Throughout Sunday evening’s Golden Globes, the host Nikki Glaser expertly ribbed the nominees in her opening monologue. Beaming presenters learn their strains off teleprompters. Some winners cried as they thanked their family members. The ceremony ran lengthy.
This was enterprise as traditional, in different phrases. Although the Globes have developed a repute for being a boozy affair, these contained in the ballroom appeared decided to generate a well mannered environment. Hollywood is present process loads of turbulence—a month in the past, Netflix struck a deal to buy Warner Bros., and a month from now, the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA will enter right into a recent spherical of contract talks that might result in one other strike—however Glaser delivered solely mild jokes concerning the trade’s precarity. A number of attendees wore tiny pins that learn “Be Good” in honor of Renee Nicole Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE agent final week in Minneapolis. The winners who talked about politics of their acceptance speeches opted for broader messages, describing how “we dwell in a really divided nation” and urging “a shared humanity.” The evening was a far cry from boisterous previous ceremonies that additionally came about in occasions of turmoil, and farther nonetheless from the work that was being honored.
The night’s remaining two movie winners captured the obvious stress between defining Hollywood as a spot for escapism and acknowledging real-world uncertainty. The Greatest Movement Image—Musical or Comedy winner One Battle After One other, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, is a propulsive thriller a couple of former revolutionary, who’s thrust again into his earlier life-style to avoid wasting his daughter. The Greatest Movement Image—Drama winner Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s tackle Maggie O’Farrell’s novel imagining the hidden origins of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is a potent tearjerker about artwork’s transformative energy. Each films are made by auteur filmmakers; each supply cinematic visions of bestsellers. However whereas One Battle After One other touches, as my colleague David Sims put it, a “uncooked nerve” in its examination of the prices of American political violence, Hamnet is its reverse in scope and tone: a proper, intimate interval piece concerning the Bard and his private tragedy.
Anointing this pair of movies got here throughout like a deliberate alternative. Taken collectively, they allowed voters to separate the distinction between making some extent concerning the world Hollywood faces and recusing themselves from doing so. One Battle After One other was essentially the most feted movie of the evening—it scored 4 trophies, together with Greatest Director for Anderson—but it was the somber Hamnet that closed the night because the winner of the final class introduced.
Consequently, One Battle After One other’s triumphs on the Globes didn’t really feel very like a coronation. As a substitute, final evening’s remarkably muted ceremony at occasions appeared uncertain of what it was meant to rejoice in any respect. The occasion is ostensibly meant to acknowledge the trade’s inventive expertise, but it didn’t broadcast one of many craft classes, Greatest Authentic Rating, which went to the Sinners composer Ludwig Goransson. The night can be imagined to characterize the tastes of the Globes voting physique—which consists of worldwide members of the press—but the one speech lower brief by music was that of Kleber Mendonça Filho, the director of the Greatest Non-English Movie winner, The Secret Agent. Even the freshly added Podcast class provided a complicated pattern of what constituted high quality: chitchat reveals hosted by celebrities and a information program from NPR.
Late within the evening, the comic Wanda Sykes lower by way of the monotony and introduced some sharpness to the stage. As she accepted the Greatest Efficiency in Stand-Up Comedy trophy for the absent Ricky Gervais, she thanked the trans neighborhood on his behalf, in a pointed jab at Gervais’s historical past of offensive joke-making. Fiery moments reminiscent of hers had been few and much between, although. The ceremony was dominated by winners that had far more of substance to say onscreen than on the podium. Many of the awarded movies aside from Hamnet, together with The Secret Agent, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Marty Supreme, and Sinners, are outlined by a way of urgency; the identical goes for the TV reveals honored, reminiscent of The Studio, The Pitt, and Adolescence. However with a handful of exceptions—reminiscent of Teyana Taylor, who gained for her efficiency in One Battle After One other, punctuating her speech with a rallying cry for her “brown sisters and little brown ladies” to keep in mind that “our softness isn’t a legal responsibility”—these within the ballroom appeared incapable of discovering a lot of a spark.
