Much can go wrong when making Oscars predictions
We got to hear at least half of the La La Land acceptance speeches and revel in their victory, then marvel at something that is surely rarer in Hollywood than most places in the world: graciousness in defeat.
Never write up your Oscars predictions. I make the same resolution every year, usually while watching the ceremony live.
On Monday afternoon, enjoying proceedings from an especially booked hotel room, I failed even to keep pace with my wife in our inhouse competition. So much for the self-proclaimed expertise. As William Goldman, a two-time Oscar winner, infamously said, ‘‘nobody knows anything’’.
Last week in this column I made the bold assertion that ‘‘masterpieces never win Best Picture’’. As Moonlight was undoubtably a masterpiece, it therefore had no chance of taking out the big prize.
The logic was impeccable but the generalisation on which it was based was faulty. There have been plenty of masterpieces which have won Best Picture. Sometimes they have even actually been the best American films of their years. It is the exception, not the rule, but it has happened. Prime examples include All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930, The Godfather films in 1972 and 1974, respectively, and perhaps One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest a year later.
There are still more occasions in which the margin between the two top contenders is so slim that their relative merits are a matter of taste. You see this trend even in the examples cited above. The Godfather‘s reputation might have but grown over time but in 1972 it had a series rival in Cabaret, which bested it in the overall Oscar tally by eight statues to three. Some would argue that Chinatown is a better film than The Godfather Part II and many would say as much about Nashville vis-a-vis Cuckoo’s Nest.
In two out of three of these cases a musical came second to a drama. To risk another generalisation, some genre films are always considered less culturally significant than others and a quality drama which transcends genre classification entirely will usually win against movies that are more easily pigeon-holed.
This fact partially accounts for the backlash this year against La La Land. It was seen as ‘‘only’’ a musical. Not only that, its stars were perceived as lacking singing and dancing prowess. However innovative – or outright thrilling, even – it might be, by definition it is inferior to a film that takes on issues of race, gender and sexuality, particularly one that does so with such poetic brilliance.
Of course, the unprecedented ending to Monday’s ceremony let both La La Land and Moonlight share a little in the prize.
Ultimately, I suspect the ridiculous toing and froing over Best Picture, in which first one film then the other was announced winner, will detract from the reputations of both. History will focus on the controversy and the comedy and the bizarre mess that a geriatric Bonnie & Clyde made of the simplest of tasks.
In their prime, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway made bank robbery look easy, but a half century later don’t ask them to open an envelope and read what’s inside. The films involved will be reduced to footnotes in this farce, equivalent to unwitting straight men in an unscripted piece of slapstick.
As it played out live though the false ending, the correction and the subsequent apologies engendered nothing but sympathy for the producers of La La Land, one of whom, in the midst of the confusion, took it upon himself to anoint his rival the actual winner.
We got to hear at least half of the La La Land acceptance speeches and revel in their victory, then marvel at something that is surely rarer in Hollywood than most places in the world: graciousness in defeat.
If the final result was a disappointment to La La Land apologists such as myself, some solace can be found in history. The truly ground-breaking musicals have seldom got the award recognition they deserved.
The practice was established at only the second ever Oscars, when The Broadway Melody, full of static camerawork and cumbersome dancing, beat out a film called Applause, which freely experimented with the new medium of sound while retaining all the visual strengths of the late silent era. It continued in the 1930s, where for all the brilliance of the Astaire and Rogers movies or the geometric wonders of Busby Berkeley’s choreography, the only Best Picture-winning musical was the comparatively minor The Great Ziegfeld.
In losing, La La Land joins the ranks of Top Hat, Singin’ in the Rain and The Band Wagon, American classics all, underrated or ignored by the very industry they celebrate.