If you’re not living under a rock then by now you’ve undoubtedly heard about the mega mix up at the world’s most important awards ceremony: you’ve heard about Faye Dunaway just happily blurting out “La La Land”, about the whole crew running up on stage to collect their Oscar for best picture, believing themselves to be the invincible champions of the night, about the mistake, about it being Warren Beatty’s fault…
It turns out nobody’s perfect, not even super rich consultancy firms like Pricewaterhouse that can’t tell two different envelopes apart, and not even the Hollywood stars who’d like to pull the wool over our eyes.
So, which film was truly more deserving of the award? The profound and touching “Moonlight” or the charming “La La Land”? It’s a tough choice, really… How does the jury even make its final decision? Well, sometimes they don’t even have to, thanks to the two all-powerful words: ex aequo.
It might ring a bell from European film festivals such as Cannes, where they’re much more likely to split the victory up equally among two candidates – just as the phrase indicates. It’s a Latin expression meaning “equal” and is used in competitions and contests when two participants get the same score and, thus, the same prize.
It can’t be a totally foreign concept to Hollywood, which is why we think they should consider using it more often. It would surely be a winning option!
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