Saltburn (2023)
Director: Emerald Fennell
Screenwriter: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe, Carey Mulligan

With the release of her debut feature film Promising Young Woman in 2020, Emerald Fennell established herself as one of the most exciting directors working today. Her candy-pop infused, #MeToo-inspired revenge thriller provoked challenging discussions and introduced the world to Fennell’s fresh voice and unique talents. With her sophomore effort Saltburn, can lightning strike twice?

The film opens at the beginning of the 2006/07 academic year as Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) enrols at Oxford University. Though Ollie struggles to make friends at first – hilariously summed up in the trailer by Ewan Mitchell’s great line “Did you know there was a college Christmas party tonight? NFI, me and you. Not fucking invited” – he quickly finds himself under the wing of charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Before long, Catton invites Ollie to stay with him over the summer at his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, Saltburn.

The title card of the picture finds itself scribbled across the film’s 4:3 frame, like the graffiti you’d find sprawled over an old school textbook. Immediately, with this simple design choice, Fennell sums up the schoolboy immaturity of many of the characters; they think the world revolves around them but really their problems are the sort of issues you’d find on the playground, and they hold onto their grudges forever. What makes it so terrifying, as their placement as the elite in society shows, is that these are the people who hold power. The ones that make the rules for everyone else yet don’t abide by them (a very funny karaoke scene in the film seems to poke fun at a very real example of this in recent British politics), the kind of people who don’t need to worry financially. There is maybe even something to be said about the latter point with regard to the film’s setting in 2007, right before the climax of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. 

Making up this abhorrent and aberrant family are an unforgettable cast of characters made up of the airhead family patriarch Sir James (Richard E. Grant), the oblivious family matriarch Elsbeth (Rosamund Pike), Felix, his siren-like sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) and their cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), a particularly mischievous jester-like character that entertains the whole family. Oh, and let’s not forget the ludicrously melancholic “Poor Dear” Pamela (Carey Mulligan). All of whom are portrayed wonderfully by each respective actor, often delivering hilarious comedic performances with such an immense depth to them that not only do they make us laugh but they offer a scarily accurate portrayal of the type of people we allow to control our world.

The loathsome behaviour and elitist thinking of each character is introduced very early on. This is perhaps best exemplified by Oliver’s first meeting with his tutor, in which he is essentially mocked for having completed the summer reading, rather than celebrated for his hard work. All the while Farleigh, who is twenty minutes late, gains the respect of the tutor due to his family name and the power that it holds. In this world, status beats out hard work every time. Equally so, the first time Oliver and Felix officially meet, Felix’s bike has a puncture and Oliver offers him his bike so that he can make it to class even though it is clear that Felix really wasn’t doing much to even attempt to fix his bike. Felix was raised to believe that all of life’s problems would be solved for him. 

In spite of all this, Oliver can’t help but to find himself seduced by their lavish lifestyles, just as we can’t help but to be tempted by the Catton family, leading to both us and Oliver finding ourselves entangled in their web. It is in the way that the film is shot that allows Fennell to seduce us so easily. Shooting the stately home as though it were a fetish object, Fennell captures the alluring nature of such a home in the most perfect way that it becomes clear why anybody who enters would never wish to leave again. 

Saltburn doesn’t produce a product that simply delivers a message of the evils of privileged high society, but instead delivers them as fully fleshed out humans of both good and bad doing. Just as Felix may be a spoilt brat he is also by far the most understanding of the family and the one who is constantly generous to Oliver for little reason other than genuine kindness. Jacob Elordi captures this in his layered performance as Felix, bringing a charm and charisma to the character as well as a childish nature.

Instead, Saltburn shows the evils of desire and the lengths that many will go to in order to get what they want. In the game that is Saltburn, everybody wants something and they are all playing against each other to get it. It’s like ‘Succession‘ for the ‘Skins’ generation.

Though it is certainly an ensemble piece and one in which each performer must be nothing short of brilliant in order to make the world of the movie work, the story really rests on the shoulders of lead actor Barry Keoghan. He, along with Fennell’s wonderful direction, brings Saltburn to life. As the film progresses and it is Oliver who becomes the desirable object, things begin to get interesting and Keoghan’s portrayal of this journey is nothing short of spectacular. Not only does he capture the growth and progression of his character with precision, but with each new scene he brings something a little different, making Oliver’s evolution all that more interesting. Come the end of the film, once Oliver has transformed into his final form, it is clear that what we have just witnessed is a special performance that will linger in the mind for years to come.

Deciding which of Fennell’s two feature films is better will inevitably come down to a matter of taste. For some, one message will hit harder than the other, but for others the pacing and structure will leave a lasting impact. It all comes down to the individual. What is clear, however, is that Emerald Fennell is one of the most exciting directors working today and Saltburn marks the second successive masterpiece in her short but impactful career.

