La La Land Set to Win Record Number of Oscars
Where do you stand on La La Land? There are those for whom no superlative is sufficient. For whom this is a modern masterpiece, a delightful confection which returns us to the Golden Age of Hollywood when romantic musicals like Top Hat, High Society and Singin in the rain were made. And then there’s the backlash. Ryan Gosling is no Fred Astaire: the stars can’t sing, can’t dance. The plot is paper thin and the surprise ending irritating.
The ‘uncommercial’ nature of the film has been deftly deployed as one of its selling points but let’s be honest, musicals are not ‘uncommercial’. This film is not nearly as daring as that other nostalgia picture, the 2012 Oscar winner ‘The Artist’, a delightful homage to silent cinema, loved by critics but greeted with less enthusiasm by the viewing public.
Related: A Review of the 2016 Academy Awards
La La Land is doing very well at the box office, after all who doesn’t need a little escapism after 2016, and according to analysis from bwin it could be set to break the record for the number of Oscar wins. Fourteen nominations are a hefty chunk but a high number of nominations don’t always yield a high number of Oscars. ‘All About Eve’, surely a film in a whole other league from La La Land, garnered fourteen nominations but only gained six Oscars. The ill-fated ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ began with an impressive thirteen nominations and came away with only three Oscars.
The record for the most Oscars stands at eleven and is shared by Ben Hur 1960, Titanic 1998 and Lord of The Rings: Return of the King 2004. So, what is the data that suggests that a low budget musical could break the record? One reason, suggests Bwin, is that of the eight awards that all three record holders won La La Land is favourite to win seven. The fact that no supporting actors from the film are nominated is apparently not a problem since the record holders didn’t win many of the acting awards either.
The strongest indicator of La La Land success is its seven Golden Globes. Titanic and Return of the King only picked up four a piece and La La Land’s Globes are those that translate to the highest percentage of Oscar wins. Director Damien Chazelle is only in his thirties but this shouldn’t be an obstacle to Oscar success; nineteen previous best director winners have been under thirty, however, it would make him the youngest ever winner.
If La La Land does turn twelve or more of its nominations into Oscars it will indeed be a remarkable achievement. In today’s terms, the cost of making Titanic would be close to $300 million and Ben Hur and Return of the King would each cost well over $100 million: La La Land was brought to the screen for a mere $30 million. Escapism has never been cheaper.
You can view the complete list of nominees here.