Bafta 2018 snubs: from Get Out to Greta Gerwig

We all agree that award season is hokum. That doesn’t stop it being infuriating when our favourite films and performances go unrecognised each year. Nominations for the grand dame of these back-slapping exercises – the Oscars – are still being deliberated by Academy members, who hand in their ballots on 12 January, with the nominations being announced 23 January. As a rule, Academy voters tend to have terrible taste in films (both Ron Howard and Tom Hooper have Best Director awards, for crying out loud).

But the UK’s own awards institution, Bafta, might be even more wrong-headed, and this year’s nominations, revealed this morning, have some typically baffling decisions and omissions. We count down the worst of them below.

No Get Out for Best Picture

The Oscars have long favoured middlebrow movies, particularly those that appear to tackle challenging subjects but do so in the most mealy-mouthed of fashions. But at least they seem to be changing. Backlashes against their conservative voting with campaigns like #OscarSoWhite has resulted in a concerted effort to shakeup Academy membership to bring younger, more ethnically diverse voices to the table, helping move the institution into the 21st century. The upshot of this membership overhaul is that Moonlight, a truly radical film that would have been unthinkable as a Best Picture contender only a few years back, took top prize last year. Bafta voting in 2018 is looking a bit stodgy in comparison.

Take for example Bafta’s snub of Get Out in the Best Film category. Jordan Peele’s hilarious and politically potent horror film is that rarest of things: both a commercial smash (it made back over 50 times its meager $4.5 million budget) and critical darling (it topped many 2017 end of year lists, including the lofty Sight & Sound poll). While we suspect Get Out might be too explosive for the Academy to win the Best Picture Oscar – not to mention the disadvantage it has in being a genre film (the last horror to win was Silence of the Lambs in 1991) – it is likely to receive a nomination.

Bafta, instead, have favoured homegrown films like Darkest Hour and Dunkirk in its Best Film category. You can see why they have been popular: they are films that act as Brexit-soothing balms, reminding us of a time when it wasn’t shameful to be British. But by recognising these Union Jack-waving pictures, Bafta voters have done a disservice to Get Out, the true film of the moment.

No Greta Gerwig for Best Director

Greta Gerwig with Saoirse Ronan on the set of Lady Bird

Women in Hollywood are angry, and rightly so. At the weekend, the red carpet of the Golden Globes – the most superficial awards show of the season – became a space for protest. Instead of being asked inane questions by Ryan Seacrest about what dress they were wearing, the women of Hollywood took the opportunity to turn the first high profile awards ceremony since the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal into a night of awareness-raising. People wore black as a mark of solidarity, high profile actresses like Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams brought gender activists with them as their plus ones, and Oprah gave a barnstorming speech aimed at the next generation of young women watching at home.

All this made it all the more embarrassing that once again no women were nominated for Best Director, a point deliciously emphasised by Natalie Portman as she presented the Best Director award by saying, “Here are all the male nominees”.

Bafta have repeated the Globes omission, with an all-male Best Director lineup. The Bafta voters seem to favour bombast and spectacle from their directors, with nods for the visually striking but emotionally sterile work by Denis Villeneuve on Blade Runner 2049 and Christopher Nolan on Dunkirk. Which is a shame, as the casually brilliant direction by Greta Gerwig on her comedic coming-of-age drama Lady Bird is more deserving.

While not as virtuosic as Villeneuve or Nolan, Gerwig is no less visually inventive and idiosyncratic, and where the actor-turned-director trumps both is her tender humanism, emotional intelligence and her work with her actors. Fingers crossed Oscar voters don’t make the same mistake of ignoring this talented director.

God’s Own Country nominated for Outstanding British Film, but not Best Debut

God's Own Country

If we’re throwing our weight behind any title in the Outstanding British film category, it’s God’s Own Country. It’s been a good year for British cinema, and what’s been particularly heartening is the emergence of several compelling new voices on the British scene, including Hope Dickson Leach with The Levelling, Peter Mackie Burns with Daphne and William Oldroyd with Lady MacBeth. Only the latter was nominated for Outstanding British Film, but at least it’s been joined by the year’s knockout homegrown movie, which also happens to be a stunning debut: Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country.

We’ve adored this beautiful and tender tale of love set on the windy Yorkshire moors since it opened Edinburgh Film Festival back in June, and we’re delighted to see it recognised here. What’s baffling, however, is that it hasn’t joined Lady Macbeth in being nominated for Best Debut film, where it presumably would have a better chance of winning. Instead, Francis Lee’s knockout first feature will have to contend for the British Film title with Best Film heavyweights like Darkest Hour and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the latter a film that’s about as British as NASCAR.

It’s not all bad

Not every Bafta decision was insane. We’ll be cheering along Paddington 2 with its three nominations, particularly Hugh Grant who's been given a Supporting Actor nod for his delightful turn as a washed-up thespian who frames the marmalade-loving bear. And we’re over the moon to see Edinburgh animator Will Anderson getting a nomination for his joyous, bittersweet animation Have Heart (one of our Scottish short films of the year). Anderson's film was bizarrely ignored by the Scottish Baftas, an awards show that manages to prove itself even more clueless than Bafta proper.

The full list of nominations are below:

Best film
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Outstanding British film
Darkest Hour
The Death of Stalin
God’s Own Country
Lady Macbeth
Paddington 2
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer
The Ghoul – Gareth Tunley (writer/director/producer), Jack Healy Guttman & Tom Meeten (producers)
I Am Not a Witch – Rungano Nyoni (writer/director), Emily Morgan (Producer) Jawbone – Johnny Harris (writer/producer), Thomas Napper (director)
Kingdom of Us – Lucy Cohen (director)
Lady Macbeth – Alice Birch (writer), William Oldroyd (director), Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly (producer)

Best film not in the English language
Elle
First They Killed My Father
The Handmaiden
Loveless
The Salesman

Best documentary
City of Ghosts
I Am Not Your Negro
Icarus
An Inconvenient Sequel

Best animated film
Coco
Loving Vincent
My Life as a Courgette

Best director
Denis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049
Luca Guadagnino, Call Me by Your Name
Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Guillermo Del Toro, The Shape of Water
Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best original screenplay
Get Out
I, Tonya
Lady Bird
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best adapted screenplay
Call Me by Your Name
The Death of Stalin
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Molly’s Game
Paddington 2

Best actress
Annette Bening, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water
Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird

Best actor
Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Jamie Bell, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool
Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name

Best supporting actress
Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Kristin Scott Thomas, Darkest Hour
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread
Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water

Best supporting actor
Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World
Hugh Grant, Paddington 2
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best original music
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water

Best cinematography
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best editing
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best production design
Beauty and the Beast
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water

Best costume design
Beauty and the Beast
Darkest Hour
I, Tonya
Phantom Thread
The Shape of Water

Best hair and make-up
Blade Runner 2049
Darkest Hour
I, Tonya
Victoria & Abdul
Wonder

Best sound
Baby Driver
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Best special visual effects
Blade Runner 2049
Dunkirk
The Shape of Water
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
War for the Planet of the Apes

Best British short animation
Have Heart
Mamoon
Poles Apart

Best British short film
Aamir
Cowboy Dave
A Drowning Man
Work
Wren Boys

EE Rising Star award 
Daniel Kaluuya
Florence Pugh
Josh O’Connor
Tessa Thompson
Timothée Chalamet

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The EE British Academy Film Awards take place on 18 Feb