The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has just finished presenting their awards, with the results being pretty much as predicted: The Revenant has won five awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound. Mad Max: Fury Road was not far behind with four wins of its own, including Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Make Up & Hair, and Best Costume Design.
These results would seem to support the recent surge of love for The Revenant, making it a favorite for the Best Picture Oscar. Though BAFTA and AMPAS have disagreed on the best film of the year a few times over the last decade, most of the time it tends to match up pretty well.
Speaking of matching up pretty well, the acting categories almost went entirely as expected, with the one exception being Kate Winslet’s win for Best Supporting Actress. However, her true rival for the award (Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl) was moved to Best Actress for these awards, so I think it’s still fair to say that Vikander is the clear favorite, especially after her victory at the SAG awards.
Another great result was Mark Rylance taking Best Supporting Actor for Bridge of Spies, finally casting some light on who we will most likely see take the corresponding Oscar (they’ve matched the Academy 7/10 times over the last decade, with one mismatch being due to not seeing the film on time, and another due to BAFTA making a better choice).
As for the screenplay awards, Spotlight and The Big Short took them as expected, but as noted earlier, only one out of eight BAFTA screenplay winners in the last four years has gone on to win the corresponding Oscar (Django Unchained), so either that streak is going to continue, or, for the first time in a few years, the two groups might finally be on the same page regarding these categories. At the moment, it certainly looks like the latter could be true, especially given the immense popularity of both scripts, but we’ll just have to see how things go.
All-in-all, it was a pretty good awards ceremony, where a lot of great films won. We even got a good laugh (Mad Max: Fury Road winning Best Costume Design over Brooklyn, Carol, Cinderella, and The Danish Girl? In what dimension would this possibly be true?). Most importantly, we got the answers to a lot of questions regarding frontrunners, so now all that’s left to do (besides catching the last few small guild awards) is to sit back and wait for the big night.
Be sure to join us the evening of Sunday, February 28th, where we’ll bring you the annual live-blogging of the Oscar winners as they’re announced. Until then, please see below for a complete list of today’s BAFTA winners:
Best Film: The Revenant
Outstanding British Film: Brooklyn
Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Revenant
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Best Actress: Brie Larson, Room
Best Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Best Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Best Original Screenplay: Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Best Adapted Screenplay: Adam McKay and Charles Randolph, The Big Short
Best Editing: Margaret Sixel, Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki, The Revenant
Best Production Design: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Costume Design: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Make Up & Hair: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Original Music: Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight
Best Sound: The Revenant
Best Special Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Best Animated Film: Inside Out
Best Documentary: Amy
Best Film Not in the English Language: Wild Tales
Best British Short Film: Operator
Best British Short Animation: Edmond
Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer: Naji Abu Nowar and Rupert Lloyd, Theeb
The EE Rising Star Award: John Boyega