Making Sense of the BAFTA Jury and BAFTA Members Nominations

The BAFTAs aren’t really the BAFTAs as we once knew them. Meaning, they aren’t really a consensus vote. They are a tightly micromanaged jury vote to spare the membership embarrassment or bad headlines for not being inclusive enough. This is how they define their jury:

Juries are made up of industry experts, with each jury comprised of BAFTA members from a diverse range of backgrounds, experience, gender, location and age groups.

But as of writing this, I can’t find information on their juries. You can’t really predict these without knowing their identity or history. A category as important as Best Director should not be, I don’t think, left in the hands of a jury, but rather their directing branch, as the Academy does. That is the very least they deserve. Becoming a BAFTA member and having a vote should be a high honor that caps a career. Instead, they’re meant to huddle out of sight while the “experts” are brought in to make it better.

Here are their voting practices in the specific categories:

The other thing to note is that the BAFTA nominations were announced after Oscar ballots were submitted. That means there is no chance of influencing the Oscar nominations at all. But they serve their purpose, which is to get the institution out of a jam. Reading anything into the acting categories is basically like fan fiction role play for Film Twitter.

In the same way they celebrated the Gothams and the various film critics awards, so too will Film Twitter celebrate these jury choices. So perhaps that is enough. Perhaps that can be its own celebration. But to think they have any sort of connection to the broader voting public is, well, wishful thinking I guess — if you like their choices.

Trying to read anything into the directing category is foolish. You need hundreds, not a handful, of people voting to get an idea of what is popular. That category and the acting categories will not factor into my own analysis. It would be like factoring in the Gothams. Their choices here are very much like what film critics groups would choose or what small individuals of sophisticated people might choose. But that isn’t what the Oscars are, and it’s not what the BAFTAs once were. They are large consensus popularity votes by an industry. If you mess with that, you have no clue what they actually think about anything.

It’s hard for me to even take any of the acting categories with any sort of serious consideration without knowing who the jury members are, what their background is, and what their tastes are. You simply can’t understand why they pick what they picked without knowing that. We only have last year to go by wherein, after all of their efforts to be inclusive and diverse, they still picked two white actors to win in lead as did the Academy. My friend called it the “BAFTA revolt,” which I thought was hilarious. So just briefly, let’s look at their acting categories:

LEADING ACTRESS
LADY GAGA House of Gucci
ALANA HAIM Licorice Pizza
EMILIA JONES CODA
RENATE REINSVE The Worst Person in the World
JOANNA SCANLAN After Love
TESSA THOMPSON Passing

Are you seriously telling me that after all that, they still only picked one non-white actress? Yes, that is what happened. So what is the ever-loving point? I don’t even know what they’re trying to do anymore. What we do know is that Film Twitter is likely to be supportive and since they trickle up to mainstream media, more or less, they will get decent press anyway? No Jennifer Hudson, because of course. The critics shunned her for an entire year practically, even though audiences responded to her performance. These are all good picks, but they’re not BAFTA picks. They’re jury picks, and we should never forget that. Only one of them, maybe two, is likely to cross over. So that means people will assume only Lady Gaga can now win the award, bouncing off of last year’s BAFTA revolt. But um. No. That isn’t what it necessarily means. Herding cats is what it means. The SAG is likely to be your better guide of the eventual Oscar winner.

Meanwhile, Kristen Stewart is still in limbo. We don’t know if she’ll turn up at the Oscars or not. A very Film Twitter-ish/film critics-ish jury did not select her for who knows what reason. I’m sure people have their theories. But that means nothing when it comes to the Academy. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. We just don’t know.

Still, with such a confusing year of nominations being announced all on the same day and the lingering specter of COVID, it’s anyone’s guess how any of this will go.

Best Director is a hot mess. It is another Twitter fantasy roleplay. They should rename these awards the Film Twitter Jury Prize. I’m only half-kidding here. The BAFTA members have to sit there and watch all of this go down knowing that these nominees do not reflect their idea of “best.”

