Mortifying horror gave way to a poetic and perfect ending
EVEN if Moonlight had triumphed at the Academy Awards in the usual way, it would have made history. What happened left history smashed in pieces on the carpet. Oscar night isn’t a gaffe-averse occasion at the best of times, but the 2017 bungle of bungles was the single most mortifying moment in the ceremony’s history. The Academy doesn’t give out Oscars for faces, but if they did, Warren Beatty’s would have been a shoo-in for Best Picture. When the error came to light, the actor’s glazed smile of horror spoke for everyone. Beatty clearly sensed the envelope was the wrong one from the moment he opened it – but like every great actor, his instincts surely told him the show must go on. Likewise Faye Dunaway, who read out the words in front of her with a Hollywood sparkle. Don’t blame them. It’s what they do. In the moment, it felt like the worst possible way for Moonlight to have won. This lyrical, ambitious, allaround exquisite film about a black, gay man coming to terms with his identity is something totally new, even revolutionary, on the Oscar landscape – but was honoured almost as an afterthought. Yet it gradually became clear that there was a sweetness and rightness and perverse poetic perfection to the whole fiasco – that the crowning of a quiet film about stories rarely told and life experiences rarely acknowledged could win in such an unignorable, allheadlines-blaring way. The manner in which La La Land flamed out at the last minute, with unimpeachable grace, also felt oddly apt in retrospect. This is a film, after all, which ends with its stars living out a momentary vision of happiness before reality arrives with a dark thud. Its producer Jordan Horowitz – who had to hand what he halfway through his own acceptance speech – will appreciate the irony. Just not for a week or two.
The best thing about the mess-up is that it cut both films free from their accepted awards season roles: the hopeless shoestring underdog versus the swaggering, toe-tapping heir apparent. Six months of stoked-up rivalry was gone in an instant.
In particular, La La Land had been the subject of some of the most contrived, misconstrued and overreaching hit jobs I’ve ever read about a Best Picture contender. Beneath the glitter, it’s a risky, complex and boundary-pushing work – and would have made almost as worthy a winner as Moonlight – but it was variously lambasted over the last few weeks as racist, sexist, fascist, tuneless, shallow and glib. Had it won, those arguments would have lingered, despite the fact they were attacking a version of it that doesn’t actually exist. But this way, its status as a beautiful, star-crossed loser becomes part of the La La Land legend – alongside the six Oscars it did win.
Until this moment, we were used to thinking about the times the “wrong film” ended up winning – like Crash over Brokeback Mountain in 2006, or Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan in 1999. But this year’s unprecedented situation was almost the opposite of that: an all-time-direst disaster, the result of which was widespread rejoicing. Even if Moonlight’s name had been read out the first time, I would have felt obliged to immediately rewind the footage, just to make sure it actually happened. The cosmos sensed the mood, and gave us a moment to match it.