“La La Land” didn’t win The 89th Academy Awards, but it did take home the major awards – at least for a few seconds.
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced “La La Land” as the winner of the Best Picture award, and the celebration started on stage, but it ended quickly when one of the winners indicated that the “Moonlight” had won the Best Picture Award.
A moment later, Beatty said that he had opened the envelope which read a card, “Emma Stone and La La Land.” He was paused and confused because of it, he added. “I wasn’t trying to be funny,” he explained.
Barry Jenkins, “Moonlight” director soon took to the stage in an astonished amazement.
Jenkins said, “Very clearly, even in my dreams this could not be true. But to hell with dreams, I am done with it, cause this is true. Oh, my goodness.”
For Jenkins and his agonizingly moving coming-of-age drama about a young, gay black man in a rough Miami neighborhood, it was quite the Hollywood ending.
“All you people out there who feel like there’s no mirror for you, that your life is not reflected, the Academy has your back, the ACLU has your back, we have your back and for the next four years we will not leave you alone, we will not forget you,” said Jenkins.
Mahershala Ali, “Moonlight” star also won the Best Supporting Actor award.
Regardless the mix-up, it was still a decent night for a musical drama “La La Land.” 32 years old “La La Land” director, Damien Chazelle made history by being the youngest person ever to win Best Director.
Emma Stone, Chazelle’s star also won the Best Actress Award and thanked Chazelle for the chance to appear in his film, that came with 14 nominations.
The Best Actor Award went to Casey Affleck for his performance in “Manchester by the Sea.”
It wasn’t just Kimmel, who made some mean and funny lines. Some of the speeches really stole the show.
When Viola Davis won the Best Supporting Actress Award, she didn’t talk politics for “Fences.” Instead, she praised the art, “I became an artist and thank God I did because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.”
There were people who delivered memorable speeches, even when they weren’t actually in attendance. Asghar Farhadi who won the best foreign language film award for his “The Salesman” wrote a speech which was read by Anousheh Ansari who accepted the award.
Farhadi chose not to attend the award night in the protest over President Trump’s travel ban, which made it undecided whether he would even be allowed into the country to attend.
He wrote in his speech; “Dividing the world into the ‘us and our enemies’ categories create fear, a deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression.”
With Kimmel’s opening monologue, such political themes touched the night from the start. Amid other things, during his monologue, Kimmel led a round of applause for the “highly over-rated” actress Meryl Streep.
Streep had denounced Trump’s campaign rhetoric without ever mentioning his name in her Golden Globes acceptance speech. Trump had criticized her as “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood” in a tweet later.
After the musical performance by Justin Timberlake, Kimmel gave a little ribbing to the show in the opening monologue, “This is my first time here and the way you people go through hosts it’s probably my last time.”