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No glitz please -- we're British_________
LONDON --The British can't really do movie glamour. It's not their fault -- it's a genetic thing. But it's time someone told them, and time they accepted it. The U.K. version of the Oscars -- the BAFTA Awards, hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts -- were held last week in London, and the results were, to borrow a local expression, fairly cringemaking. The academy tried to streamline things this year by separating out the television awards and whipping up a flashy "50th Anniversary" logo to rival the American show. But the event's seams were still showing. While everyone goes to the Oscars -- the notable point being who's skipped it -- BAFTA is forced to hype its pre-recorded event by advertising those celebrities who actually agreed to show up. Look who's here! Hugh and Liz! Sigourney Weaver! Sean Connery! (Well, he's here to pick up a special achievement award, but still -- isn't he dashing in his kilt?) Juliette Binoche! Oh, and lots of other British actors including the casts of "The Full Monty" and "Nil by Mouth," the contrasting British successes of this year. The foreigners are generally celebs who are in town anyway, filming or doing a star turn in the London theater, so the least they can do is to pop over to the Grosvenor House Hotel in the pouring rain for a nice dinner. Attention is lavished on Kevin Spacey, who's now wowing audiences in Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh" at the same theater that recently snagged Binoche for a Pirandello play. This year's host, a brilliant mimic named Rory Bremner, was overwhelmed by the star wattage. He can do an uncanny rendition of Tony Blair's crawling smile or President Clinton's affable shrug, but he is hopeless in the presence of beautiful women -- "Julia Roberts!" he announces, with gushed astonishment -- and is witless in his banter with Hugh Grant. "So you're about to begin work on the new film by Richard Curtis, who scripted 'Four Weddings'?" "That's right." "But it doesn't have a title yet?" "No," Hugh apologizes, before going on with characteristic self-deprecation to tell jokes about having always played girls' roles in his school plays, as he presents the award for best actress. That Judi Dench collects this -- her gracious acceptance speech a short stream of her lovely, husky vowels -- points up the main role the BAFTAs have carved out for themselves. Presented about a month after the Oscars, the BAFTAs have become an opportunity for the discerning British film community to get right what silly sentimental Hollywood got wrong. Thus there's compensation not just for snubbed British actors like Dench or "The Full Monty's" Robert Carlyle, who wins best actor, but also for overlooked American performers. This year Sigourney Weaver is named best supporting actress for her role in "The Ice Storm" -- giving her a chance to make an effusive, Oscar-like speech after making a tart reference to the movie's failure to earn any other major prizes. So the nominations are an odd bunch, slanted heavily toward British films but with other quality productions rounding out the list. (Baz Luhrmann, for instance, picks up best director for "Romeo and Juliet.") There are also a few extra categories thrown in, so everyone has a chance to win something -- kind of like at camp. "The Full Monty" wins something called the "Audience Prize" for popularity, as well as the best film of the year; but it is Gary Oldman's powerful "Nil by Mouth" that wins best British film and also best original screenplay. In being honored with a special award given previously to cinema gods such as Charlie Chaplin and John Gielgud, Connery faces two presenters who give the only funny and improvised speeches of the evening. The first is Billy Connolly, who is beautifully irreverent, calling Connery terrible names and making raw political cracks about Scotland. The second is the elegant patron of BAFTA, Princess Anne, whose long years spent opening hospital wards and libraries seem to have given her an easy eloquence that spares her having to squint into the unreadable autocue. In the show's final quarter hour, which should mark its climax, the mike is handed over disastrously to a dreary representative from the BAFTAs' corporate sponsor, who mumbles about new funding for British screenwriters. What went wrong? It's not as though they can't do award ceremonies here. A minor classic of the genre is the annual broadcast -- live! -- of the nation's prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize, commentated by a panel of non-nominated novelists who offer huffy and often hostile opinions of the short-listed contenders. And theater, as you'd expect, is a point of cultural strength; the press has coined a phrase, "luvviedom," to capture the kiss-kissing, "Luvvie!" chumminess that characterizes the world of England's real stars -- Ians Holm and McKellen, directors such as Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner, Dame Judi, Dame Maggie, Dame Diana. (That's Dench, Smith and Rigg, in case you don't know your dames.) A comedy awards program on the small screen already produced a classic moment of aggressive British hilarity, when the elderly Spike Milligan took the stage to collect an award and called Prince Charles, who had been praising him, a "groveling bastard." This is what the British do best: cut people down. The morning after the BAFTAs the papers hardly mentioned "Nil by Mouth's" impressive success, or the significance of Oldman's coming home to make the film. No, the headlines were all variations on "Full Monty Sinks Titanic," followed by unrestrained gloating that the giant zillion-dollar ship won not a single award in this country. Michael Caine caught the mood when he stepped up to present the final prize for best movie and said, "I just want to say that if 'Titanic' doesn't win this, its producers shouldn't worry -- I have no doubt that this nomination will really push the film over the edge."
Sylvia Brownrigg lives in London. Her collection of stories, "Ten Women Who Shook the World," was published last year in the U.K. |
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