Saltburn is a seductive odyssey of lust, desire and betrayal that plays out like a Shakespearean episode of ‘Skins’, with a slight dash of ‘Succession’. Perhaps just as importantly, it does for Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” what Promising Young Woman did for Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind”. Emerald Fennell has done it again.

Score: 23/24

Of course, none of this is a critique of any filmmakers. Indeed, directors should tackle whatever subjects they want to tackle and the resulting works will be all the better for it – I suspect Scorsese’s exploration of the intricacies of social media wouldn’t be as fulfilling as his established wheelhouse. But there remains a worryingly large hole in the cinematic vocabulary regarding modern life – especially when film can be so powerful in reflecting and developing an understanding of one’s existence. In the swiftly evolving, industrialised world of the 30s, an overwhelmed public found solace in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Directors like Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle, Playtime) and Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon) spent much of their long and successful careers crafting cinematic microcosms of contemporary society. So where then is the seminal modernist satire for the 21st Century? And if there was one, would audiences be interested in engaging with such subject matter?

The first question is perhaps the simplest. Given the age of most of Hollywood’s prominent directors, covering something that has developed so rapidly and so recently would present a variety of challenges. They have little experience of this new environment, and many will have even less interest in it. Indeed, the online world is viewed by many as an interconnected web of often-anonymous, superficial behaviours with little insight into our own “real” lives. Furthermore, even now, almost 20 years after the founding of Facebook, we have yet to see the extent of the internet’s impact on our collective psychology, our sense of self, and our social lives. So unless one has grown up within this environment, there is perhaps little foundation from which to launch any creative engagement. But even if the older generation is understandably hesitant, one might assume that there are younger filmmakers bringing an authentic perspective to the issue. Here, cinema appears to be in an odd place. There are certainly many young, exciting, and popular filmmakers – the Safdie Brothers, Joe Talbot, and Emerald Fennell to name a few – but for the most part, these are from a generation that came of age just before the dominance of social media. There is, however, one intriguing exception.

Bo Burnham has dedicated much of his career to exploring the effects and particular absurdities of this new unregulated space. His peerless status in covering such subjects perhaps explains the respectful adoration of his many young fans. Whether it’s 2018’s Eighth Grade, or 2021’s ‘Inside’ (which feels more like experimental film than comedy special), Burnham has provided a comedic, cathartic, and empathetic insight into a world seldom explored on screen. The particular effectiveness of his work is rooted in both his experience as an early “content creator”, but also in his belief that social media is not merely a forum for youthful superficiality, but – like 12 Angry Men’s jury room – a window into the complexities of human beings and their social contexts. Throughout ‘Inside’, it is this approach that allows Burnham to segue from parodying Instagram posing to sympathising with the common grief-stricken outpourings that randomly find themselves on our screens. It allows him to brilliantly satirise the overwhelming, quick-fire chaos of online existence on “Welcome to the Internet”, but it also gives the work an authentic quality. In the case of ‘Inside’, young people, who feel the brunt of the internet’s effects more acutely than anyone, felt represented by a voice that acknowledges the absurdity, even laughs at certain behaviours but never looks down upon its subjects. This nuance, rooted in lived experience, is what evades most internet-oriented films and “screenlife” horror productions. Indeed, if one of social media’s worst offences is to anonymise, dehumanise, and generally flatten our complex experience, Burnham seems intent on reminding audiences of the real people behind the screen.

Aside from Burnham – who appears to be the only major figure consistently tackling the online age – there are occasional efforts by established auteurs that merit discussion, not least the work of Steven Soderbergh. Interestingly, within the director’s recent work there has been a distinctly modern streak not just in theme but form: 2018’s psychological horror, Unsane, and 2019’s sports drama, High Flying Bird are both shot on iPhone. Though these films are not about anything uniquely contemporary, the use of the iPhone camera places Soderbergh amongst a small cadre of directors making films that are aesthetically, identifiably current. Furthermore, with 2021’s Kimi, Soderbergh would turn his gaze towards that strange contemporary phenomenon of being both more interconnected than ever and yet equally alienated. It’s a surprisingly subtle, multifaceted take on tech and the nature of privacy, wrapped up in a Rear Window-esque thriller. The director, who has previously tackled everything from the War on Drugs (Traffic) to sexuality (Sex, Lies, and Videotape) to corporate recklessness (Erin Brockovich), deserves credit for consistently attempting to dissect the modern world.