DIRECTOR
AFTER LOVE Aleem Khan
DRIVE MY CAR Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
HAPPENING Audrey Diwan
LICORICE PIZZA Paul Thomas Anderson
THE POWER OF THE DOG Jane Campion
TITANE Julia Ducournau

No Steven Spielberg. No Kenneth Branagh. No Denis Villeneuve, even with Dune leading the field with 11 nominations. And that means nothing in terms of the Oscar race. We know Jane Campion is winning anyway, but the whole point of large consensus industry awards is to show what they all think is the best. And that isn’t what this is.

BAFTA did not choose any of the directing nominees. The jury did. Like 10 people. BAFTA members have been put in BAFTA jail until they can learn how to vote like Film Twitter. When that happens, I expect they will be let out of jail.

Last thing on the jury selections – these aren’t exactly diverse and inclusive unless you think “inclusive” means what film critics prefer.

So let’s look at the other categories where the entire membership voted instead.

Best Picture

BELFAST
DON’T LOOK UP
DUNE
LICORICE PIZZA
THE POWER OF THE DOG

Okay, meanwhile back in the real world we get an example of what movies they actually liked, more or less. In the old days, the Best Picture and Best Director categories wouldn’t exactly line up. Now we only have two movies that do – the two the jury approved of and the two the members liked are Licorice Pizza and The Power of the Dog. Not surprising, since that is true of film critics as well.

And then screenplay:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
BEING THE RICARDOS Aaron Sorkin
BELFAST Kenneth Branagh
DON’T LOOK UP Adam McKay
KING RICHARD Zach Baylin
LICORICE PIZZA Paul Thomas Anderson

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
CODA Siân Heder
DRIVE MY CAR Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
DUNE Denis Villeneuve
THE LOST DAUGHTER Maggie Gyllenhaal
THE POWER OF THE DOG Jane Campion

The thing I would note about these is that Hamaguchi got a screenplay nod by the entire membership. I think that matters, personally, because it is a signal that it might crack the Oscar screenplay list too. Had the Best Director category been voted on by the entire membership or had their nominations been released prior to the Oscar ballots due date, there might be a chance Hamaguchi is that fifth slot. He still might be. That is not a bad way to go, but you have to figure out which of the current DGA five to dump. It ain’t gonna be Paul Thomas Anderson, and I personally don’t think it will be Kenneth Branagh.  But I guess you never know. Otherwise, these look as we would expect. They show you which films they liked the best.

The only other thing I would note here is that Dune is coming on strong with 11 non-jury nominations. The Power of the Dog has four non-jury nominations, though we would expect their jury picks to align with the Academy’s, so roughly four. Belfast has six total, and one of those (Best British Film) is by the jury. Licorice Pizza has five, though two of those nominations are by the jury. So Dune is a monster leading this thing. How hilarious is it, then, that the director is omitted.

That is how the cookie crumbles, my friends. It is what it is. All in all, I’m going to take away from this three things:

1) Dune is a monster
2) Hamaguchi in play
3) Don’t Look Up is well-liked enough to get Best Film though we can’t know how that translates over.

In a parallel universe or a different website, you would get a much more broad-minded spin on these. But I’m an old timer. And a traditionalist. I don’t see any point to having a jury control that much of the beating heart of these awards. For whatever that is worth (which isn’t much). History should reflect what their industry thought were the best and to have left off so many of the actual best in order to satisfy — I don’t even know what exactly — seems to defeat the whole purpose.

The BAFTAs will have their live ceremony, and we’ll be watching to see whether or not it matters if their nominees matched with Oscar. Traditionally, that is how it works. There is a status bump for those that have a nomination. Maybe they will vote that way, maybe they won’t. Who knows.

This site is about the Oscar race. That is why we focus on that. And if we didn’t, if we tried to pretend we were film critics, they would not let us (or me) into the club anyway. It’s like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. You can’t pretend to be something you ain’t.