The BAFTAs: An assessment

It proved a good night at the Baftas last night as pretty much all the right films and performances won. Even the annual jingoism award, which inevitably crops up in an acting category, seemed justified: Colin Firth’s superb, career-best performance in A Single Man (and I won £50 on that so it pleased me!). Plus Firth gave the best speech of the night in his fantastically laconic tone. Note here that Carey Mulligan’s win doesn’t count as jingoism since hers was far and away the best performance in the category.

Mulligan’s win was of course a highlight. Expected but thoroughly deserved and it feels like a justification to those of us who have been banging on about how good she is and how big she was destined to be for the past 3-4 years. She also wins best dressed. She looked fantastic.

Equally great was Moon’s win at the top of the night for Duncan Jones as best first-time director. Love the film and so glad it didn’t go to Sam Taylor Wood’s uninspired Nowhere Boy.

Of course The Hurt Locker’s 6 wins, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, was the triumph of the night. It was my vote for Best Film and I’m glad to see it beat out Avatar – though I think this was pretty expected at the Baftas despite what American publications like Variety say about “surprises”. I was particularly pleased here to see Mark Boal take screenplay over Quentin Tarantino (which also happened at the WGA Awards Saturday night). This is great because as good as QT’s dialogue is that script just lay there on the page. Tarantino made a hugely enjoyable, well crafted film but I had despised it in script form when I had read it a year earlier and it really showed me that Tarantino’s true talent lies in his direction, the way he brings together all the great elements behind and in front of the camera, not his writing. Sure he writes great dialogue but Hurt Locker deserved this win and I thought it was the one they might not get.

I was disappointed that Up’s fairly twee score got Best Music. Coraline’s (unnominated) score was far superior, and of the nominees Crazy Heart deserved the win. But then Crazy Heart, much as I loved it, never felt to me like a film that was going to gel with Bafta voters (hence, my placing the bet on Firth to beat bookie favourite Jeff Bridges).

I also would have liked to see Coraline win Best Animated Film. I don’t want to come off like an Up hater. I’m not, I loved it. But there was something so fresh and brilliant about Coraline that I would have liked to see it buck the Pixar-win-trend.

As disappointed as I was by the inevitable win of Kristen Stewart for the Orange Rising Star Award (or Jello BAFTA as I call that hideous statue) over Mulligan we all knew thanks to Twilight and it being the public-vote award that this would happen. What provided the silver lining though was that Stewart seemed genuinely embarrassed to have won, clearly knowing it was only due to the obsessive Twilight fans and not really because of how people felt about her work. And let’s be fair, Stewart really impressed in Sean Penn’s Into The Wild and was great in last year’s Adventureland; and she also seems to go out of her way to make a lot of small budget indies inbetween Twilight sequels like this week’s domestic opener The Yellow Handkerchief, Sundance films Welcome To The Rileys and The Runaways. In fact Stewart gave the distinct impression in her exception speech that she wasn’t terribly enamoured of Twilight fans – not that I’m sure they’d notice. Plus Mulligan was always going to win Best Actress so it all evened out.

The “lack of imagination” award (or Costume Design as it’s generally known) predictably went to uninspired costume drama The Young Victoria. Why imaginative works of genius like The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus consistently get overlooked here is beyond me but on the plus side it did lead to winner Sandy Powell dedicating here award to the woman who had cut her costumes for years and died after Young Victoria before accidently calling her “replaceable” – brilliant!

James Corden scored good laughs as a presenter (Nick Frost died on his arse with his attempts at humour) but one of the best laughs of the night was a cut to Avatar producer Jon Landau after he was named-checked in the acceptance speech for Production Design, where he was clearly about to doze off.

The reel of Vanessa Redgrave’s acting history reminded us how great an actress she is and how much she deserved the Fellowship; and then her off-the-wall rambling bonkers speech (who knew Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It said “Thank you Bafta”?!) reminded us how true her reputation for being bat-shit crazy is. She’s basically our Shirley Maclaine!

Amongst a generally good evening though my biggest disappointment was finding out that Lord Attenborough had chosen as his successor as president of the academy Prince William. Ugh! What a step backwards. I’ve rarely agreed with any Dickie sentiment and this seems typical Dickie but I think is a mistake. It should have been kept in industry. Perhaps Lord Puttnam for instance.