The DGA will be announcing tonight and the BAFTA Awards are tomorrow, Sunday. By the end of the weekend, we should have a pretty good idea of where this race is headed — though I suspect we might be hitting a bit of a flatline. Some years are unpredictable and some years are not. We don’t yet know what this year will be. I think it looks like it could be Everything Everywhere All at Once for the sweep. But if it’s not, then we’ll be able to have some fun for the next couple of weeks. If it is indeed a sweep, well, then we’ll endure. We survived the Slumdog Millionaire year. Anything is possible after that.
The BAFTA Awards were upended after the “Great Awokening” of 2020 when they drastically changed how they voted. It reminded me a bit of playing chess. If you keep your pawns in the right place you are always protected. Not to say they are using people as pawns to protect themselves, but the end result is the same. As long as they have a select jury to make sure there is equity, diversity, and inclusion (more or less, or however it is they decide their jury picks), they won’t become fodder for the agonizing think pieces the Golden Globes and the Academy have gotten.
What that has meant is a break with the consensus. Normally, that would be a good thing. But if they’re hand-picking the nominees it can never really be anything more than what it is. Meaning, you don’t gain power in the industry, or momentum in the awards race, unless you’re there because you earned it. But the BAFTA have ensured its own protection through a time of fear, purges, and persecutions in an ongoing effort to make all things equitable and fair.
That led to last year’s Best Actress category at the BAFTAs having no crossover with the Oscars.
One thing that will happen, though, is that the Globes will have a match this year. They haven’t matched with Oscar since 2019. But this year, Best Actress is likely to go to either Cate Blanchett or Michelle Yeoh, both of whom won the Globe.
The BAFTA coming in now MIGHT have some influential power on the Oscars. Maybe it will make a splash, or court through the noise somehow. Then a week from now, the SAG Awards will bring down the hammer on whatever our expectations are going to be.
I will say that there is a high probability that Everything Everywhere isn’t going to win Picture, Actress, and Supporting Actor. This is unusual for any time in Oscar history but especially in the era of the preferential ballot.
We saw at SAG Three Billboards and The Help both win two acting awards and Ensemble. But neither went on to win Best Picture. To be fair, Three Billboards might have won Best Pic if it hadn’t been attacked. But we’ll never know.
The last film I can think of that won two acting awards plus Best Picture was Million Dollar Baby. Shakespeare in Love was another. The Silence of the Lambs was yet another.
More likely, Everything Everywhere wins Best Pic + one acting award, with Cate Blanchett picking up Best Actress. OR it wins two acting awards and something else wins Best Picture.
Either way, BAFTA’s track record for BP in the era of the expanded ballot has gone something like this:
2009
BAFTA/Oscar: The Hurt Locker
2010
BAFTA/Oscar: The King’s Speech
2011
BAFTA/Oscar: The Artist
2012
BAFTA/Oscar: Argo
2013
BAFTA/Oscar: 12 Years a Slave
2014
BAFTA: Boyhood
Oscar: Birdman
2015
BAFTA: The Revenant
Oscar: Spotlight
2016
BAFTA: La La Land
Oscar: Moonlight
2017
BAFTA: Three Billboards
Oscar: The Shape of Water
2018
BAFTA: Roma
Oscar: Green Book
2019
BAFTA: 1917
Oscar: Parasite
2020
BAFTA/Oscar: Nomadland
2021
BAFTA: The Power of the Dog
Oscar: CODA
What could account for a match-up prior to 2014 and then a split? In some of those years, the BAFTA Awards happened before they caught wind of the big guilds. I don’t think it was so much the BAFTAs that changed as the way the Oscar race rolled out and how unpredictable they became.
Here are some of the things that changed: SAG became SAG-AFTRA, boosting their membership by about 50,000 voters. The Oscars added members after the #OscarsSoWhite movement erupted around 2015. Politics and upheaval in Hollywood post-2016 definitely caused ripples here that didn’t translate overseas, but either way, it is what it is.
Is there anything that might help us figure out what might win the BAFTA this year? Well, they do tend to have a pretty good match-up with the Globes. Since The Fablemans is out, that would mean that The Banshees of Inisherin would win. However, if Everything Everywhere All at Once is about to run the town, maybe it wins. That Banshees beat it at the London Film Critics, though, makes me think maybe Banshees has the edge.
Either way, here are our BAFTA predictions:
Best Film
The Banshees of Inisherin — Sasha Stone, Clarence Moye, Mark Johnson, Marshall Flores
All Quiet on the Western Front — Ryan Adams
British Film
The Banshees of Inisherin — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Best Director
Todd Field, TAR — Johnson, Moye, Adams
Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin — Stone
The Daniels, EEAAO — Flores
Best Actor
Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin — Stone, Johnson, Moye
Bill Nighy, Living — Adams
Brendan Fraser, The Whale — Flores
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett, TAR — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson
Michelle Yeoh, EEAAO — Flores
Supporting Actor
Ke Huy Quan, EEAAO — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Supporting Actress
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Original Screenplay
The Banshees of Inisherin — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Adapted Screenplay
All Quiet on the Western Front — Adams, Stone, Johnson
Living — Moye, Flores
Casting
Triangle of Sadness — Adams, Moye
EEAAO — Stone, Johnson, Flores
Cinematography
All Quiet on the Western Front — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Costumes
Elvis — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Editing
Elvis — Adams, Moye
Top Gun: Maverick — Stone, Flores
EEAAO — Johnson
Makeup
The Whale — Adams, Johnson, Flores
Elvis — Stone, Moye
Production Design
Babylon — Adams, Johnson, Moye
Elvis — Flores
All Quiet on the Western Front — Stone
Score
Babylon — Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
All Quiet on the Western Front — Stone
Sound
All Quiet on the Western Front — Stone, Adams, Johnson, Moye
Top Gun: Maverick — Flores
Visual Effects
Avatar: The Way of Water — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Animated Feature
GDT’s Pinocchio — Stone, Adams, Moye, Johnson, Flores
Documentary Feature
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed — Stone, Adams, Johnson, Moye, Flores
Foreign Language
All Quiet on the Western Front — Stone, Johnson, Moye, Flores
Decision to Leave — Adams
Rising Star
Daryl McCormack — Adams, Johnson
Naomi Ackie — Stone
Emma Mackey — Flores
And the charts (thanks to Marshall Flores)