This may sound familiar: last night The Artist won big at an awards ceremony. The London Critics' Circle gave the silent black and white flick film of the year, director of the year and actor of the year at a star-mottled ceremony on London's South Bank.
Michel Hazanavicius's homage to Hollywood's golden age doesn't need an awards boost. Its slow crawl from rank outsider to Oscar favourite accelerated to a mad dash with its triumph at the Golden Globes last week. However it was heartening to see that, when the director and his star Jean Dujardin stepped up to receive their awards at the BFI Southbank on Thursday, they were collecting their prizes alongside talents the Oscars are unlikely to honour.
Name a high-profile award that Submarine's Craig Roberts (the Critics' Circle's young British performer of the year) will win this year. Or another ceremony that will see Asghar Farhadi's A Separation awarded three times over. Add to that multiple nominations for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, Lars von Trier's Melancholia (the US National Society of Film Critics's film of the year) and Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive. All were celebrated in Cannes, ignored by the Globes and are likely to be overlooked by the Academy. You get the strange sense that we're still relying on venerable institutions like the Critics' Circle to offer an alternative.
Film journalism's old guard live in interesting times. On the one hand "the art of criticism" as promoted by the Critics' Circle – a 430-strong body that celebrates its centenary next year – is being outpaced by bloggers less beholden to the idea that a serious discussion of film should be delivered weekly to the silent consumer's door. Twitter allows for a consensus to be formed and reinforced within minutes of the credits rolling. Meanwhile, producer Scott Rudin's decision to "ban" New Yorker critic David Denby from his future films after Denby broke a review embargo suggests that there is little room in Hollywood's business model for press coverage that doesn't adhere to the old rules.
"It's clear that critics have an increasingly influential voice in awards races," said London Critics' Circle chair Jason Solomons last night. There's evidence to support that view too. The Academy's decision to restructure its documentary nomination process so that only films reviewed by the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times are eligible for consideration directly ties the critics' agenda in with that of the Oscars. Interestingly, there's been no mention as yet as to whether a web-only review would qualify a film under the new system (which is set to come into force next year). If so then what's a review? A video? A blogpost? A tweet?
London's critics didn't get it all right yesterday. Gary Oldman remains gong-less for his brilliantly unassuming turn in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, despite being nominated for British actor of the year and actor of the year. John McDonagh's cop comedy The Guard seems to be out of the race altogether. It's been nominated for one Bafta (original screenplay), but if it was going win a high-profile award it would have won it here. Drive – a favourite among the Twitter cabal – drove off empty-handed. What these results suggest is that the tiers between the critical opinion of the Academy and the long-serving print journalists remain. Meanwhile the new bunch are busy making a stand underneath them both.
Last night saw an award shared for the first time in the Critics' Circle's history, with both The Iron Lady's Meryl Streep and Margaret's Anna Paquin named best actress. It seems an apt signifier – a divvy-up between the dead cert for this year's best actress Oscar and the star of a film that was ignored by its studio until critics (print and "other") started to champion it. The stark split – between the totally obvious and the relatively obscure – seems fitting. One for them, and one for an increasingly fragmented us. "Audacter et Sincere", reads the Critics' Circle's motto. Boldly and frankly. For big and for small. For now.
