Those Unexpected BAFTA Wins Could Impact the Oscars

It’s so tempting to let every awards show suddenly shift your thinking on what’s ahead in the Oscar race. Every time, Film Twitter (or X) goes wild. Take this Sunday’s BAFTA Awards, which were full of surprises.

But were they? “KPop Demon Hunters” and Amy Madigan didn’t win because they weren’t nominated. That doesn’t hurt them going forward. But the BAFTAs are often predictive, as the Oscar voters lean international (24 percent).

Yes, it’s true that “Marty Supreme,” a very American movie, did not win anything. That shows us that it falls behind the other four films that have all scored slots for Screen Actors Ensemble, PGA, DGA, and Oscars: BAFTA leader “One Battle After Another,” with six wins including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor Sean Penn, Cinematography, and Editing; “Sinners” with three including Original Screenplay, Supporting Actress Wunmi Musaku, and Score; “Frankenstein” with three craft wins including Costume, Production Design, and Hair & Makeup; and “Hamnet,” with two, including Best British Film and Actress Jessie Buckley.

But that’s not all we can glean from the show. Here are some takeaways from the BAFTAs.

Timothée Chalamet is good to go for SAG and Oscar wins.

Losing Best Actor doesn’t mean Chalamet is suddenly a weaker contender than he was before. It’s a local thing: remarkable young British actor Robert Aramayo (who also won Rising Star, as expected) snatched the BAFTA away for his heartbreaking performance as a young man battling Tourette Syndrome in “I Swear,” which also won the BAFTA for Best Casting.

In this case, Aramayo had the home turf advantage. (Sony Pictures Classics will release the true story stateside April 24.)

‘I Swear’SPC

Chalamet should go on to win the SAG Award for the second year in a row, this time for “Marty Supreme,” followed by the Oscar. But what about the international vote? Marketing whiz Chalamet did not miss an opportunity to show off his French bonafides on the campaign trail. (He and Jodie Foster should costar in a film français.)

Three of Chalamet’s rivals are also in American films. In “One Battle After Another,” Leonardo DiCaprio is part of an ensemble, and plays a comedic role, which is often a disadvantage. Also, he has won before (“The Revenant”). First-time nominee Michael B. Jordan stars in “Sinners,” which landed a record 16 Oscar nominations, and marks a high degree of difficulty for playing twins.

Somehow, so far, that doesn’t beat Chalamet’s feats at table tennis and ability to draw audiences into rooting for him even as his character behaves egregiously. And as awe-inspiring as Ethan Hawke’s performance as whip-smart fast-talker Lorenz Hart is in “Blue Moon,” it’s up for Original Screenplay, not Best Picture.

This leaves one international contender, Cannes Best Actor winner Wagner Moura in Brazil’s “The Secret Agent,” which is also nominated for Picture, Casting, and International Feature Film. But Moura gives a brilliant, naturalistic, but subtle performance, and many voters may not have sampled this one.

Sean Penn gains ground.

Actors tend to reward actors who go BIG, like Penn as the broad, sphincter-tight Col. Steven J. Lockjaw in “One Battle After Another.” His BAFTA win can be seen as a well-known Oscar winner (“Milk,” “Mystic River”) riding the coattails of a popular contender. But if that’s the case, why didn’t his co-star Teyana Taylor win the Supporting Actress BAFTA? Many thought she was the frontrunner, but she lost to “Sinners” star Wunmi Musaku.

‘One Battle After Another’©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

Wunmi Musaku gets a lift.

Yes, but she is also homegrown. The Brits often vote for their own. This may also be a case in which the voters wanted to give “Sinners” a win. And Musaku gave a wonderful acceptance speech, which always helps.

But this category is now wide open, with Madigan added to the mix for SAG and Oscars, a legacy actress returning to the fray after 40 years, with veteran Oscar-winner husband Ed Harris at her side. Taylor has conducted a note-perfect Oscar campaign with style, but that does not overcome some voter discomfort with her sex icon Perfidia Beverly Hills.

Nothing will stop the “One Battle After Another” momentum.

It’s like a snowball rolling downhill faster and faster. Paul Thomas Anderson won the DGA and BAFTAs, which will be followed by the inevitable SAG and PGA. “Sinners” and “Frankenstein” are likely to replicate their BAFTAs. And “Hamnet” needed to do better at the BAFTAs to prove a real rival. It may wind up a one-Oscar wonder.

Jessie Buckley is unassailable.

We knew that before the BAFTAs — where she was the first Irish actress to win Best Actress — and it’s still true. She’ll go on to win at the Screen Actors Awards and the Oscars.

Wither “Sentimental Value”?

Its two supporting actresses, Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, may continue to split the vote. The movie did win BAFTA’s Best Film Not in the English Language, and is up for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and Stellan Skarsgård, who won the Golden Globe but not the BAFTA and failed to land a slot with the more mainstream American Screen Actors.

My sense is that enough Academy voters don’t like Penn and admire Skarsgård for him to take the win. “Sentimental Value” might have to settle for Best International Feature. But Indie Spirit winner “The Secret Agent” is moving up as more people see it. That Brazilian bloc could factor, as it did with last year’s “I’m Still Here.”

“Mr. Nobody Against Putin” could challenge “The Perfect Neighbor” in the documentary race.

Both films tackle how government institutions, in Russia and Florida, respectively, fail in governing and protecting their citizens. And they both use unconventional filmmaking methods to tell their stories. A humane small-town Russian school videographer reaches out to a BBC documentarian to collaborate on a documentary about what he sees in his classroom. And respected director Geeta Gandbhir creates a timeline with police and door cam footage to reveal an unassailable narrative about neighborhood justice gone wrong.

Pavel ‘Pasha’ Talankin in ‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’
Sundance Film Festival

Copy down the craft wins.

With the exception of “Zootopia 2,” which won without having to compete with “KPop Demon Hunters,” you can lift all the BAFTA craft categories onto your Oscar ballot. However, the cinematography race is tight. The win for Michael Bauman is a reminder of the strength of “One Battle After Another,” but Oscar voters may go with Autumn Durald Arkapaw (“Sinners”) instead. She’d be the first woman to win in that category (only four have been nominated).

And not to be discounted is “Train Dreams,” another popular Best Picture nominee, whose Brazilian cinematographer, Adolpho Veloso, won the Spirit Award last weekend.