So the 2020 Baftas were a mixed bag, reviled in advance for their dull Dulux uniformity, with some pretty mediocre product being bewilderingly promoted and great directors overlooked. But there were some great films getting rewarded too.
For me, is wonderful to see best film, director and outstanding British film go to Sam Mendes for 1917, co-written with Krysty Wilson-Cairns. This drama from the first world war’s western front has passion and sweep, and its director of photography Roger Deakins was always going to be a shoo-in for the cinematography Bafta for his amazing camerawork, fabricating the illusion of a continuous unbroken shot, following the ordeal of two terrified British soldiers as they journey through no man’s land and across vacated German lines on a desperate mission to warn their comrades of an enemy trap.
For some, its sheer technical achievement was held against it, as if it was just flashiness. I couldn’t disagree more. Of course, it is part of the spectacle and sheer delirious shock that the film delivers, but it also cleverly enfolds narrative and character-arc within that flow. The writer Daniel Maier made the interesting point that the film is not, in fact, in real time – so part of the single-shot’s eerie effect is that time speeds up and slows down within it.
The Baftas for foreign language film and original screenplay go to the film that has dominated the connoisseur conversation for months, and has become a virtual totem for people who yearn for awards to be given something that isn’t reeking of establishment mediocrity. And so it has proved. Parasite, by the Korean director Bong Joon-ho (which he co-wrote with Han Jin Won), is a brilliant and scabrous social satire about wealth, hypocrisy, family values, the servant class and the master class. It is indeed superbly written and acted, and it’s exhilarating to see Parasite continue its triumphal progress at the Baftas.
Joker has been a global box office smash and a critical hit, the backstory of Batman’s cackling arch enemy, given an indie-arthouse makeover of towering seriousness and a shrieking performance from Joaquin Phoenix in the lead as the Pagliacci of dysfunctional crime – which duly won Phoenix the best actor Bafta. This was a firework display of ultra-acting, or perhaps all of the fireworks going off at once, but he’s done similar stuff in other, better films. (And Phoenix’s critical superlatives more properly belonged to Adam Sandler for the utterly unrewarded Uncut Gems.) It was a big flashy turn in a big flashy film, but I am in a minority who found it disappointing and overblown, with no second or third act. But we Joker refuseniks know that this film’s fiercely committed fanbase are not shy of letting you have their opinion of your opinion.
Renée Zellweger is a very popular best actress winner for her compassionate and utterly committed recreation of the unhappy Judy Garland in the final years of her life as she attempted to play the Talk Of the Town club in London in the late 1960s. It was Zellweger’s most relaxed and engaging performance in years and although I liked Saoirse Ronan better, no-one could begrudge Zellweger this award
Brad Pitt winning best supporting actor (playing the amiable stuntman in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood) is a victory I should have predicted, but didn’t – I wrongly figured it would go to Anthony Hopkins or Joe Pesci. But Pitt’s is a performance that looks easy but isn’t – a laidback, untroubled address to the camera that only great screen actors can bring off. Pitt is becoming the Gary Cooper of his generation. Laura Dern was a very worthy winner of best supporting actress as the tough, canny divorce lawyer in Noah Baumbach’s marital-breakdown tragedy Marriage Story. Dern is pure charisma here, and clearly entering a golden age of screen performance.
For Sama – Waad al-Kateab’s searing chronicle of life in the Syrian town of Aleppo — was a thoroughly worthy winner of best documentary, though I had my fingers crossed for The Great Hack, about the great data-theft scandal.
Taika Waititi gets best adapted screenplay for his anti-war comedy Jojo Rabbit, in which a scared German boy during the second world war is visited by his imaginary best friend: a zany version of the führer. It is a film with many critical admirers and it is beloved by many smart, thoughtful people. But, at the risk of further enraging its battalions of Twitter fantroll enforcers – always ready with a pass-agg telling-off and a feline insult – I have to stick to my view that this is a bafflingly weak, twee, bland, unfunny and misjudged film, nowhere near the standard of Waititi’s brilliant previous work.
One of the purest pleasures of the night was outstanding British debut going to Mark Jenkin for his amazing 16mm black-and-white film Bait, an adventure in the style of early cinema, which is also a piercingly emotional story of two Cornish brothers. What a triumph for Jenkin: a terrifically distinctive talent. I take an immodest pleasure in pointing out that I was the first critic to evangelise for this film. I also let out a cheer to see that best animated short went to Maryam Mohajer’s excellent Grandad Was a Romantic. It has the best and funniest punchline of any movie at the Baftas.
