The Golden Globes are unpredictable, but that is part of the fun. The most nominated film of the night (The Shape of Water) took home one Globe (Best Director). In this article we are going to present the results and discuss what this means going forward in this awards season.
Best Motion Picture – Drama
Winner: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
In a surprising move, the HFPA awarded the biggest prize of the night to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Many predicted The Shape of Water or The Post to win, and others, including us, hoped Call Me By Your Name would take the prize. But, why did Three Billboards win? It is a difficult question to ask, but it is possible that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) was moved by the story of female empowerment that portrays a set of nuanced, complex characters. The movie discusses themes of race, revenge, loss, grief, and rage. The movie is also a crowd-pleaser, earning the Toronto Film Festival audience award against steep competition.
Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Winner: Lady Bird
As expected, Lady Bird took the Globe home, and we are very pleased about it. Lady Bird is adored by many and rightfully so! There is no surprise here, but we still wished The Big Sick was in the conversation that night as it should have been nominated.
Best Performance by an Actress – Drama
Winner: Frances McDormand
Frances McDormand had a defiant performance as Mildred Haze, a woman from a small town in Missouri who took a stance against the police when she got impatient because there were not any leads in the case of her daughter, who had been raped and murdered. The script gives Frances several opportunities to showcase her skills as one of the best actresses out there.
Best Performance by an Actor – Drama
Winner: Gary Oldman
Gary Oldman plays Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour. This was expected by many as his performance features a great transformation and loud punchy lines in a historical documentary drama. It is hard to imagine that if the Hollywood Foreign Press Association could not resist the charms of Gary Oldman’s performance a good-old historical drama, the Academy would… This is unfortunate because we expected the Globes to reward the more nuanced and genius performance of Timothee Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name – who is a revelation and gives one of the best performances of the year.
Best Performance by an Actress – Musical or Comedy
Winner: Saoirse Ronan
We were big fans of Ronan’s performance in Brooklyn, and it was about time she got more recognition. Saoirse is a phenomenal young actress. She embraced this role as an American teenager and delivered one of the most candid portrayals of a high-school student of all time.
Best Performance by an Actor – Musical or Comedy
Winner: James Franco
James Franco plays Tommy Wiseau – the director and producer of The Room. In his role, Franco was a funnier version of Tommy Wiseau, while preserving Tommy’s essence and personality. Even though Daniel Kaluuya’s performance in Get Out was not strictly comedic, we still favored Daniel winning.
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Winner: Allison Janney
Allison Janney took the Golden Globe home after a surprising win over critics’ favorite Laurie Metcalf. We still haven’t see I, Tonya, but we better go watch it soon since it has been over-performing this awards season.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Winner: Sam Rockwell
Sam Rockwell is one of the favorites this season, but many expected Willem Dafoe to win this one. Rockwell winning was one of the early night indicators that the HFPA would choose to reward Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri with the biggest award of the night.
Best Director
Winner: Guillermo del Toro
Yes! Guillermo del Toro was rightly awarded the Golden Globe for his incredible work in The Shape of Water, a lovely fairly-tale adventure between a woman and a water creature.
Best Screenplay
Winner: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Now this was a pretty clear indicator that Three Billboards would over-perform that night and take the Best Motion Picture – Drama Golden Globe. This was surprising enough, when facing the steep competition of the most nominated movie of the night: The Shape of Water (written by Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor), the highly-acclaimed Lady Bird (written by Greta Gerwig), the politically-themed The Post (written by Josh Singer and Elizabeth Hannah), and one of the favorites of the night: Call Me By Your Name (written by the acclaimed James Ivory and director Luca Guadagnino).
Best Motion Picture – Animated
Winner: Coco
There is not much to add here; this was expected and honestly predictable. From the other worthy contenders, we have The Breadwinner, which is a great film, and Loving Vincent. But, we all know that Coco is being pushed by the huge animated juggernaut Pixar and was the most popular animated movie of 2017. The sad reality is that few people have even seen The Breadwinner. Don’t get us wrong, we LOVED Coco, but year after year it becomes more apparent that Pixar and Disney have just too much power over the academy.
Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language
Winner: In The Fade
All the foreign movies nominated were premiered and shown at foreign film festivals. We have The Square, In The Fade, and Loveless, which premiered at Cannes 2017; A Fantastic Woman, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival; and, finally First They Killed My Father, an Angelina Jolie production that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.
This category was very unpredictable. After The Square got the Palme D’Or (top prize at Cannes), got many of the critic circles’ awards, and won pretty much every category at the European Film Awards, we expected that to win – even if we did not love the film when we watched it at the New York Film Festival.
But what does this all mean?
We can learn a few things from the Golden Globes, but the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is a very small group (less than 200 journalists). This means that even though the demographics can tell us something, we can learn very little about what The Academy (a much larger group) would do.
The biggest message is that most people haven’t really been turned off by the divisive (and “politically incorrect”) aspects of Three Billboards. So, Three Billboards stands strong and is now predicted as one of the Oscar favorites. Does this mean it is going to win as many awards at the Oscars? Certainly not because The Academy has also added a new set of members who change the demographics of the voting group. But after Three Billboards just won the Critics Choice Best Ensemble award, it now is the front-funner for the Best Picture Academy Award. We personally are not sure if Three Billboards will win Best Picture because of the new ranked voting system used by The Academy.
We are still frustrated that Lady Bird, one of the best movies of the year and one of the most acclaimed, did not earn its director a nomination. This is outrageous considering that it was good enough to nab both the Best Motion Picture award and the Best Actress. The good news is that the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Nominations came out today and both Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig’s names were included in the nominees. The DGA voting population and the voting population who votes for the Best Directing Academy Award widely overlap.
Film and Tonic 