The Baftas went according to plan, if not exactly according to type, and the pundits’ predictions were largely correct, although it is sad that Moonlight did not get the silverware that it deserved. There was actually an interestingly political and dissentient flavour to the evening, with wins for I, Daniel Blake in the best British film category, occasioning a stirring speech from that remarkable film-maker Ken Loach, whose return from retirement has been marked with one of the biggest hits of his career. Ava DuVernay had the prize for documentary with her angry, uncompromising and unmissable film 13th, a barnstorming attack on the poisonous residue of Jim Crow and slavery in America’s penal and criminal justice system. These wins are all more relevant and appropriate for our new lurch into chaotic, reactionary and mendacious politics. And a mention should go to Daniel Mulloy’s excellent film Home, winner in the short film category — a welcome and imaginative engagement with the refugee situation.
But obviously the gold-medal podium position is taken up by La La Land: best film and best director for Damien Chazelle, together with an award for Justin Hurwitz’s music and Linus Sandgren’s lovely cinematography. And La La Land even pulled off an unexpected coup: best actress for Emma Stone. She beat out Natalie Portman, whose studied impersonation of Jackie Kennedy was thought to have it in the bag. It is in fact a brilliant technical display of acting from Stone, playing a smart, vulnerable, emotionally wounded wannabe movie star called Mia. She gives a clever and sophisticated deconstruction of the audition process. Her character is ostentatiously brilliant at acting in auditions – appearing to be able to cry and emote with devastating plausibility on cue, but finding that it is all being ignored by the jaded, casual, iPhone-checking casting directors. Rightly or wrongly, the movie suggests that her success can only come when she drops all that, becomes subdued and gives us something real from her own life. Whether this revelation of the business’s essential integrity is in any way an accurate assessment of the casting process, or the casting process that gave Emma Stone this peach of a role, is another matter entirely. Either way, the Bafta for Stone is pleasing, as her performance was just so entertaining. She brought her comedy chops and her acting chops, and the result was a joy. It’s amusing to think back to the lighter comedy roles that have led up to this moment for her. When she got the Bafta, I couldn’t help thinking about her performance in the broad teen comedy Superbad 10 years ago, opposite Jonah Hill.
Best actor went to Casey Affleck, making his lock on the Academy Award even stronger. It would be a huge upset if that went to anyone else now. Affleck brings something condensed and undiluted to the role of Lee Chandler in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, a Boston janitor who is suffering from a terrible secret grief. He is a brick of hate and shame, packed tight with unacknowledged emotion, which finds expression in all sorts of destructive ways, but which is to be challenged by a gesture of hope from beyond the grave, sent to him by his late brother. It is a great performance from Affleck and a worthy winner. The same goes for Kenneth Lonergan with his powerful and serious Bafta-winning screenplay.
In the supporting actor roles, the big upset was that Mahershala Ali, who was superb in Moonlight, was beaten out by the very good Dev Patel in what was possibly a more crowd-pleasing film: Lion. This was a very good movie and Patel gave a performance of great maturity and presence in it. Good on him. But I would have preferred it to have gone to Ali. I should also say that the best adapted screenplay award should really have gone not to Lion but to Nocturnal Animals – that bravura work from writer-director Tom Ford.
A thought also has to go to Hugh Grant, who has won hearts and minds, though sadly tonight not a Bafta, with his extremely charming and affecting turn in Florence Foster Jenkins.
Viola Davis is probably the single most charismatic performer of all the nominated talent on show at the Baftas, and it is excellent that she has won best supporting actress for her supremely intelligent and sympathetic portrayal of the long-suffering Rose Maxson in the sonorous drama Fences. There aren’t many actors who can stand up to Denzel Washington in full flood and match him in acting power line for line, speech for speech, but that is what Viola Davis does. It is masterclass stuff, though here again my purely subjective vote (and full disclosure – I am a Bafta voter) went to Hayley Squires for her deeply moving and utterly sincere supporting role (actually, some might say co-starring role) in I, Daniel Blake. She didn’t get a Bafta, but she has the satisfaction of knowing that her appearance in the now legendary food bank scene has given her Hall of Fame status in British film history.
Outstanding British debut went to Babak Anvari’s fascinating scary movie Under the Shadow – and what a crackingly good film that is. I find myself hoping that British cinemas can be persuaded to give it another short national big-screen release, just on the basis of this Bafta. My personal choice was for the powerful documentary The Hard Stop, about the Mark Duggan case.
All of which has to bring us back to Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake. It is a film which has its doubters, who are uneasy with what are arguably rough edges, and I myself wouldn’t argue that it is flawless. But it has something which is lacking in so many British social-realist film, or films of all kinds. I, Daniel Blake has passion. It is enraged about injustice in the real world and, in Churchill’s words, sees no need to be impartial between the firemen and the fire. It is a movie which repeatedly hits the C major chord of unashamed idealism and standing up for the benefit claimant and the unemployed. This is an issue that has been revived again with the recent BBC drama The Moorside, about the Shannon Matthews case: how do you represent the working classes on screen? Loach and his longtime screenwriter Paul Laverty chose not to do that kind of big, real-life case of grisly irony and bad faith, but a fictional, researched conglomerate of a thousand, unsung little cases of people who are not in fact skivers or scammers, but people left exposed by the new political austerity. The I, Daniel Blake award was a ringing Bafta moment.
