Baftas 2022: a lively, good-taste nomination list despite some surprising omissions
msn.combullying and abuse. Clarke denied accusations of sexual misconduct and the award finally had to be suspended. But this year’s list is very lively: the best director section is not lacking in inclusivity and good taste: Aleem Khan, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Audrey Diwan, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jane Campion and Julia Ducournau. (All fascinating choices – though I personally am a Titane refusenik, finding that film inferior to Ducournau’s debut, Raw. )Leading the nominations tally is Denis Villeneuve’s gigantic sci-fi adaptation Dune with 11 (though no director nod), then it’s Jane Campion’s enthralling The Power of the Dog with eight, and below that is Kenneth Branagh’s wonderfully heartfelt and sympathetic personal movie Belfast with six, based on his own early memories of a boyhood in Northern Ireland at the beginning of the Troubles.
I was surprised actually not to see Belfast going higher than this and not actually leading the field, as it seems tailor-made to appeal to Bafta voters.
As far as snubs go, and whatever my reservations about the film, I am staggered to see nothing in the best actress category for Kristen Stewart’s enjoyable portrayal of Diana, Princess of Wales in Pablo Larraín’s satirical fantasy Spencer.
Maybe native-Brit Bafta voters are slightly more sceptical about Stewart’s reading of Diana than was generally assumed. And I am sorry to see that David Lowery’s superb The Green Knight, with Dev Patel as the troubled Arthurian hero – one of the very best films of the year – seems to have been so widely forgotten.
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