Film Inquiry

2020 Golden Globe Awards: The Motion Pictures

Soham Gadre

Sam Mendes accepting his Golden Globe for best drama motion picture for “1917.” Photo Credit: Paul Drinkwater/NBC

Congrats to the Golden Globes for another ceremony in the books, the fifth one hosted by Ricky Gervais, who decided to simply read jokes that we’ve all heard before from a flashcard. Perhaps he did us (or at least me) a favor in this regard, because the audience tolerance for long-winded jokes and antics which 98% of the time don’t land (ask Jimmy Kimmel) has waned every year to the point now where the opening monologue and joke inserts by the host are something we just need to get through like a chore. Some people choose to wash the dishes during this. Others go to the bathroom. I, luckily, couldn’t get my internet connection to work during the opening monologue. Lucky me. For the rest of the show Gervais just popped in sporadically, said his his one liners (the best of which was the last one on Harvey Weinstein), and moved the show along. In that respect, this was arguably Gervais’s best comedic performance in years because it wasn’t a performance at all.

The Impressive Gimmicks

A lot of movies which came out and won awards used narrative and technical gimmicks that are easy trappings for awards voters who, as director Bong Joon-ho cheekily acknowledged during his acceptance speech for Parasite’s Best Foreign Film win, don’t really have a diverse palette for the kind of cinema they watch. The Academy is no different of course, considering many of the nominees and winners in the technical category are more representative and evaluative of the quantities of time and process it must have taken to accomplish the editing, sound, camerawork, costumes etc rather than if those things are done appropriately well for the film.

2020 Golden Globe Awards: The Motion Pictures
1917 (2019) – source: Universal Pictures

The biggest surprise of the ceremony came at the major awards, where Sam Mendes’s World War I drama 1917, for which the promotional campaign made it look like a prequel to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, pocket-watch ticking in the soundtrack and all, won both the Best Director award for Mendes and Best Motion Picture – Drama.

Running off the same kind of energy of the “single tracking shot” that Alejandro González Iñarritu used for Birdman (which also won Best Picture at the Globes en route to an Oscar win as well), 1917 went very under-the-radar among awards prognosticators due to the heavy-weight competition of Tarantino and Scorsese in the running. It also released in very few theaters in the U.S. In reality we should’ve realized an epic war-time film like this, mixing the high-stakes mission of Saving Private Ryan with Dunkirk’s race-against-time thrills and added technical gimmickry of “shot in a single take but actually just very cleverly edited” would be a recipe to make awards voters impressed.

We Need to Talk About Quentin

Tarantino’s win for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a divisive topic of discussion, though not for the reason I thought it should be. Tarantino’s scripts generally employ the gimmicks of cross-referencing not only cinematic inspirations, but the process and structures of other art mediums. In his latest script he uses a timely literature trope of the “unreliable narrator”. Some would say this is for the sake of chastising his own character’s honesty, and reclaiming a tragic history of the city he grew up in. But I never found Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that deep, possibly because I just don’t think Tarantino is a deep filmmaker.

He is as childlike in his fascination for cinema as Spielberg is and as (perhaps naively) optimistic about justice and redemption. None of this is a bad thing on its face, but we’ve seen this before and with this script, Inglorious Basterds, and Django, Tarantino seems to have taken an opposite road to Malick, Kaurismaki, Scorsese, Ken Loach, and Mike Leigh, instead settling for trying to re-do histories which he finds too unsettling to tackle head-on. In other words, perfectly agreeable for awards season.

You Laika That!

About five hours after Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins, famous for his post-game celebration of yelling the phrase “You Like That!” after a signature win, stunned the football world by knocking off Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints in the NFC Wild Card game, Laika Productions finally beat Disney and Pixar for an award. Laika, which specializes in intricately constructed and imaginative stop-motion animation, won the Best Animated Film award for Missing Link beating out heavy favorites Frozen 2 and The Lion King (which I’m pretty sure Disney tried to convince us was “live action” but whatever).

The Missing Link (2019) – source: Laika Productions

This was the night’s most feel-good win, (putting aside Tom Hanks’ Cecil B. DeMille award) not for any real tangible reason, but because a year ago, there was serious talk regarding Disney strong-arming awards shows to include categories which curry to their favor. For the HFPA to shut out the conglomerate studio, which has been ruthlessly buying major franchise entities and establishing itself as a potential monopoly, just gives me a warm feeling inside. I wish I could’ve seen Scorsese’s grin after that announcement.

Foreign Affairs

There were spurts of discussion at the Globes on foreign affairs ranging from potential war with Iran (though the country’s name was never directly said on camera) and solidarity with the people (but not mentioned, the 480 million animals) affected by the climate-change induced brush-fires in Australia.

Although a lot of us are jaded and understand that rich celebrities giving speeches about these things at a self-congratulatory event in Los Angeles doesn’t mean much, Russel Crowe’s message after winning Best Actor in a Mini-Series or TV Movie for The Loudest Voice which was read in his absence at least sounded sincere especially because he was in Australia at the time directly facing the catastrophe and it struck close to home for a lot of Hollywood’s artists who are Australian and have families in the region. You can donate to help out here.

source: NBC

If there’s a major cinematic lesson to take out of this awards show, and there usually isn’t, it also concerns the affairs of foreign countries. In Bong Joon-ho’s acceptance speech for Parasite, delivered in Korean, he said, “Once you overcome the inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many amazing films.” This statement gained more weight as the night went along, especially during the Best Director award presentation where Bong was referred to as a “new voice” (he’s been making movies for 20 years now).

For the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which literally has the F word that scares everyone in its name, the winners and nominees of the Golden Globes are generally relegated to Western-centric cinema and that too, most of it in English. A particularly funny moment of complete sincerity during the show happened when the presenters of the Best Original Score awards proudly declared the composers came from “all over the world” and then proceeded to list U.S., U.K., France, and Iceland as the countries. Sure.

What are your thoughts on the Golden Globes?

2020 Golden Globe Awards Winners: Motion Pictures

Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Best Motion Picture, Drama

Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language

Best Screenplay, Motion Picture

Best Original Song, Motion Picture

Best Original Score, Motion Picture

Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Best Motion Picture, Animated

Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama

Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

Best Director, Motion Picture

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