What exactly is going on this awards season? With the Baftas crowning All Quiet on the Western Front as its Best Film winner, we’ve officially entered chaos mode. All bets are off. Anything could happen. The German-produced take on Erich Maria Remarque’s piercing, anti-war novel – in which innocent patriotism goes curdled and cold in the trenches of the First World War – first dropped on Netflix without much fanfare, back in October. The words “Bafta”, “Oscar”, and “winner” were nowhere to be seen.
Flash forward to Sunday night’s ceremony, and All Quiet on the Western Front has not only walked away with the top prize, but its cumulative seven wins mean it’s now beaten out Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso as the most highly decorated non-English language film in Bafta history. Let me be clear about why exactly this win has awards prognosticators everywhere tearing their hair out. The shock here isn’t because All Quiet on the Western Front is undeserving – it’s been praised from all corners, and the reviews have been almost universally positive – but because it essentially throws out the window all the typical rules about how these awards work. People will be annoyed. But, trust me, awards season could really do with a little more anarchy.
