Golden Globes Analysis: All Hail to ‘La La Land’ and Meryl Streep

The 74th Annual Golden Globes began with a Jimmy Fallon song-and-dance number based on “La La Land,” and then continued heaping the honors on Damien Chazelle’s musical, breaking a long-standing habit of spreading the wealth until the Oscar front-runner ended the night as the biggest movie winner in Globes history.

[...] except for the moments when Meryl Streep was on stage and the evening of glitz stopped in its tracks to pay attention to her comments excoriating President-Elect Donald Trump, it was a “La La Land” night from start to almost-finish.

The film won the Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy award with more than 15 minutes to go in the telecast, but the drama awards offered an anticlimactic coda to the victories of “La La Land” and the eloquence of Streep.

Sure, those 15 minutes contained some key awards: an acting prize for Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) over Denzel Washington (“Fences”), which showed that Globes voters aren’t always dazzled by stardom; the best-actress award for Isabelle Huppert, an emotional moment for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to put the emphasis on foreign; and the Best Motion Picture – Drama award for “Moonlight,” honoring a small and eloquent movie that had been overlooked for the rest of the evening.

The film has looked almost unstoppable since it debuted in Venice more than four months ago, and it still looks that way, though the tastes of the 90-odd members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is hardly a barometer for anything else that will happen between now and February 26, when the Oscars bring an end to awards season.

[...] while the first award of the night suggested that these voters were determined to be as perverse as ever — picking the “Nocturnal Animals” co-star Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the supporting-actor category over four actors all thought to be likelier winners by most pundits – they ended up being more discerning than perverse.