The London Film Critics Circle announced their winners yesterday, with TÁR besting all of the frontrunners in Best Picture and Todd Field winning Best Director. The Banshees of Inisherin, it must be said, gave TÁR some competition, winning five awards, including Best Actor, Supporting Actor and Actress, Screenplay, and Best British Film.
TÁR’s win is significant because of the close relationship London has to the BAFTA. It isn’t 100%, of course, and it doesn’t match the Oscars necessarily, but it does show that TÁR is probably more competitive than many of us have previously thought. Let’s do a quickie rundown just for Best Picture, vis a vis London, BAFTA, and Oscar in the era of the expanded ballot.
Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t, but I fully expected Everything Everywhere All at Once to dominate at BAFTA. Thus, it should have won something here with the London Film Critics. What this tells me, at least for now, is that we might not be in a year like The Artist, say, where one film wins everything. So far, we have different winners from the major groups:
Toronto Audience Award: The Fabelmans
National Board of Review: Top Gun: Maverick
Golden Globe Awards: The Fabelmans, The Banshees of Inisherin
The Critics Choice Awards: Everything Everywhere All at Once
London Film Critics: TÁR
There is no doubt that CODA broke almost every “rule” from a stats perspective. Its win showed an industry in flux, with no direction home. The race was pointing to two streaming platform films — Netflix vs. Apple. Voters, it seemed clear to me, didn’t like having these two options. They also had the option of Belfast, which looked a lot like Oscar winners of old, the Weinstein model of Best Picture winners: intimate character dramas that reflect the Boomer ethos.
But it’s also clear that with this Academy, the new members added in to shift the demographics toward more international and non-white voters, perhaps many younger ones too, that activism was and remains a big part of what defines them as a business, especially in the era of streaming where the market no longer drives profit/success.
In that world, CODA comes out the clear winner. The Power of the Dog’s win was wrapped up in two things: Netflix and Jane Campion. CODA offered up the chance to make history and expand their representation to the deaf community.
The reason that matters with the Oscars specifically is the preferential or ranked choice ballot. That is the difference between Moonlight or La La Land winning Best Picture. There’s a good chance CODA still would have won considering it took the PGA and SAG (if you take both, you’re likely winning, even with the exception of Apollo 13). In the era of the expanded it’s locked and rare:
2011 — The King’s Speech
2012 — Argo
2014 — Birdman
2021 — CODA
And that’s it. So if Everything Everywhere take the PGA and the SAG it won’t matter what wins the DGA or the BAFTA or anything.
These are the five SAG ensemble movies:
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Fabelmans
Women Talking
Babylon
Everything Everywhere All at Once has LGBTQIA activism in its theme. The Power of the Dog was also gay-themed, like Brokeback Mountain was. That didn’t seem to move the needle in the same way that CODA did. You can make of that what you will. But up against, say, Top Gun: Maverick or the Banshees of Inisherin perhaps it makes the difference.
Women Talking is also wrapped up in a social justice theme and is a “#MeToo” movie. It also has, believe it or not, a transgender character whose acceptance is part of the story just like it is in Everything Everywhere for the queer daughter. But is that enough to push it into the winner’s circle? Is that our standing ovation movie?
The protagonist in TÁR is gay, but it isn’t exactly gay-themed, meaning it isn’t about that – if it was she’d have to be heroic by default. But she isn’t. She’s actually a complicated human and not a saint. Actually, anyone could play that role — I was envisioning Viola Davis the other day thinking people should put her in those kinds of movies too, loosen up the restrictions on what kinds of roles are appropriate for Black women.
All of this to say that TÁR’s win in London seems to indicate voters who are inclined toward something darker and more subversive, maybe the most since Parasite? They were awarding pure excellence in cinema, something we don’t really see that much these days, with Parasite being a recent exception.
Here is how it looks when you fold in BAFTAs with the majors:
I don’t think the London Film Critics has as much to do with the Oscars as it does with BAFTA but BAFTA in its own way does end up influencing the Oscars. For whatever reason, they seemed to go way against the status quo with their choices.
What movie do YOU think is going to win Best Picture?