‘Nomadland,’ ‘The Crown’ and ‘Borat’ win big at Golden Globes.
Boseman and ‘Borat’ also win in virtual awards show honoring film and TV’s best in tricky year
With a telecast split between New York and Los Angeles in front of an audience of first responders instead of Hollywood stars, the Golden Globes telecast Sunday night was a peculiar event that honored a strange and strained year in TV and film.
Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” — about a woman traveling through the American West in a van after losing her job during the Great Recession — won best motion picture, drama. And Zhao, a filmmaker from China, became the first woman to win the directing award in nearly 40 years.
“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” won best motion picture, musical or comedy, with its director Sacha
Baron Cohen also winning an acting award for the film.
“The Crown” — the beloved and soapy account of England’s royal family — was TV’s big winner. It took best TV series, drama, and best actress and actor awards for Emma Corrin and Josh O’Connor, who played ill-suited couple Diana and Charles, Princess and Prince of Wales. Gillian Anderson, the show’s Margaret Thatcher, won a supporting actress award. “The Queen’s Gambit” — about a chess prodigy rather than royalty — won best limited series, anthology series or TV movie, and its star, Anya Taylor-Joy, won best actress in that category.
On the comedy side, the departed “Schitt’s Creek” continued its winning ways after sweeping the Emmys, winning best TV series, musical or comedy, and a supporting
actress award for Catherine O’Hara. Jason Sudeikis — clad in a ragged, hooded sweatshirt and seemingly quite surprised — won best actor, comedy, for the fish-out-of-water tale “Ted Lasso.”
A lingering issue of previous years’ Globes-So-White criticism permeated the show, even going back to the announcement of its nominations when the almost universally acclaimed TV show “I May Destroy You” was shut out. As though the Globes wanted to avert the hashtag before it began to spread, Black actors won the evening’s first two awards: Daniel Kaluuya took best supporting actor in film for “Judas and the Black Messiah,” and John Boyega won a supporting actor award for the TV series “Small Axe.” And one of the evening’s most poignant moments came with the award for best actor, drama, which went to Chadwick Boseman for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” The actor died of cancer in August at age 43. “He would say something beautiful,” his wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, said, “something inspiring.”
Musician Andra Day filled big shoes playing jazz legend Billie Holiday in the film “The Unites States v. Billie Holiday.” She won best actress in a motion picture, drama. A trio of reps from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association addressed the issue briefly, with one saying, “We must have Black journalists” to an audience that already knew that. So, HFPA, get to it.
Other acting awards went to Jodie Foster, best supporting actress, drama, for “The Mauritanian”; and Rosamund Pike, best actress, comedy or musical, for “I Care a Lot.”
Hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey did the best they could with a difficult task. They hosted from two spaces thousands of miles apart, Fey in New York and Poehler in Los Angeles. On one hand, as with the Emmys, this sort of remote presentation can work well. There’s no live audience to sit silently should a joke fall flat; and an absence of overwrought musical performances is refreshing. And a sweetness emerged in the telecast as winners were often joined by their kids.
On the other hand, you have to wonder if a telecast like this works in this format, even when there’s a theater full of attendees. What’s the point of all the revelry? Credit Fey for asking, “Could this whole night have been an email? Yes.”
Awards shows are by nature garish displays of hermetic revelry: fancy people handing fancy trophies to other fancy people for entertaining viewers. But the Globes telecast conveyed a discomfort with its pomp, featuring numerous breaks to encourage people to donate to several causes to help those in need.
Nevertheless, the Globes’ mix of film and television may prove to be the future as our culture’s habits change and institutions fade. Not long ago, cinematic auteurs groused about Oscar-nominated films that debuted on Netflix. The past miserable year rendered that argument quaint after most, if not all, of the nominated films could be accessed through one’s TV while theaters were largely closed. Netflix owned 22 of the film nominations and 20 for TV, the leading studio for both.
I’m curious to know if the presentation and consumption of art and entertainment in 2020 will be an aberration or if film gradually morphs into something consumed at home: There is, after all, a category for “limited series, anthology series or TV movie.”
I certainly miss seeing movies in a theater, but plenty of viewers feel differently. At the end of last year, the Hollywood Reporter noted that film box office was down 80 percent from 2019. It could be a temporary crisis. It could be something more lasting. Hopefully, when the masks come off, we’ll know more about the future of theatrical film, whether it returns to its old settings or has been affected permanently.
Just a year ago, Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais quipped in his opening monologue, “I got offered this gig by fax.” Funny — unless you once worked in the fax-paper-manufacturing business.