15 March 2022 - BAFTA Awards 2022
Jane Campion leads roll-call of worthy winners as Baftas hit all the right notes
Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian, 13/03/2022)
The Power of the Dog, the story of a troubled family of ranchers in 1920s Montana, is an essay in dysfunction, a film in the business of upending social and generic norms. It is a hugely satisfying, intriguing, stimulating drama with a whiplash of an ending that took us from the realm of alt-western to alt-body horror. It was this film’s mythic quality, its dreamlike knight’s-move away from the world generally represented in westerns, that no doubt resonated with Bafta voters, who awarded it best film and gave best director for the increasingly celebrated Jane Campion.
Baftas 2022: 5 biggest talking points, from Putin jokes to swipes at JK Rowling
Ellie Harrison (The Independent, 14/03/2022)
The 2022 Bafta Film Awards were a sparkling return to form, with the starriest names in cinema walking the red carpet and attending the ceremony in person for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
Comedian Rebel Wilson hosted proceedings, on a night where Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune led the pack with 11 nominations, closely followed by Jane Campion’s western The Power of the Dog, which amassed a total of eight.
Filthy gags, muted politics and Bassey bossing it: what we learned from the Baftas 2022
Catherine Shoard, Andrew Pulver and Alex Needham (The Guardian, 13/03/2022)
The key takeaways from a ceremony that saw The Power of the Dog triumph – but Coda and Belfast emerge the real winners.
Oscars: ‘Power of the Dog’ Emerges As Clear Frontrunner After Jam-Packed Awards Weekend
Scott Feinberg (The Hollywood Reporter, 14/03/2022)
This last weekend before the start of the final round of Oscars voting March 17 was packed with important Oscar “precursors” on both sides of the Atlantic — the Directors Guild of America Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards in London and the Critics Choice Awards in both places Sunday — and if one thing is clear after all of it, it is that The Power of the Dog is now the film to beat for best picture.
Jane Campion’s psychological Western may not be Sam Elliott’s favorite outing of 2021, but it clearly is the preferred choice of many others, having claimed the top prizes of all three groups. And while the Oscars’ top prize is, unlike these groups’, determined by a preferential ballot of the sort employed by only one other precursor — the Producers Guild of America, which will weigh in next weekend — it is impossible to argue that any other film is better positioned for Oscar glory at this time.