Cinema sold the Globe: Steven Spielberg was responsible for Shakespeare

Jennifer Lawrence's naked dress, jokes about George Clooney and Timothy Chalamet, Portuguese from the stage, the Amy Poehler award for the best podcast — this will be remembered at the 83rd Golden Globes. The prestigious award was presented on Sunday evening (early Monday morning in Moscow), and it was one of the most predictable ceremonies in the long history of the award, founded by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Leonardo DiCaprio, Yorgos Lanthimos, Richard Linklater, Guillermo del Toro and Jafar Panahi were left with nothing. The films and TV series "Battle after Battle", "Hamnet", "Transitional Age" and, what can be considered the only surprise, the Brazilian "Secret Agent" were honored here. Izvestia tells the most interesting story about the results of the Golden Globes.

Politics at the Golden Globes

Until 2023, the Golden Globe was an award of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and eventually came to such a crisis that the association ceased to exist, and the voting composition radically changed. Since that moment, the Golden Globe Foundation has been engaged in the Globe, which has relied on representation and tried to reincarnate the fading, but still the main award after the Oscar with an eighty-year history.

This year's ceremony had chances to sound loud. For example, Jafar Panahi's film "A Simple Accident", the winner of the Cannes Film Festival, had four nominations. It is clear that the voting took place before the current events, and yet awarding prizes to Panahi's Cannes rivals seemed declarative today.

At the same time, there was almost more politics than at the last Oscar. The stars themselves spoke about Iran in their speeches. Presenter Nikki Glazer sadly joked that Jafar Panahi could not come to the award, and he was "canceled" in his homeland in a completely different way than Hollywood philanderers were "canceled". Actor Wagner Moura, receiving a prize for his role in The Secret Agent, stated:

— Although we are sitting in this beautiful hall, we cannot ignore the courage of those who are now on the streets of Tehran and Caracas. We see people who literally lay down their lives for the right to be heard, the right to be free. My heart goes out to my Iranian colleagues today, who, like Jafar Panahi, are forced to remain silent or be abroad.… Art can be a mirror, but sometimes it has to be a megaphone. I hope one day the stories we tell will be stronger than walls, sanctions and violence.

Actress Sarah Snook, before presenting the Ray Seahorn Award for the series "Out of Many," said from the stage:

— We are standing here celebrating the stories that unite us. But today it's hard not to think about those whose stories are being interrupted right now. My heart aches for every mother from Israel to Gaza who can't just put her child to sleep safely tonight. We hope that art will help us find a path to compassion, which is now so lacking.

The creators of the Pitt series were alarmed about the United States, saying that "the country is divided like never before." There were several jokes about Donald Trump, for example, that he could impose a 200 percent duty on stars if they started filming only in Ohio. Or that George Clooney won the Golden Globe for the last time so long ago that Timothy Chalamet (who stole the prize from Clooney) was three years old at the time, and Trump did not yet know that Greenland was for sale.

This dialogue between Clooney and his old friend Don Cheadle was one of the best moments of the evening. Cheadle teased Clooney that they hadn't given him anything, Clooney smiled shyly and politely snapped, but Cheadle couldn't get away.

"I saw your face when Timothy Chalamet was announced,— he rattled. It was the face of a man who suddenly realized that his time had passed and the moisturizer was no longer working.

Clooney responded by saying that it would have been better if he had gone out to present the prize with Brad Pitt, it was much more pleasant to stand next to him. And Cheadle joked that Pitt would not have been involved in charity work and brought out veterans who were about to become museum exhibits.

Who received the prizes

Everything was clear here in almost all the nominations. "Battle after Battle" led the way among the full meters. The prizes, however, did not go to Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, but Paul Thomas Anderson was declared the best screenwriter and director, and the best supporting actress was Tiyana Taylor. And the prize for the best comedy/musical was also awarded to this picture. There are four prizes out of nine nominations.

"I've always thought that screenwriters are just professional thieves who can't be caught," joked Paul Thomas Anderson, receiving the screenplay prize. — For example, I stole the phrase from Thomas Pynchon, the author of the novel "Battle after Battle," that "it's never too late to have a happy childhood." And Benicio del Toro's hero built the whole arc around this phrase. And I stole a line from Nina Simone from her interview.: "I'll tell you what freedom is for me: not to be afraid."

There was a lot of joking about which categories films and artists were included in, and Nikki Glaser simply stated that this award was "the only place where 'Battle for Battle' and 'Wicked' are considered the same type of film." They immediately remembered that "The Martian" by the "wonderful comedian" Ridley Scott also once appeared in this nomination. However, these jokes are heard every year, and everyone has long been accustomed to them.

The "Transitional Age" towered among the series, and the artists from there, including 16-year-old Owen Cooper, only managed to rise for awards. And next to it, the Studio and Pitt were honored. When receiving the award for best Drama series, Pitt showrunner John Wells joked that "you may have made a mistake, but we definitely won't give this envelope back."

Richard Linklater was completely "swept" — he had two films presented in different categories, "New Wave" and "Blue Moon". Both were rewarded with prizes and reviews, but the Globe chose to ignore them this time. It seemed that Joachim Trier's "Sentimental Value" would have a lot of prizes, but only Stellan Skarsgard was given the Globe for Best Supporting Actor. Skarsgard was very moved. "Frankenstein", "Bugonia", "Method of Elimination", "Sorry, baby" remained without awards. A couple of minor prizes went to the Sinners. "K-pop Demon Hunters", as expected, won the award for "Best Animated Film" and "Best Song".

— We were shooting a story about the most famous Englishman in history, and I suddenly realized that it was directed by a woman from China (Chloe Zhao. — Ed.), the main role is played by a guy from Ireland (Paul Meskal. — Ed.), I'm playing the second main role — another Irishwoman, — reflected Jessie Buckley, who won the award for best actress in the film "Hamnet". — And our team is half Polish. We literally gathered the whole world in one small garden in Stratford to tell the story of grief. And it worked! It turned out that to understand the heart of the English genius, you don't need a passport — you just need to be human.

The Golden Globe for Hamnet as the best drama concluded the evening, and the nominees were selected in this category so that Chloe Zhao's film simply had no one to compete with: all the competitors went to comedies and musicals. And here, of course, the organizers of the award benefited from the fact that the film was produced by Steven Spielberg, the personification of modern cinema, a great storyteller and at the same time the creator of outstanding dramas. It fell to him to sum up the results, receiving a prize.

"They say that history is what we write down, but art is what we remember,— said Spielberg. —Hamnet is a film for everyone who has ever lost and found the strength to continue. And a reminder that even the deepest pain can give birth to something immortal.

With that, they wished the audience a "happy Chalamet" and dispersed. By the way, the film for which he won the prize, "Marty the Magnificent," is being released in Russia this week. Read an interview with Timothy Chalamet about this role in Izvestia in the coming days.