89th Academy Awards: What does Hollywood offer today?
By
David Walsh
28 February 2017
The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, held Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, was an even more complex and peculiar affair than usual. At such an event, in a quite striking and almost brutal fashion, genuine artistic talent and personal decency cross paths with banality, cynical commercial interest and triviality.
This year, the coming to power of Donald Trump little more than five weeks ago inevitably added an element of heightened tension and anxiety. A number of award presenters and recipients expressed opposition to Trump’s extreme right-wing administration, but the opposition of these circles—despite sincerity in many cases—tends to be distorted by their wealth and distance from the burning problems of the mass of the population.
After an embarrassing mix-up, Moonlight was announced as the winner of the best picture award. The film, about a black youth growing up in Miami in the 1980s and 1990s, also gained honors for best supporting actor (Mahershala Ali) and best adapted screenplay (Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney).
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, about love and music in contemporary Los Angeles, collected six awards, including best director (Chazelle), best actress (Emma Stone), best original score and best original song (Justin Hurwitz) and best cinematography (Linus Sandgren). The film had been nominated in 14 categories.
Casey Affleck won the best actor award for his performance in Manchester by the Sea, written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, who won for best original screenplay. The film looks at a working-class man in the Boston area responsible for a terrible personal tragedy.
Viola Davis earned the best actress award for Fences, a film based…