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Why we must celebrate Moonlight winning Best Picture
With the Oscars fiasco now behind us, we should look back and recognise the history that was made.
Whilst it is hard to avoid the big story, with the wrong name being announced as Best Picture, we shouldn’t let that overshadow the achievement made on the night.
And that is Moonlight winning the award.
To those who watched Moonlight will understand thoroughly why the movie won Best Picture, and quite frankly the movie deserves it. However, on paper it seemed almost impossible for a movie of this nature to win Best Picture.
With an estimated budget of only $5 million, Moonlight is an independent movie. With a fairly unknown director and no big names in the cast, aside from arguably now Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, who appears in Netflix series Luke Cage and House of Cards, this success did not seem likely.
Factor in an all-black cast, and them competing with a juggernaut in La La Land, which in its own way is also a great movie and deserves all their accolades. It would be understandable if La La Land truly had won because not only was it a well-directed movie, it was also a big budget Hollywood movie.
Yet Moonlight pulled an upset by beating out La La Land, proving that anything is possible for independent film makers trying to leave their mark in the film industry.
If you can create a well-directed movie, with the right cast and great story, anything can happen.
Aside from this amazing achievement, this is only added with Mahershala Ali being the first Muslim to win an Oscar, as well as Moonlight being the first all-black cast to win Best Picture, this truly was a great and deserving night for all involved.
It is unfortunate that the Moonlight cast and creators were unable to have their moment but perhaps the drama that happened was able to guide more people to watch the movie.
Moonlight received a 97 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, and will go down in film history.
