HOLLYWOOD’S BIG NIGHT
Early Oscar wins for Viola Davis, Mahershala Ali, Damien Chazelle
It was shaping up to be the year that an old-fashioned Hollywood musical took the Oscars by storm, while the elite of the cinema world delivered a stern rebuke to their nation’s new Republican president, in between thanking their agents, parents, God and Harvey Weinstein.
But in the early going it was anything but a La La Land route. Montreal sound engineer Sylvain Bellemare took the award for sound editing for his work on Denis Villeneuve’s science-fiction picture Arrival, which went into the night tied with Moonlight with eight nominations including best picture.
Only La La Land, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s tale of love and jazz, set amid a fantasy version of Los Angeles, and starring Emma Stone and Ontario’s Ryan Gosling, had more nominations with 14. And only Titanic in 1997 and 1950’s All About Eve have managed that feat; both went on to win best picture.
La La Land also lost out on sound mixing to Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge. It did win the prize for production design. Other Oscars in the early part of the awards ceremony included Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for costume design; Suicide Squad for makeup and hairstyling; and the seven-plushour miniseries O.J.: Made in America for best documentary.
The evening began with a best supporting actor win by Mahershala Ali for the film Moonlight; later, Viola Davis took the best supporting actress prize for her role opposite Denzel Washington in Fences, delivering a tearful thank you to the late screenwriter August Wilson and others.
But for the most part the speeches avoided the kind of pointed barbs heard at the recent Screen Actors Guild awards, and from Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes, when she took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump, calling him a bully and received a Twitterlashing in response.
One exception on Sunday night was Asghar Farhadi, the Iranian director of The Salesman, which won the best foreign-language Oscar. Farhadi, who also won the prize for his 2011 film A Separation, boycotted the ceremony after Trump’s travel ban.
“I’m sorry I’m not with you tonight,” he said in a statement. “My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and six other nations.” Referring to the travel ban as “inhumane,” he called on filmmakers to “create empathy between us and others, an empathy we need today more than ever.”
Gael Garcia Bernal, presenting the prizes for animation, also noted that actors are often migrant workers, and that, “as a Mexican, as a Latin American, as a migrant worker (and) as a human being, I’m against any kind of wall that wants to separate us.”
A teary-eyed Alan Barillaro of Chippawa, Ont., thanked his three little birds — his children — as he accepted the best animated short Oscar for Piper.
The six-minute film, produced by Pixar, depicts a baby bird and her mother trying to dodge waves while searching for food on the beach. It was the first win in that category for Pixar since For the Birds in 2000.
Meanwhile, Zootopia won in the best animated feature category.
If La La Land winds up as the best-picture winner, it will be the first time since 2002 and Chicago that a musical won the best-picture Oscar; before that, it was 1968 and Oliver! that last took the prize.
La La Land would also represent a rare instance of a true box office champion taking the trophy: The film has earned $140 million to date, with only Hidden Figures doing better ($152 million) among the best-picture nominees. The last time an Oscar winner did so well was 13 years ago, when Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won 11 awards while taking home $342 million at the North American box office.