The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Guess who will waltz off with a Bafta tomorrow
Can a revamp put a spring in the step of the annual British film awards – or only lead to a more predictable bunch of winners?
Bafta’s revamp of the voting process for its annual film awards had an obvious aim: a richer, wider-ranging and, yes, more Twitter-pleasing field of nominees. But there has been one intriguing unintended consequence: far more predictable final results.
Or at least, with one year’s data to work with, that is how it seems. For last year’s awards, Bafta’s new three-stage system yielded a historically offbeat – not to mention racially diverse – array of contenders, especially in the four acting races. Yet the eventual winners turned out to be exactly in lockstep with the Oscars in all but one of 19 directly equivalent categories. (Cinematography was the outlier: Bafta chose Nomadland, and Oscar went with Mank.)
Why the last-minute snap back to conformity? The new voting system is so complicated that even many Bafta members privately admit they don’t understand it. But essentially, the short circuit occurs in the second round, when the longlists collated from the various chapters’ first-round ballots (the editors choose the 15 best editors, the writers the screenplays and so on) are narrowed to a final five or six.
In the four acting brackets – the highest profile awards after Best Film – the two most popular nominees on each longlist automatically qualify for a place on the shortlist. But the other four are selected from the remaining names by an anonymous jury, whose role in theory is to ensure that less high-profile candidates get a look in. Meanwhile, in the directing and casting categories, juries select the entire field – which in directing must be strictly balanced by sex. (Bafta doesn’t distinguish between the member and committee picks, though it’s not hard to guess which are which.)
So what happened when these often eccentric options were presented to the membership at large last year, before the final ballots were due? Exactly what you’d expect: they were completely ignored, and voters doubled down on their first-round choices. Of course that may not continue to be the case in years to come: it seems clear that Bafta regards its voting reforms as an ongoing project, and some refinements have already been made since last year. But for now, the wider fields only seem to make the front runners more conspicuous. So with that in mind – and with the usual nobody-knows-anything film-world disclaimer – here are our predictions for who will (and should) carry home the statuettes tomorrow evening.
BEST FILM
Should win Dune
Will win The Power of the Dog Could the top prize go to a sci-fi movie? We can but dream: in 73 years of Baftas, it hasn’t happened yet. But Jane Campion’s prickly psychological western would (and will) be a hugely deserving winner.
BEST DIRECTOR Should and will win
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog Bafta’s track record with women in this category is miserable. But Campion, on masterful form, would be no mere box-tick pick.
BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE Should and will win
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
With the Academy Award to follow in a fortnight, we suspect.
BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World
Should win
Will win Lady Gaga, House
of Gucci
No Oscar overlap in this category, which makes things exciting. Gaga – a blatant wider-membership choice – probably has this licked.
BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Should win Mike Faist, West
Side Story
Will win Ciarán Hinds, Belfast Faist was a wiry revelation in West Side Story – but Bafta will most likely opt instead for Hinds’s gruff, benevolent turn in Kenneth Branagh’s well-liked Belfast.
BEST ACTRESS IN
A SUPPORTING ROLE
Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
An irresistible star-is-born performance, and even the otherwise West Side Story-sceptical Bafta membership would be daft to deny it.
Should and will win
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Should win Licorice Pizza –
Paul Thomas Anderson
Will win Belfast – Kenneth Branagh Branagh’s absence in the director category – hey, blame the jury – might well tip the balance in his favour here.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Should win Drive My Car – Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe
Will win The Lost Daughter – Maggie Gyllenhaal
Against some truly ferocious competition (and, ahem, CODA),
Gyllenhaal’s gleamingly intelligent adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novella feels like it has the edge.
BEST ANIMATED FILM
The Mitchells vs The Machines
Bafta has an interesting track record in this category of slipping between Disney and Pixar productions to back a deserving third option, and Netflix’s supremely entertaining family adventure is certainly that.
Should and will win
BEST DOCUMENTARY
Flee
The bleak new topicality of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s hand-drawn recreation of a young man’s escape from his war-ravaged homeland won’t have been lost on voters.
Should and will win
BEST FILM NOT IN
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Drive My Car A favourite since its premiere at Cannes, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s masterful melding of Haruki Murakami short stories has the all-important momentum here.
Should and will win
OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM
Last Night in Soho Belfast
Branagh’s tender monochrome cine-memoir is the most widely nominated of the contenders in this category, and its considerable box-office success (for a grown-up drama post-Covid) can have only further boosted its chances.
Should win Will win
The Bafta Film Awards 2022 is on BBC One tomorrow night at 7pm