How Many Oscars Did ‘La La Land’ Win? Most Ever Academy Awards Record Broken?
How many Oscars did La La Land win? After the weeks of Academy Awards buzz, the Best Picture favorite won a total of six statues. Here are all the statues it took home, even though it did come in shy of breaking the record for the most ever victories on mainstream Hollywood’s biggest prize night.
- Best Actress — Emma Stone
- Best Director — Damien Chazelle
- Best Cinematography
- Best Original Score
- Best Production Design
It was, of course, a surprise that the film did not take home Best Picture. So much so, that actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway accidentally got the whole cast and crew of La La Land up on the stage before realizing that he had read the card incorrectly. The prize instead went to Moonlight, making it the only most-ever Academy Awards nominations movie to lose out on the top prize.
No matter how many Oscars it actually ended up winning, La La Land did tie with All About Eve and Titanic for the most nominations in Academy Award history. Titanic, on the other hand, went on to win 11 of its 14 nominations, tying with Ben Hur for the most wins in Oscar history.
‘La La Land’ could still pull this thing out if it wins in Florida & carries the Rust Belt. #Oscars
— Funny Or Die (@funnyordie) February 27, 2017
La La Land fared a more similar fate to All About Eve. The film walked away with only six wins, even though it came in with a record number of nominations that wasn’t broken until nearly 50 years later. That was at least partially due to the fact that both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter were nominated for Best Actress. Though that was part of the reason it was one of the most nominated films of all time in the first place, it is largely believed to be the reason why Davis lost out to Judy Holliday for her comedic role in Born Yesterday.
Like All About Eve, La La Land was partially able to join the distinguished category because it was nominated twice for one category — though in this case, it was for Original Song. While that did technically put it up for more Academy Awards, it didn’t really increase its chances to break the record — even though it did win the Oscar for “City of Stars.”
But now that we know the answer to “How many Oscars did La La Land win?,” one has to ask why did so many Academy Awards go to the film? As noted above, it certainly didn’t please every cinema-goer this year, particularly if you’re talking to the kind of hardcore critics that spit on the triumphs of movies like Argo and Crash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x6eDpJaqWg
Despite all of La La Land‘s Oscar wins, it won’t make everyone happy. One recent review from The Guardian tore it to shreds, saying that it received praise largely for playing it safe and sucking up to Hollywood.
“It is easy to see why the Academy’s voters have embraced La La Land. Many of them will have followed a path all too similar to Seb and Mia’s. Seeing their life-choices vindicated by the witchcraft of their trade must have been something of a comfort. All the same, the best picture winners that stick in the memory, such as Schindler’s List, Gandhi, Chariots of Fire, and Titanic, tend to extol humanity’s better nature, not its shortcomings.”
La La Land‘s momentum could perhaps best be compared to The Artist, which became the first foreign-produced film to ever win Best Picture in 2011. Like the Academy Award favorite musical, The Artist was a movie meant to reflect old-era Hollywood classics, though in the French film’s case it was black and white silent pictures instead of the Technicolor musical blockbusters that ruled the box office during the ’40s and ’50s.
Many critics argued that both films were laboratory grown to win Oscars, as they were a sort of a love letter to the industry itself. The Artist didn’t get anywhere near breaking Academy Awards records, however, securing just five out of its 10 nominations — though it did pick up some major ones like Best Picture, Best Actor for Jena Dujardin and Best Director for Michel Hazanavicius.
Now that you know how many Oscars La La Land did win, do you think it deserves to break the record for most Academy Awards ever?
[Featured Image by Paul Drinkwater/Getty Images]
