BAFTA Confirms ‘One Battle’s Dominance; Throws Supporting Races Into More Disarray; And Jumpstarts Robert Aramayo’s Oscar Campaign For Next Year -Hammond Analysis

The one very predictable thing about the just-ended BAFTA Awards in London is that Paul Thomas Anderson simply cannot be beat. Starting with the Gothams and continuing through every other awards ceremony, at least the ones you have heard of, at the end, One Battle After Another is the chosen one for Best Picture. The Brits saw it no differently and showered it with six wins, including three (Director, Adapted Screenplay, Picture) for Anderson personally. It moves into next weekend’s Producers Guild and Actor Awards in as strong a position to ultimately triumph on Oscars night as any movie in recent history, although Oppenheimer at this point was considered a pretty sure thing. The latter won at BAFTA also, the only film other than 2020’s pandemic-affected year of Nomadland to match Oscar’s Best Picture winner since 2014.

This is a statistic where competitors to One Battle can take heart. Since the turn of the century only 10 films out of 24 have been a Best Picture match between Oscar and BAFTA. That is just 41% of the time, but bettng markets will tell you the odds are in Battle‘s favor to break that curse, to say the least.

What today’s British Academy Awards really did was throw some ringers into acting races, and the talk of the show was the win of Robert Aramayo for Best Actor for Kirk Jones’ British film, I Swearin which he plays a man afflicted with Tourette syndrome. He beat Oscar nominees Timothée Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke and Michael B. Jordan, along with Jesse Plemons (BAFTA has six nominees). The good news for them is it won’t affect the race or momentum at the Actor Awards or the Oscars because I Swear doesn’t even open in the U.S. until April 17, despite having premiered last fall at the Toronto Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics acquired the movie in late October, but apparently made the decision to hold it back until 2026 for domestic release and did not qualify it for Oscars, usually (but not always) the case for a TIFF pickup with awards potential. SPC already has Hawke in the Best Actor race with Blue Moon.

But now, no doubt as I said in my Friday ‘Notes On The Season’ column, where I warned of a possible Aramayo upset at BAFTA (and cited the growing betting odds that had him second only to Chalamet, albeit a long shot), they have a solid Best Actor Oscar contender for next year. It is an extraordinary performance, reminiscent of the kind of role that brought Best Actor Oscars to Daniel Day Lewis in My Left FootGeoffrey Rush in Shineand Eddie Redmayne in The Theory Of Everythingto name three. You can even go back to 1968 and Cliff Robertson in Charly. The BAFTA wins (he also took the Rising Star award, which is voted by the public) have certainly jumpstarted Aramayo’s Oscar campaign, no doubt, but this is a highly unusual development, because in most years, AMPAS and BAFTA are pretty much in lockstep calendar-wise, at least when it comes to the major players.

Where BAFTA also sowed confusion is in the Supporting acting races, both of them, although we didn’t need any more confusion there. Best Supporting Actor winner Sean Penn, absent in London, picked up his first BAFTA win ever for his memorable role as Steven Lockjaw in One Battleand Wunmi Mosaku, although British, was a bit of a surprise as Best Supporting Actress for Sinners. It was the first major win this season for both (although Mosaku is a past BAFTA TV winner). Now we have a Supporting Actor race where Penn has won BAFTA, Stellan Skarsgard (favored to win in London) for Sentimental Valuetook the Golden Globe, Jacob Elordi won Critics Choice for Frankensteinand Benicio Del Toro was a big winner at National Board of Review, National Society of Film Critics and both Chicago and New Film Critics Circle to name four early victories for his role in One Battle. With Skarsgard, currently a favorite to win an Oscar on his first nomination, the plot thickens because he isn’t even nominated at next Sunday’s Actor Awards, which happen right in the heart of Oscar voting.

Supporting Actress Mosaku’s BAFTA win adds to the suspense, as she beat One Battle‘s Teyana Taylor, who took an LA, Chicago and a few regional critics awards, plus then won the Golden Globe a week after losing to Weapons veteran Amy Madigan (not even nominated at BAFTA) at Critics Choice. At the National Board Of Review, the winner was Sentimental Value‘s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, who like Skarsgard, won’t be competing at the Actor Awards. This all makes that race a bit unpredictable too as we move into crunch time. It looks like there may be a lot of nail-biting at the Academy Awards when it comes to the Supporting categories.

As for Hamnet at Focus, who took the BAFTA Best Film award last year for Conclave in the search for their elusive first-ever Best Picture Oscar, there were high hopes its very Britishness would stop One Battle and Sinners in their tracks, but alas, it settled only for Best British Film and a predictable Best Actress win for Jessie Buckley, who is riding high right now.

Additionally, Netflix’s Frankenstein‘s BAFTA wins for Makeup and Hairstyling, Costume Design and Production Design are all expected to follow on Oscar night. As for the first Animated Feature win of the season for Disney’s box office champ Zootopia 2 (or Zootropolis 2 as it is called in the UK), that likely is due to the fact that Netflix was unable to convince BAFTA that their KPop Demon Hunters should be eligible, even though it didn’t have a “proper” theatrical qualifying engagement. There is no Best Song category at the BAFTAs, so the rousing performance of Oscar Best Song frontrunner ‘Golden’ was probably a bit of a consolation gesture towards Netflix and a boost for its Oscar chances, RE: KPop just a few days before ballots go live.

On the bright side for those now moving on to the Actor Awards and then the big one, the Oscars on March 15, each of the other five BAFTA Best Film nominees got a “golden” moment on stage with Sinners taking three, including Best Original Screenplay for Ryan Coogler, where he is also favored at WGA and Oscars; Sentimental Value getting a crucial Film Not In The English Language prize; and Hamnet with a couple. However, Marty Supreme came in with 11 nominations and has now tied for the film with the biggest number of losses in BAFTA history after getting completely blanked. Again, Oscar and Actor Awards presumed frontrunner Chalamet doesn’t have to worry about Aramayo, and that is probably something I swear A24 is happy about tonight.