The Baftas can seem like another stepping stone on the long road to the Oscars, but the UK industry’s highest honour can assert its own identity when it wants. Last year the British Academy of Film and Television Arts gave its best actress award to Joanna Scanlan for After Love, a film scarcely seen across the Atlantic, and for the seventh time in the past eight years chose differently from the US Academy in the best film race. (Bafta went for Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog while the Oscar went to the wispy Coda: a point to the Brits there.)
Tomorrow night we can hope for more bold choices. Netflix, hot off its victory last year, once more boasts the top nominee. Not many expected Edward Berger’s German-language All Quiet on the Western Front to lead the field with a whopping 14 nods – the most for any film at the Baftas since The King’s Speech 12 years ago. Rather quietly released to the streaming service last November, this robustly stirring, immaculately crafted adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic first world war novel is well worth catching up with – even if its harrowing battle scenes really demand a large screen.
