The furor over La La Land is without a doubt one of the stranger things I've observed in the movie industry recently. And yet, I guess it's really not strange at all.
I think it's a good, entertaining movie that's been unfortunate enough to have been caught in the middle of a perfect storm of politics.
The beginning of this, I think, is that it's been a rather poor year for movies. The relative poverty of choices for Oscar nominations has handed an unusual number of nominations to La La Land, which I think would normally have won about 4-5 nominations, for song, best film, direction, and maybe one acting category. This has put it under the spotlight more than usual.
Meanwhile, the Academy's fetishisation of the film/entertainment industry has been a talking point in quite a few recent awards. The Artist (2012), Argo (2013), Birdman (2015) have all at some point been highlighted as examples of this.
Then of course, there's been the '#OscarsSoWhite' movement, and the broader movement for the film industry to be more inclusive towards minorities. I'd personally be surprised if last year's outrage didn't precipitate three Oscar movies about African-Americans this year. That's not to say Fences, Hidden Figures and Moonlight are not good movies of course (Moonlight is especially good), but it's hard to think of their prominence as a coincidence. It doesn't help that Moonlight, in particular, seems to 'tick a lot of other minority boxes', and thus has some political energy behind it.
Finally, all this comes months after Donald Drumpf's hateful and divisive run to the White House. Feelings are boiling over, and people are focusing their attentions on the movie starring beautiful white people, one of whom also happens to be in an all black jazz band.
It's a shame, because I think if you ignore all the politics, La La Land is a perfectly enjoyable film. It doesn't deserve to win best picture, but it doesn't deserve all this vitriol, half of which I suspect come from people who haven't actually seen the movie.
As an aside, I read an article the other day that said Casey Affleck maybe shouldn't win Best Actor, because he was charged (not convicted) with sexual assault in 2010. It's a pretty serious allegation, and if true, he probably should have gone to jail. But should the Oscars be awarded to the most morally deserving? Or should they just award the best? I mean, it's not as if they award the best most of the time anyway, but I'm not entirely comfortable with people suggesting that Denzel Washington should win ahead of Casey Affleck's hands down best performance of the year (of the nominees) either, because of stuff that has nothing to do with acting.
How do others feel about this?
