Express & Star

The Oscars 2017: Wins, losses and mishaps mark the 89th Academy Awards ceremony

It'll be a ceremony that perhaps will be remembered for all the wrong reasons, but did the winners really deserve their titles and did the losers really deserve to walk away empty-handed?

Published

The 2017 Academy Awards crowned Moonlight as Best Picture. The film tells the life story of Chiron, a young black man growing up in Miami. Chiron's mother, played by Naomie Harris, is a crack addicted, abusive and neglectful figure in Chiron's life. So much so, that when drug-dealer Juan, played by Mahershala Ali comes into his life, the young boy clings on to him as a unlikely role model.

The story, split into three parts, shows Chiron's unexpected coming of age, retaliating after a brutal beating by his would-be boyfriend, spurred on by the school bully.

When we next see Chiron, he is almost a mirror-image of Juan, who has since died. He is bulky, gold-chain and grills-wearing, ultimately terrifying looking drug dealer. But he is still struggling to come to terms with who he is, with the sensitive, gentle soul of the younger Chiron still visible in brief snapshots with his long lost friend and lover, Azu, played by Duan Sanderson.

What is the most powerful part of the film is that which is left unsaid.

Chiron barely speaks throughout the film, and indeed throughout his whole childhood, which has enabled him to build up a protective wall around his true identity. What is all the more tragic is that he is so devoid of role-models, that Juan aka Ali who was the first Muslim action to win a Best Supporting Actor Award for his role in the film, that he becomes everything he wanted to avoid growing up.

The film shows what it means to grow up in a world that is unable to recognise you as valuable unless you subscribe to a particular role - in this case the burly, black drug dealer from the ghetto. But in subverting that, in making the character gay, the film becomes Best Picture, by the way it challenges our perceptions, our own bias on what it means to be young, black and male in America.

The film was undeniably better than La La Land. But the movie wasn't without its merits, securing six of the eight awards it was nominated for.

The musical story of a wannabe actress and jazz musician struggling through the trials of tribulations of finding love and work in LA is a starkly modern one, set to a soundtrack that harks back to the Golden Age of MGM cinema.

The irony of the not-so-happy ending of the story makes the film a step forward in the genre of musical rom-coms. Though Mia, played by Emma Stone who won Best Actress for her role, manages to secure her acting success, and Seb played by Ryan Gosling, opens his jazz club, that success comes at a price - each other.

Stone deserved recognition for the way she in some ways carried the film to its own success - from the moment she delivers an incredible audition in a cold white room in front of hostile directors - we know that this is an actress who deserves to be recognised. But perhaps not so much as Viola Davis.

Fences, directed and produced by Denzel Washington, secured Davis an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

The win, for her portrayal Rose Maxson, of the long-suffering wife of Troy Maxson, played by Washington, was a deserved one, if only for the piercing monologue she delivers after Troy tells her he has been having an affair, and that the woman he slept with, is pregnant.

The speech seems to speak to all women everywhere who have ever been let down by their husbands, a speech that seems to severe the 18-year marital ties of Rose and Troy and highlight how delusional and selfish he has been in blaming everyone else for his own failings.

Best Original Screenplay went to Manchester by the Sea with Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler securing the Best Actor Award.

In possibly one of the most powerful film scenes on last year, Affleck walks out of a interview room at his local police station after being questioned over the deaths of his three young children in an accidental house fire. Grabbing the gun of a passing police officer he holds it to his head and tries to pull the trigger as officers try to wrench it from his hand.

The scene immediately justifies why Chandler has seemed dead in the eyes for the preceding scenes, a shell of a man forever re-living the moment he went out for beer and his life changed irrevocably.

But one of the biggest losers of the awards, Lion, directed by Garth Davis sees Dev Patel play Saroo, telling the true story of a man who is lost in India after falling asleep on a train missed out on the recognition it merits.

The journey that young Saroo, played by the incredible Sunny Pawar goes through is one that is at best harrowing, at worst genuinely disturbing, as we see how he escapes potential human trafficking and violent sexual abuse. Saroo is instead adopted by an Australian couple, who also adopt the mentally-ill Mantosh.

At the age of 25, Saroo decides to try and find his biological mother and brother - who lost him on the train twenty years prior. The film, in a not-too dissimilar way to Moonlight, is a striking exploration of how we craft our own identity through experience and how being 'lost' can ultimately result in your finding an unexpected path back to where you began.

The film missed out on the six awards it was nominated for, but was one of the most poignant and necessary films of last year.

There are dozens more than deserve a mention - Mel Gibson's exploration of the story of a military doctor at Hackshaw Ridge which secured an award for Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing, sci-fi triumph Arrival, which saw Amy Adams snubbed by won the Best Sound Editing Award and the topical O.J in America which won the Best Documentary Feature Award.

Film Florence Foster Jenkins - starring Meryl Streep who was up for Best Actress - was also a worthy nominee, although perhaps was a little too twee too secure an award.

Hidden Figures was the other major player up for Best Picture, with the ceremony itself honouring the real-life NASA Hero Katherine Johnson but the film missing out on all three of the awards it was up for.

All-American cowboy-esk Hell or High Water was also left out in the cold despite being nominated for four awards and providing an interesting glimpse into the lives of the white working class in the American south.

Overall, this year's Oscars arguably provided a very balanced, self-aware awards that for the first time seemed to provide a more level playing field for actors, directors and film-makers of colour.

Moonlight's awkward, but not unexpected win, marked the end of a ceremony that was trying hard to combat the controversy around the #OscarSoWhite campaign but the losing of Lions and Hidden Figures perhaps shows that we've still got someway to go.

By Jessica Labhart

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.