Top Trumps with BAFTA & the Academy Awards
The 2017 BAFTA (film) awards are taking place tomorrow Sunday 12 February so I thought it might be a good time to take a quick look at what British equivalent of the Academy Awards has awarded over the years and how they compare to their American counterparts. Not that it’s like a contest or anything, I mean the UK and the USA have been BFFs since primary school. They still hold each other’s hands while walking down gentle declines. They’ll be weaving each other friendship bracelets next, probably made from the hair of all the children to whom they have denied entry into their respective countries.
These close cultural ties are clearly manifest. Lately I have been of the opinion that BAFTA has failed to distinguish itself as a governing body in comparison to the Academy Awards. The same films nominated over and over, the same films winning — a process of bland homogenisation which leaves no room for genuine surprise. But actually this has been the case for decades now. Looking back over the Best Film winners it is surprising how many times the award has gone to heavyweight American titles from The Graduate to Annie Hall to Dead Poets Society. But then the original name of the category when the awards started in 1940 was Best Film from any Source which clearly implies an internationalist bent. So I admit, I was wrong about the perceived inherent Britishness of the BAFTAs — it was never there in the first place. In fact, France has won this category a fair few times including Truffaut’s Day for Night and Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. In addition, non-English language films have been nominated for the grand prize a number of times, especially in those early days (a rarity at the Academy Awards).
The winners so far this decade have been fairly uninspiring except that BAFTA rightly awarded the top prize to Boyhood in 2014 but then wrongly to The Revenant a year later. Between 2000–2010, they differentiated on six occasions choosing to crown The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the King, The Pianist, The Aviator, Brokeback Mountain, The Queen and Atonement. Those last two in particular feel mildly jingoistic. However, going back to the ’90s is where you find some truly popular winners that you cannot ever imagine winning Best Picture including The Commitments, Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty. Interestingly, all three of those could be defined as being centrally comedic in tenor whereas the Academy’s record with comedy is notoriously patchy. Go back even further to the ’80s and BAFTA diverged from the Academy Awards eight times out of ten rightly rewarding great films such as The Elephant Man, Educating Rita, The Killing Fields and Jean de Florette.
BAFTA is slightly complicated in that there’s this weird separate category of Best British Film which has the distinct feel of the best effort prize at school. I say this despite a slew of high-calibre winners including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, This is England, Secrets & Lies, Lawrence of Arabia and most hilariously Gravity to which most people’s reaction was: SPACE ISN’T BRITISH (although we now have Tim Peake so in your face!) The category is still decidedly concessionary because the winners of the Best British Film are usually always nominated for Best Film. It’s like the guardians of the gates are laying a benign hand on your shoulder and whispering you’re good, but you’re not Hollywood good. This year I’ll eat my hat if I, Daniel Blake doesn’t win Best British Film. Not because I have inherent faith in the voting body that makes up BAFTA but purely because it is also nominated for Best Film.
The same goes for one step down the line with another BAFTA-invented category, that of Outstanding Debut for a British Director, Writer or Producer. Often the winner of this category is whomever is nominated for Best British Film. This year the honour will probably go to Babak Anvari for Under the Shadow. The same thing occurred with Chris Morris on the frankly genius Four Lions in 2010 and Stephen Beresford for the brilliant Pride in 2014. It’s a veritable venn diagram of talent.
The most one can hope for come Sunday evening is that people are interesting on the podium. I sometimes think perhaps you’d be better off thanking your family, colleagues and agents every day of your life rather than in a single segment of one-and-a-half minutes with the threat of an orchestral fuck off hanging over you. And here’s hoping Moonlight upsets the La La Land apple cart because you can bet your bottom dollar Trump won’t be showing that particular movie at the White House anytime soon. Frankly, there couldn’t be a better endorsement.
