The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh’s 1923-set story of a friendship wrecked on a small Irish island, has picked up eight nominations for next year’s Golden Globes.
McDonagh’s follow-up to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has been nominated for best picture – drama or comedy, as well as director, screenplay, score, leading actor in a comedy or musical (Colin Farrell), supporting actress (Kerry Condon) and twice for best supporting actor (Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan).
No women are in the running for best director this year, and none of the 10-strong best picture nominees was directed by a woman. Sarah Polley is the only female screenplay nominee, for Women Talking. Only nine women have been up for best director in the Globes’ 80 year history, and only three have won: Barbra Streisand for Yentl in 1983, Chloé Zhao for Nomadland in 2020 and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog in 2021.
In an awards season so far foggy on clear frontrunners, McDonagh’s success lends early momentum to his movie, with much-loved multi-universe epic Everything Everywhere All at Once coming in second with six nominations, for best comedy or musical, screenplay, director (for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), leading actress in a comedy or musical (Michelle Yeoh), supporting actress (Jamie Lee Curtis) and supporting actor (Ke Huy Quan).
Heavyweight titles from Steven Spielberg and Damien Chazelle tied for third on the nominations scoreboard, with Spielberg’s autobiographical drama The Fabelmans up for drama, screenplay, score, director and actress in a drama for Michelle Williams.
Another ode to Hollywood, Chazelle’s lavish Babylon, overcame mixed reviews to be celebrated in the categories for leading actor in a comedy or musical (Diego Calva), supporting actor (Brad Pitt), supporting actress (Margot Robbie), score and best comedy or musical.
Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron’s belated sequel to his 2009’s 3D hit, has been recognised for director and drama, where it’s up against another belated sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, which also scored a nod for Lady Gaga’s original song, Hold My Hand.
Todd Field’s first film since 2006, the ecstatically reviewed Tár, completes the drama nominees; Cate Blanchett is also up for leading actress in a drama for her performance as a pre-eminent conductor facing professional ruin.
Bill Nighy vies for his first leading Golden Globe for his role as a terminally ill civil servant in Living, against frontrunner Brendan Fraser, who plays a morbidly obese teacher in The Whale. Other contenders in the drama category include Hugh Jackman for The Son, Jeremy Pope, The Inspection and Austin Butler for Elvis.
Butler’s inclusion in that category – rather than the comedy or music division – will raise eyebrows among many viewers of Baz Lurhmann’s musical biopic. But positioning Butler in the drama division looks a similar tactic to that followed for Rami Malik’s awards season sweep for Bohemian Rhapsody.
Other Brits in the running this year include Ralph Fiennes for The Menu and Daniel Craig for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, both in the leading actor in a comedy or musical category, while Eddie Redmayne is up for supporting actor for The Good Nurse.
Emma Thompson and Lesley Manville are both nominated in the actress in a comedy or musical, the former for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and the latter for Mrs Harris Goes to Paris.
Meanwhile Olivia Colman faces off against Blanchett, Williams, Viola Davis (The Woman King) and Ana de Armas (Blonde) for actress in a drama for her performances as a cinema manager battling mental health problems in Margate in Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light.
Colin Firth, who co-stars in that film, is one of three Brits competing for best performance by an actor in a limited series, anthology series, or a motion picture made for television. Firth has been recognised for his work in thriller The Staircase; Taron Egerton for prison chiller Black Bird and Andrew Garfield for Mormon crime drama Under the Banner of Heaven.
Meanwhile, barnstorming Indian epic RRR is up for the international film prize, facing competition from revisionist German war movie All Quiet on the Western Front and Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave.
The Golden Globes award ceremony will screen live on 10 January this year, following last year’s boycott of the ceremony by NBC. The broadcast dropped its coverage of the 2022 edition following accusations against its organisers, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), of “ethical lapses” and of failing to maintain a sufficiently diverse membership.
The ongoing scandal triggered a boycott by Hollywood stars and their publicists, and the HFPA opted to announce its 2022 winners in a pared-down ceremony with no audience.
The HFPA has taken steps to reform itself: in July it was acquired by Eldridge Industries, with Eldridge’s Todd Boehly as interim CEO, and in September it announced it had appointed 103 non-member voters to increase the diversity of its voting pool, saying that its voters were now 52% female and 51.5% racially and ethnically diverse (of which 19.5% Latinx, 12% Asian, 10% Black and 10% Middle Eastern).
The HFPA’s president Helen Hoehne also said the organisation had banned its members from accepting gifts from studios.
However, the HFPA has not managed to extricate itself fully from crisis: best actor frontrunner Fraser announced in November he would not attend the awards ceremony after alleging that he was sexually assaulted in 2003 by Philip Berk, a longtime HFPA member and a former president of the organisation.
Hoehne responded by saying: “I personally, sincerely hope … we are able to regain Mr Fraser’s trust, along with the trust of the entire entertainment community.”
