Evening Standard British Film Awards: Bring on the Britbusters

As big screen gong season kicks off with the Evening Standard British Film Awards, David Sexton hails the UK’s class of 2016
Best of the best: the class of 2016
David Sexton5 February 2016

It’s awards season. Leading the British pack, the London Evening Standard British Film Awards, first established in 1973, are being presented this Sunday, having been revived after a three-year break. There is no better year in which to do it and show just how much British and Irish cinema has to give the world, both in front of and behind the camera. We have so much to celebrate — and don’t need to be distracted by the #OscarsSoWhite diversity controversy over the Academy’s nominations, even though it shows no signs of quieting down.

Spike Lee, Jada Pinkett Smith, Will Smith and Tyrese Gibson have called for a boycott or said they won’t attend.

To go alongside the Bechdel Test as a way of assessing the representation of women in films, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis has proposed a new one to measure whether “African-Americans and other minorities have fully realized lives rather than serve as scenery in white stories”, to be called the DuVernay Test, after Ava DuVernay — the director of the Martin Luther King biopic, Selma, nominated for Best Picture last year but not for Best Director, nor for Best Actor for David Oyelowo.

Even President Obama has weighed in, saying that telling everyone’s story makes for better art and entertainment and Hollywood should give equal opportunities to all. The Academy, led by its President, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, has promised rule changes to try to remedy the representativeness of its voting members in future.

The row has dominated the awards debate this year — perhaps a little unfairly, since the Oscars are at the very end of the entire film-making and distribution process, not necessarily therefore the source of any industry-wide bias. It’s a pity, too, that it has slightly obscured a pretty remarkable success story: how extensively British film-makers are included in the Oscar nominations, especially in co-production, technical and writing roles as well as in the big acting categories.

Oddly, this year the Academy seems almost to have recognised British talent and achievement better than the Baftas, which although voted for by the equivalent British Academy are open to any film released here, except for just two categories, Outstanding British Film and Outstanding British Debut. In this year’s nominations, for example, there was no overlap at all between Best Film and Best British Film, a wounding distinction. Nor was there any mention at all for Charlotte Rampling’s great performance in the marital crisis drama, 45 Years, whereas she made the cut for Best Actress at the Oscars (even if her chances of going further may have been skewed by an unfortunate interview she gave in France speaking of “anti-white racism”).

At least the Baftas managed a nomination for Idris Elba’s stunning part in Beasts of No Nation — but as Best Supporting Actor? Elba deservedly won the supporting category in the SAGS, the Screen Actors Guild Award, in the States - but maybe he should have been up for the lead for the role?

Films such as 45 Years or The Lady in the Van could never have been made anywhere but Britain

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Consider: this year, Channel 4’s film-making arm, Film4 Productions, scored no fewer than 15 Oscar nominations across six fine movies it backed, including Room, Carol, 45 Years, Amy, Ex Machina and Youth. As David Kosse, who has recently taken over as director of Film4 from Tessa Ross, said: “Fifteen nominations is an amazing validation of our belief in the potential of these bold, inspirational stories.”

Or then again, look at the Oscar Best Picture nominations — there’s a lot of British talent hiding in plain view out there, with a British component to nearly all of them, except the strictly Boston-set Spotlight.

The apparently all-American The Martian, for example, has a British director, Ridley Scott, British producers and plenty of British actors including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong and Sean Bean. Those responsible for its nomination in the Best Visual Effects category are largely British too, as are those for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ex Machina, making this a British- dominated field, one vital to the continuing impact film makes on the big screen, as technology advances.

The London Evening Standard British Film Awards - Best Films

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Bridge of Spies boasts not only Mark Rylance — nominated for best supporting actor alongside Christian Bale for the Big Short and Tom Hardy for The Revenant, thus making this another majority British shortlist — but it only exists at all as a film because of 36-year-old Londoner Matt Charman, nominated for Best Original Screenplay alongside the Coen brothers, having discovered the true story and pitched the film to Steven Spielberg. “I’m pinching myself to think that a historical footnote I found could lead to the most wonderful collaboration with Steven Spielberg and now to recognition from the Academy. It seems like a miracle,” he said on the day he heard.

But then again, Brooklyn is almost entirely British and Irish, from the wonderful Saoirse Ronan to Nick Hornby’s skilful redaction of Colm Toíbín’s novel (his wife Amanda Posey being a producer moreover, with Finola Dwyer), Room is a triumph too, a Best Picture contender, with Irish director Lenny Abrahamson nominated, as well as Emma Donoghue for adapting her own novel.

In almost every Oscar category, there are British contenders — from Rampling and Ronan for Best Actress, to Fassbender and Redmayne for Best Actor, and Kate Winslet for Best Supporting Actress. Remarkably, Londoner and St Martin’s School of Art alumna Sandy Powell gets two separate Oscar nominations for Best Costume Design, for her work on Carol and Cinderella. There’s Asif Kapadia’s wrenching Amy up for Best Documentary and even Shaun the Sheep Movie taking on Inside Out for Best Animated Film.

So, however strongly you may feel about the #OscarsSoWhite cause — the Economist, incidentally, has produced some substantial statistics suggesting that “the number of black actors winning Oscars in this century has been pretty much in line with the size of America’s overall black population” (around 12 per cent) — we should not undersell the scale of British achievement throughout the industry. It’s not only the splashy winners — Eddie Redmayne, Steve McQueen, Slumdog Millionaire and co — that contribute. And it is precisely to single out the creativity in depth of British cinema that the Evening Standard British Film Awards exist.

If films such as 45 Years or The Lady in the Van could never have been made anywhere else, there are also British stars, technicians and writers playing crucial roles everywhere — think what a great action heroine Emily Blunt has turned out to be, or what a cameraman we have in Roger Deakins — as we’re shortly to see again in the Coen brothers’ new cracker, Hail, Caesar! — or how many people all round the world have been thrilled by John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, both 23-year-old Londoners, emerging as the hero and heroine of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the multi-record-breaking smash. British Film absolutely deserves its own dedicated awards. We look forward to celebrating it all on Sunday — and maybe having a few surprises too.

The winners of the Evening Standard British Film Awards will be announced at the ceremony on Sunday February 7. The Awards are held in partnership with Television Centre, a new residential, studio and office development in White City. For information, visit televisioncentre.com. #ESFilmAwards

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