 nominations, a feat that hadn’t been accomplished since 1997’s Titanic. This, after becoming the winningest film in Golden Globes history a few weeks earlier, suggested that there was virtually no way La La Land could lose. But then the tides changed. There were multiple thinkpieces about Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian “mansplaining” to Emma Stone’s Mia, its depiction of jazz, and the fact that Gosling and Stone aren’t the best singers or dancers. Nobody knew whether Oscar voters were truly paying attention to this backlash, but it was such a mammoth contender with 14 nominations that there was no way it could possibly lose, right?
The Final Vote
As Oscar night drew closer and closer, all the momentum seemed to be on La La Land‘s side, even with the backlash. Let’s face it, Best Picture winners like Birdman and The Artist had their fair share of critics and they wound up winning anyway. There were some who stuck their neck out and predicted Moonlight, but there are always dreamers every year whose boldness usually goes unrewarded.
Now, with Best Picture being decided using a preferential voting system, a movie does not necessarily win on the initial ballot alone. This means that even if La La Land earned the most no. 1 votes out of all the Best Picture nominees on the first ballot, it still had the potential to lose if others ranked it lower on their ballots. It then becomes necessary to warrant no. 2 votes, and this is where a movie like Moonlight likely shined. With a movie as big as La La Land, you either love it passionately enough to put it at no. 1, or you just didn’t like it and put it towards the bottom of your ballot.
So why did voters go with Moonlight over La La Land? For one, there is a certain underdog status to Moonlight, and America loves a good underdog. La La Land had the expectation of being the preordained frontrunner and some may have been disappointed by the final result, while Moonlight was more of a discovery, of which people could taken ownership. Plus, with people more concerned than ever about the state of America, and putting the quality of the film aside for a moment, how would it have looked if Oscar voters rewarded the movie about a young, white, attractive couple achieving their dreams? And a movie called La La Land at that, which has connotations of being out of touch with reality?
There’s also the influx of new voters to consider, voters who come from different backgrounds who can appreciate a story about a poor, black, gay kid growing up in Miami more than others. Whatever the combination, Moonlight made Oscar history and single-handedly took down one of the most obvious frontrunners of all time.
The Film Itself
Moonlight could have won for any number of reasons, but what about the actual quality of the film? The movie offers a fresh perspective not seen often at theaters, centering on a black boy growing up poor in Miami and struggling with his sexuality. Young Chiron is guarded and hauntingly quiet, with a thousand-yard stare that will pierce your heart just a little more with each interaction he has with those around him. It is rare for a film to center on such a quiet character without giving in to the crutch of narration to hold our hand and explain exactly what they are thinking. Yet, with Jenkins’ delicate touch behind the camera and each actor’s expressive, heartbreaking face, we see a lifetime of shame, confusion, and desperation. We understand Chiron. We are Chiron.
Chiron is played by three different actors at different stages of his life: Alex Hibbert as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teen and Trevante Rhodes as an adult. While these three actors do not exactly look alike, their souls are completely in sync with Chiron, which is all the more impressive considering Jenkins did not allow them to meet before filming began. Those around Chiron deliver beautiful, lived-in performances as well, including Mahershala Ali as drug dealer/mentor Juan, Naomie Harris and Chiron’s mother, Paula, André Holland as Adult Kevin, and Janelle Monáe as motherly figure Teresa. Ali and Harris received the most acclaim, scoring their first Oscar nominations and Ali going on to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but the three Chiron performances at the center are the ones that grab your heart and never let go.
Composer Nicholas Britell’s lush, classical score helps enhance the emotional arc of Chiron. Each Chiron theme is teased out in frenetic bursts, mirroring his inner turmoil as he tries to bury that one gnawing secret he can’t help escaping. James Laxton, the film’s cinematographer, draws us into Chiron’s struggles through POV shots and fourth wall breaking that make you feel just as isolated and exposed as the main character himself. We may not know all the details of what Chiron hopes for in life, but by the end it’s clear that like many of us, he is just looking for solace in an unfair world.
Will Moonlight Stand the Test of Time?
Moonlight was never the type of movie I thought would win Best Picture at the Oscars. To put it in frank terms, it was too black and too gay for the average straight, white, old male Academy member to fully embrace. It may sound harsh, but consider how in the previous 88 years of Oscar history only four Best Picture winners had African Americans at the center: In the Heat of the Night, Driving Miss Daisy, Crash, and 12 Years a Slave, and all of these happened to be about racism. When it comes to LGBT films it’s even worse — unless you count a few scenes in Midnight Cowboy, the 1969 Best Picture winner, the history of Oscar voters awarding Best Picture to films about gay characters is completely non-existent.
Moonlight‘s victory is really a historic one, considering it has an all-black cast yet the film is not about racism, and its main character is gay and the plot involves him coming to terms with his sexuality. As a member of the LGBT community myself, I have a personal connection with Moonlight. Watching the film, I felt every moment of Chiron’s isolation, recognizing so many of his struggles in my own life. I wanted to reach out and hug Chiron, to let him know he wasn’t alone, that his feelings weren’t alien. A Best Picture win may not mean much to most people, but seeing it succeed gave me a sense of pride like no other victory before. It made me feel like stories about people like me and other minority groups actually matter, and resonate with wide swaths of individuals. It also felt like vindication after Oscar voters refused to vote for Brokeback Mountain a decade ago, with multiple members expressing their own homophobia as a contributing factor. We have truly come a long way.
There is no other film like Moonlight that has won Best Picture, and the unique way in which it won will always be remembered. Even beyond the optics, though, I believe Moonlight will live on for years to come without showing any signs of aging. Despite taking place at a distinct point in time, the film also has a universal quality where I imagine anyone could sit down and watch it in the next 30-40 years and completely understand Chiron’s quiet desperation. History will look kindly on Moonlight, and Chiron’s story will live on.
To watch Moonlight for yourself, it is available to rent or buy on Amazon, and DVD and Blu-ray through the following links: