BAFTA Film Awards 2019 Winners: What Do They Mean For The Oscars?

Now that we’re a little removed from the BAFTA ceremony, it’s time to take another look at the big winners from Sunday and read the tea leaves they provide. Maybe they’ll help with some tougher categories at the Oscars. Remember, there is an overlap with voters between the Academy and BAFTA, so the wins do count. I’ll only be looking at the key categories, ones that either still have some potential spoilers or are wide-open races.

 

Best Film – Roma

With the Directors Guild win, Critics Choice win, and now BAFTA win, in a place where The Favourite seemed to be on a landslide sweep, Roma seems to have sprinted ahead in the Oscar race for Best Picture. It still has some fundamentals about it, though, that don’t scream Best Picture winner. For example, the film is from Netflix, and the Academy has proven in past years that they aren’t exactly all about Netflix (Beasts of No Nation received 0 nominations, and Mudbound scored 4 nominations without Best Picture last year). It’s also a foreign film, and in the 91 years since the Academy got started, no foreign language film has ever won. They’re nominated every now and again, but they almost always win the Foreign Language category as a sort of participation award, if you will. Also, the film is black-and-white, and has a very slow start. It’s not until the third act that the actual plot kicks in, and I’m not sure that all voters will get that far in the film.

But the big arguments against anything but Roma winning is who do you pick? Green Book had gained momentum off of Golden Globe and Producers Guild wins, and Mahershala Ali and the Screenplay may win, but that’s about it. Traditionally, our Best Picture winners receive more acclaim than that. Sure, two past African-American prospective films like 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight picked up wins in acting, screenplay, and picture, the same three place Green Book could win, but this isn’t exactly in that company since it was directed and written by white guys. On top of all that, it lacks a Best Director nomination, and also didn’t have a great show at BAFTA.

So how about The Favourite, which won the BAFTA award for Best British Film? Well, that’s all fine and dandy that The Favourite pulled out 7 wins at BAFTA (honestly, where else would it win that many?), but in the other precursors, it’s been a bit of a disappointment. Out of five nominations at the Globes, it only had one win, it had two wins out of 12 nominations at the Critics Choice Awards, and went home empty-handed at the PGA and Screen Actors Guild Awards. On top of all that, director Yorgos Lanthimos wasn’t nominated by the DGA or Globes. It does share the honor of tying for most nominations at the Oscars, but the 7 wins on Sunday may be too little too late for The Favourite as far as Best Picture is concerned.

 

Best Actor – Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody

You can pretty much carve it in stone now: Rami Malek is going to win at the Oscars for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury. His wins at the Globes, SAG, and now BAFTA have put him on the same trajectory as Eddie Redmayne four years ago, and he repeated with an Oscar win. While there were some naysayers on Sunday against Malek, citing either Christian Bale or Bradley Cooper for upset wins, it seems like the bus has left the station, and Malek is on it.

 

Best Actress – Olivia Colman for The Favourite

While Colman’s performance is my personal favorite of the five nominees at the Oscars, I don’t see her repeating. Her closest competition, Glenn Close in The Wife, has otherwise swept the board for the major industry awards. A Globe win, SAG win, and tie at Critics Choice seems to have made this race hers to lose. While an out-of-nowhere upset is still possible for Olivia, I’d be foolish to bet that it would happen. Glenn, baby, your time is about to come for that Oscar to be in your hands.

 

Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Rachel Weisz for The Favourite

Now we enter the only acting race with genuine suspense left in it. Regina King seemed to have had this category locked up in September, after If Beale Street Could Talk debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, and especially after she swept the critics prizes and won the Globe and Critics Choice awards. But then she was snubbed by both BAFTA and SAG, and the last time that happened, everyone, including yours truly, fell off the Oscar cliff with Sylvester Stallone in Creed. And who beat him? Why, it was BAFTA winner Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies. While Rachel’s win at BAFTA can be explained away by both Regina’s absence and the IOU factor (Weisz did not win for The Constant Gardener, even though she swept the season otherwise), I’m on the fence about who will win at the Oscars. The ball seems to be in Regina’s court with more wins throughout the season, but Rachel’s villainous turn in The Favourite, as well as it being nominated in more categories than Beale Street, may be irresistible for Oscar voters. For now, I think Rachel can pick up the momentum and win, but it’s going to be a photo-finish on February 24th.

 

Best Original Screenplay – The Favourite

While The Favourite’s script has been heralded as one of the best of the year, it has struggled thus far in the screenplay categories. It lost the Globe to Green Book, lost the Critics Choice to First Reformed, and wasn’t eligible for the Writers Guild awards. This was the film’s first major win of the season, but is it too little too late? Well, whoever wins the Writers Guild prize may well go on to win the Oscar. If that turns out to be true, The Favourite will not repeat at the Oscars.

 

Best Documentary Feature – Free Solo

This is the first big industry award in this category to go to an Oscar nominee. Non-nominees Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Three Identical Strangers have both picked up their fair share of wins through the season, but at the Oscars, it seems it’ll be a two-way-race between BAFTA winner Free Solo and RBG, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc. RBG has two nominations, and since the real life RBG has been in the news a lot recently with her health concerns, as well as the release of biopic On the Basis of Sex, her name has been top of mind lately. So I’ll stick with RBG at the Oscars, despite Free Solo’s victory at BAFTA.

 

Best Editing – Vice

Vice is my prediction at the Oscars as well, but I thought Bohemian Rhapsody would come away the winner on Sunday in this category. Bohemian and The Favourite both won at the Editing Guild (ACE Eddie), so it seemed like one of them would likely pull ahead both here at BAFTA and going forward at the Oscars. But possibly, no Vice (har-har). We have seen a trend in recent years where a non-winner at Ace Eddie wins at the Oscars, like Gravity, Whiplash, and Hacksaw Ridge. And hey, guess what? Two of those (Whiplash and Hacksaw) won at BAFTA. So Vice may indeed be our winner.

 

Best Original Score – A Star is Born

Since BAFTA does not have a Best Original Song category, this was the only realistic place to award both Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga for their work on A Star is Born. This was one I should have gotten. While “Shallow” is a 100% lock at the Oscars for song, the score category will likely go to If Beale Street Could Talk.

 

Best Makeup and Hair – The Favourite

Since The Favourite is not nominated in this category at the Oscars, the win on Sunday is pretty much marked up to the sweep-factor that came in for the film. I suspect fellow nominee Vice will pick up the win in just under two weeks.

 

Best Sound – Bohemian Rhapsody

This win seemed to come out of nowhere for me. The film is up for both sound categories at the Oscars, though, so I guess the sound people like it. What’s interesting about the overlap in this category, though, is that, with the exception of The Revenant, the winner of Best Sound at BAFTA goes on to win at least one of the sound categories at the Oscars (usually both). Since Bohemian is a film all about music, I think it stands a good chance to win the Sound Mixing prize, where we’ve seen other music-related films like Whiplash, Les Miserables, Dreamgirls, and Ray win in previous years. Sound Editing will likely go to First Man.

 

Best Visual Effects – Black Panther

Another non-Oscar-nominee winning here. This win was likely triggered to the fact that this was the sole nomination for the Marvel superhero, and it was just too good to pass up. Either Avengers: Infinity War or First Man will win at the Oscars.

A reminder that the Academy Awards will air on Sunday, February 24th. We have between now and then to figure out who we’re going with in some of these tough, tough categories.