How 'Moonlight' pulled off the Oscar upset of a lifetime
NEW YORK (AP) — Long before Barry Jenkins made his way to the podium through the bewildered throng that packed the Dolby Theatre stage at the Academy Awards, he sat in a Toronto hotel room explaining his movie's quiet power.
Since its fall film festival debut, Jenkin's tenderly lyrical film has steadily risen not through the loud kind of arm-waving that often catapults movies to the top prize — big box office, scene-chewing performances, historical sweep — but instead by a soulful, unremitting glow that slow-burned all the way to the Oscars.
"La La Land," with a record-tying 14 nominations, was seen as the hands-down favorite, having run up prizes from the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild, the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes.
Widely expected to honor itself again by awarding a showbiz celebration like "La La Land," Hollywood veered instead to Miami's Liberty City, and a film that ripples with the humanity of a young man — black, gay, poor — seldom dignified by the movies or other realms of society.
In the wake of the election of Donald Trump — surely a factor on Oscar night — Hollywood chose not a love letter to itself, but, as filmmaker Mark Duplass argued in an open-letter to academy voters , a "love letter to the core human values that connect us all."
[...] it might even be too deserving.
"Moonlight" had won at the Writers Guild Awards and the Globes and (unlike "La La Land") been nominated for best ensemble by the Screen Actors Guild.
[...] the best-picture category, unlike the other categories, uses a preferential ballot to select the winner, a ranking method adopted in 2009 when the category increased from five movies to as many as 10.