Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer wins seven out of fourteen BAFTA awards

The 77th British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards took place in London. The winner was Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which took home seven of the fourteen awards it was up for, including Best Picture. Second place went to The Wretched Poor by Yorgos Lanthimos with five prizes. Comments Julia Shagelman.

This year, the ceremony was held for the second time at the Royal Festival Hall on the south bank of the Thames, which gave some of the winners, such as Christopher Nolan and his wife, and one of the producers of Oppenheimer Emma Thomas, an opportunity to share fond memories of how they came here as children to concerts and film screenings. Now they themselves have risen to the stage as laureates of the main national film award.

The host of the ceremony, actor David Tennant, opened the ceremony with a video in the style of his popular series “Staging.” After a comic diversion on the topic of “who to leave the dog with”, played out with the help of Michael Sheen, Tom Hiddleston, Judi Dench and other notable figures from the British acting guild, Tennant appeared in the hall in a ceremonial kilt, holding under his arm the same dog, which he quickly sold to the person sitting in front row to Shin. The rest of his compere was in the same lightly humorous spirit, starting with the promise that the ceremony would be “smooth as Ken’s chest” (the plastic character of “Barbie” played by Ryan Gosling, nominated for supporting actor).

For Greta Gerwig’s film itself, nominated for five awards in total, the evening did not go very smoothly: she did not receive a single award, just like Emerald Fennell, who equaled her in the number of nominations for Saltburn (but Sophie Ellis-Bextor performed her hit live ” Murder on the Dancefloor”, thanks to this tape, again rose to the heights of popularity 22 years after the first release). Other losers at the ceremony were Bradley Cooper’s Maestro and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which were nominated in seven and nine categories respectively but came away empty-handed.

The favorite of British film academics, Oppenheimer, in addition to the main prize, received awards for best direction (this is the first victory for Nolan, who has already been nominated for BAFTA eight times in different categories), cinematography, editing and music.

In addition, Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. become best actor in a leading role And Best Actor in a Supporting Role respectively. Downey, who received his first BAFTA in 1993 for Chaplin, thus set a kind of record – the longest gap between two victories in the history of the award.

For Emma Stone, named best actress for her role in The Unfortunate, this break turned out to be much shorter: she received her previous BAFTA in 2017 for La La Land. The film by Yorgos Lanthimos, a surreal neo-Victorian fantasy on gender themes, took the remaining awards in the “technical” categories: best costumes, makeup and hairstyles, production designer’s work and visual effects.

Jonathan Glazer’s “Zone of Interest” won in both categories “Best British Film” And “Best Foreign Language Film” (an international team worked on a film about the serene life of the family of the commandant of Auschwitz right outside the fence of the concentration camp, and they speak German), and also received a prize for the best sound. Producer James Wilson, who took the first two awards, emphasized that the themes of the mass death of innocent people and the desire to isolate themselves from it are now, unfortunately, relevant again. The victory of the film “20 days in Mariupol” by Ukrainian director Mstislav Chernov in the nomination also reminded us of pressing political issues “Best Documentary”.

In the screenplay categories, the BAFTAs went to Justine Trieu’s Anatomy of a Fall and Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, awarded for original and adapted screenplay respectively.

The victory of the latter, beating such strong competitors as “Oppenheimer”, “The Unfortunate Poor”, “Zone of Interest” and the favorite of British film critics “We Are Strangers to Everyone” by Andrew Hay, was perhaps the only surprise of the evening. Perhaps she will increase Jefferson’s chances at the Oscars, where he will be nominated in the same category, although there instead of Hay he will have another serious opponent – Greta Gerwig, who has more hope of success in her homeland, additionally fueled by popular outrage over that she wasn’t nominated for directing Barbie.

In general, although BAFTA is considered an important milestone in the awards season, the choice of British and American film academics rarely coincides. In category “Best movie” they’ve met just 13 times since 1990, although the odds are high that Oppenheimer will change that statistic. In the directing and acting categories, the percentage of matches is higher, although last year none of the BAFTA winners in these categories received an Oscar (German director Edward Berger was not even nominated for one). Davan Joy Randolph, who won the British Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Leftovers, can confidently prepare her Oscar speech this year. It is too early for the rest of her colleagues to stop fighting, the results of which will be announced in Los Angeles on March 10.