The method of Moonlight’s Best Picture win at the Oscars might have been bizarre and shocking, however in toppling anticipated favourite La La Land, Barry Jenkins’s movie set quite a lot of milestones. It’s the lowest-budgeted movie to win the prize since Delbert Mann’s Marty in 1955; if adjusting for inflation, it’s the lowest ever. It’s the first film centered on an LGBTQ character to be named Best Picture, and the first whose solid is fully folks of colour. Beyond that, it’s unimaginable that Moonlight beat La La Land just because the latter appeared like a movie geared toward Academy voters—a well-made authentic musical about artistry and Hollywood desires, shot by with nostalgia for the trade’s Golden Age.
But possibly it shouldn’t be so shocking that Moonlight took Best Picture. It’s a stunning film, but additionally in some methods one that matches a mildew the Academy has been leaning towards lately. For many years, it was very uncommon for the film with the most awards of the evening to lose the Best Picture race. But lately, that’s been the norm. For many years, splits between Best Picture and Best Director (as occurred ultimately evening’s Oscars) had been a relative rarity; in the final 20 years, it’s occurred 8 occasions. Moonlight is a singular movie, and one which tells the sort of story the Academy Awards have largely ignored by its historical past—but it surely’s additionally the sort of smaller, extra intimate story that voters have began warming to.
Moonlight gained three Academy Awards this yr: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), and Best Adapted Screenplay for Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney. Last yr’s Best Picture winner Spotlight took solely two trophies, and in 2015, Birdman gained 4. The yr earlier than that, 12 Years a Slave gained three, as did Argo in 2013. In each case, there was one other extra opulent manufacturing that gained no less than as many trophies, if no more: The Revenant, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Gravity, and Life of Pi, respectively (with all however Budapest profitable Best Director however not Best Picture). La La Land appears to belong to this new ticket-splitting norm, the place voters chalk up a bunch of technical wins for the glitzy frontrunner, however give Best Picture to the extra critically acclaimed, smaller manufacturing.
Again, this isn’t to low cost Moonlight’s game-changing triumph. Though motion pictures like Spotlight and Birdman had been unbiased works, they had been made on a a lot greater funds and distributed by extra established indie wings of main studios (Moonlight’s distributor was A24, an organization founded only five years ago that has shortly change into one in all the most revered names in American artwork cinema). Still, just one main studio has gained Best Picture in the final decade—Warner Bros. (for Argo and The Departed). As Hollywood’s main manufacturing corporations have tilted away from status movies to focus extra closely on large tentpole franchises, the Best Picture nominations listing is generally full of indie and “mid-major” corporations, (with streaming service Amazon making its own breakthrough this yr for Manchester by the Sea).
If issues had been already edging on this route, then Moonlight is perhaps the starting of a fair greater sea change. Of this yr’s 9 Best Picture nominees, it’s the lowest-grossing (having made $22 million in the fourth months since its launch, behind the subsequent lowest Hell or High Water with $27 million). The Oscars used to have a sure reverence for completely nicely reviewed movies that broke out in a significant means. It’s how consensus selections like A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, Braveheart, and Forrest Gump took the prize over extra acclaimed motion pictures. La La Land suits that mildew nicely—however that mildew might have been damaged.
It helps that Moonlight was universally heralded, getting the sort of rapturous essential raves that come as soon as in a technology, relatively than yearly. It was additionally a fantastically made movie on each degree, attracting help from a wider swath of Academy branches (it was nominated for its music, cinematography, and enhancing together with the anticipated writing, appearing, and directing nods). That’s essential for a Best Picture win, as a result of folks from each Academy department get to vote on the winners, and it’s what had saved smaller, much less technically spectacular indie motion pictures from profitable in the previous. Perhaps subsequent yr the trophy will go to some large epic that hits at the field workplace, like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, and this latest sample will probably be upended. Either means, Moonlight’s win is surprising sufficient to be remembered without end. The factor to look at for now could be if it’s a magical Oscars anomaly, or an indication of profound change for the Academy.
