Christopher Nolan, arguably the most commercially and critically successful British director in decades, looks set to secure his first Bafta victory next month, after his latest film, Oppenheimer, was nominated in 13 categories.
The film is up for best film, director, adapted screenplay, leading actor for Cillian Murphy, supporting actress for Emily Blunt, supporting actor for Robert Downey Jr, cinematography, editing, costume design, makeup and hair, original score, production design, and sound – but it was overlooked in the visual effects category.
Although Nolan, 53, received the Britannia award from Bafta in 2010, and has been nominated eight times for previous films including Dunkirk and Inception, he is yet to win either a Bafta or an Oscar. This year’s Academy Award shortlists are announced next Tuesday; to date Nolan has five nominations.
Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’s steampunk fantasy, came in second place on Thursday with 11 nominations, including nods for best film and adapted screenplay, and for Emma Stone’s leading performance, although her co-stars Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe were not mentioned.
Stone will compete against Margot Robbie (Barbie), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall), Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple) and Rye Lane’s Vivian Oparah – but not Past Lives’s Greta Lee, nor Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone, who had been considered Stone’s key competition, having taken the Golden Globe for best female actor in a drama earlier this month.
“It’s a very competitive year,” Bafta chair Sara Putt told the Guardian of the omission. “Who would we take off this list?”
While Greta Gerwig’s DayGlo satire eventually triumphed over Oppenheimer at the box office, taking $1.4bn and breaking multiple records, Nolan’s film looks likely to enter the billion dollar club imminently off the back of awards season rereleases (it’s currently on $953m).
Along with Robbie’s acting nomination, Barbie is up for original screenplay, supporting actor for Ryan Gosling, costume design and production design; a considerable decline from the 15 mentions it took when the Bafta longlists were announced a fortnight ago.
Earlier this week, culture secretary Lucy Frazer praised the production, which was largely shot in Leavesden Studios, saying “before it was exported to all corners of the world and became the biggest selling film of 2023, Barbie was made and recorded in Hertfordshire – not Hollywood.”
Warner Bros, the studio behind the film, have said that Barbie contributed £80m in direct spend to the local economy, created 685 jobs, involved more than 6,000 extras, supported 754 local businesses and paid over £40m in local wages.
Neither Gerwig nor Past Lives’s Celine Song nor Saltburn’s Emerald Fennell feature on the shortlist of directors, with Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Trier the only woman in contention. Alongside her and Nolan are Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest, Andrew Haigh for All of Us Strangers, Bradley Cooper for Maestro and Alexander Payne for The Holdovers. Four of these are first time nominees, none have previously won – and none are Martin Scorsese, another surprise omission from the list.
Last year, only one woman was among the director nominees, down from three in 2022 and four in 2021 – the first year after Bafta introduced radical backstage changes to try to improve inclusivity in the wake of the #BaftasSoWhite backlash of 2020, when none of the performers nominated were people of colour.
“We know it’s not a level playing field,” Putt told the Guardian of the lack of female representation on the best director shortlist. “The odds are stacked. Of the 100 top-grossing films released last year, only 12 were made by women.”
Putt said that while the Bafta longlists are designed to be interventionist – the director category has to have gender parity – the organisation was “not about quotas”.
She added that the bigger picture appeared “a little more hopeful”, with 11 of the 32 total director nominations – including short films and documentaries – going to women. “But there’s still a long way to go.”
Overall, however, the best film nominees – Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer and Poor Things – represent some vindication for those who have championed auteurist cinema in the face of superhero pressure.
All five – even those bankrolled by major studios – are defiantly the work of individual artists, rather than a creative conglomerate. Poor Things, released in the UK last week, is a full-frontal feminist phantasmagoria, while The Holdovers, out this Friday, harks back to the golden age of early 70s US indie moviemaking.
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Next Friday sees the release of Haigh’s extraordinary ghost story, a part-autobiographical tale of being a gay child while Aids was in its infancy; a week later comes Glazer’s radically experimental Auschwitz drama.
Perhaps the most discussed film of the season, Fennell’s black comedy Saltburn, scored a leading actor nomination for its star, Barry Keoghan, as well as supporting nods for Rosamund Pike and Jacob Elordi.
Keoghan is up against Oppenheimer’s Murphy, Maestro’s Cooper, Colman Domingo for Rustin, Teo Yoo for Past Lives and Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers. Giamatti – who was not nominated 20 years ago for his performance in another Payne film, Sideways – is fast becoming the man to beat this year, having taken a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice award.
Not in the running, however, is Andrew Scott for All of Us Strangers, although co-star Claire Foy was named in the supporting actress category, alongside Blunt, Huller, Pike, Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple and Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers. Mirroring Giamatti, Randolph is widely expected to prove victorious, having already won almost every equivalent prize going.
Their co-star, newcomer Dominic Sessa, looks more of an outside bet in the supporting actor race, with stiff competition including Downey Jr, Gosling, Paul Mescal for All of Us Strangers and Killers of the Flower Moon’s Robert De Niro – who, like Nolan, has never won a Bafta despite eight nominations (including most promising newcomer in 1976).
But there was disappointment for American Fiction, Cord Jefferson’s biting farce starring Jeffrey Wright as a conflicted novelist, which was only nominated for adapted screenplay. Likewise Ferrari, Michael Mann’s biopic with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, scored a single nod, for sound.
Meanwhile May December, Todd Haynes’ drama starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, failed to secure a single nomination.
Last year, Edward Berger’s anti-war epic, All Quiet on the Western Front, won seven Baftas from 14 nominations, including best picture. Cate Blanchett won best actress for Tár while Austin Butler won best actor for Elvis. At the Oscars two weeks later, Blanchett was beaten by Michelle Yeoh, Butler by Brendan Fraser and Everything Everywhere All at Once dominated, taking seven Oscars.
Yet despite this divergence, there is considerable overlap between the 7,800-odd Bafta members and the some 10,000 Oscar voters.
The ceremony will take place at the Southbank Centre in London on 18 February, hosted – for the first time – by David Tennant. The Oscars follow three weeks later, on 10 March.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
