How Moonlight pulled off the Oscar upset of a lifetime
It was the most critically adored nominee going into the Academy Awards, but films as good as Moonlight don’t often win best picture
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.
“There’s something in the way black men grow up in this country,” said Jenkins. “There’s a lot of information on these men’s faces when they’re not speaking, partly because we’re robbed of our voices so much by society and the things society projects on us.”
It was, in a way, fitting that Moonlight – stealthy and silent – won best picture amid such cacophony. Since its autumn film festival debut, Jenkins’ 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.