There are other seminal works that might have prompted further engagement. With 2010’s The Social Network, David Fincher crafted a terrific insight into the man who has had such an enormous impact on the psychology of young people. 12 years after its release, following the endless, unregulated expansion of these companies, the film’s questions have grown increasingly prescient. Indeed, if the man behind Facebook – the forerunner of most modern social media – was so heartlessly calculating, what does this say about the duty of care of these mediums? As a despondent Burnham concludes during ‘Inside’, “maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit … was a bad call”. Thus, given its critical acclaim, widespread popularity, and continued relevance, perhaps The Social Network is the closest thing we have to a seminal modernist work.

Elsewhere, there have been interesting efforts from outside the mainstream. Arthouse favourites A24 – who also produced Eighth Grade – distributed Zola in 2020 (the film is based on a viral 148-tweet-long Twitter thread). They have also produced Bodies, Bodies, Bodies, which attempts to satirise the dynamics of friendship in a social media-dominated world. Another recent A24 venture, the surprisingly successful Everything Everywhere All at Once, portrayed that strange predicament of having everything at your fingertips and yet feeling despairingly numb. Though the film doesn’t directly reference the internet, its affecting, gleefully silly portrayal of existential crisis clearly connected with audiences’ experiences of modernity. Indeed, incidentally or not, the film’s “everything bagel” is a suitably absurdist allegory for the informational overload of the internet.

Outside of the art-house, certain genres – horror and comedy – are usually comfortable satirising the modern age, perhaps owing to their popularity among younger audiences. Indeed, the emergence of “screenlife” thrillers – in which the story is set entirely on the screen of a laptop or phone – has yielded perhaps the largest set of internet-themed films. Amongst this genre – populated mostly by jump-scares and teen-slasher antics – there have been some well-received entries: 2018’s Searching was touted as a more sophisticated delve into online life. Eugene Kotlyarenko’s twisted thriller Spree introduced the unique director’s take on the subject. But beyond these efforts, most have been dismissed by critics as gimmicky or have been unable to break into the mainstream. Conversely, comedy has been slower off the mark. Where the genre might have taken encouragement from the success of Matt Spicer’s witty 2017 film, Ingrid Goes West, since its release there have been almost no equals. Though there have been countless teen-oriented studio rom-coms, that film’s thoughtful examination of parasocial obsession and envy remains an island.

Recommended for you: The Art of the Social Media Thriller; Narcissism, Paranoia and Tools for Good or Ill

This is all particularly strange when one considers how consistently and how successfully TV has dealt with this cultural shift. Shows like ‘Euphoria’, ‘Mr. Robot’, and the ever-prescient ‘Black Mirror’ have been showered with accolades for their thoughtful, artful explorations of distinctly contemporary issues. Everything from online dating to social media groupthink to influencer culture has been explored by these shows. Though this is accompanied by the retro aesthetics of shows like ‘Sex Education’ and ‘Stranger Things’, it is the balance that counts. So when will the film industry correct its lopsided scale?

Perhaps this lack of distinctly modernist, tech-oriented cinema reflects a curious shift in both the composition and attitudes of audiences. Firstly, the modern film-watching audience – in part due to an abundance of entertainment across different platforms and mediums – is fractured and diffused. With the exception of franchise films, audiences are for the most part content to peruse the endless options of streaming sites without ever venturing to the cinema. So perhaps there are no seminal modernist works because, with audiences spread across various niches and only unified by big-budget franchises, there is no framework for an enormously popular film that effectively taps into the public consciousness.

Secondly, though young people have certainly found a few artists that authentically and effectively portray their experience, perhaps the dearth of explicitly contemporary cinema is less to do with auteur’s reservations, and more a simple lack of appetite – from filmmakers and audiences – for films that deal with the current state of things. For a chronically online youth, forced at risk of alienation to engage in or observe the addictive feeds, comparison-inducing artifice, and anonymous cruelty of social media, there is an understandable hunger for escapism. Why, in other words, when one does commit to briefly unplugging from the online world, must one observe that world on – ironically – an even bigger screen? For fans of cinema, the immersive and empathetic work of Scorsese, Anderson, Jenkins, or Sciamma is much more immediately appealing than any exploration of the tiring and inescapable dynamics of the internet. But this has always been part of cinema’s purpose. If Modern Times asserted the humanity of the exploited worker within the newly industrialised world, why should it be any different for what has been referred to as the Digital Revolution?

Thus, hopefully – if TV’s successful portrayals are any indication – there will soon be a wave of filmmakers keen to assess this Silicon Valley-crafted environment with nuance, insight, and authenticity. Considering how important art can be for understanding our context, the progenitors of an explicitly modernist cinema are worth appreciating. Indeed, for the moment, trailblazing artists like Bo Burnham remain the exception.

Written by Noah Sparkes

Among the standout winners of the night were Chloé Zhao and her film Nomadland which earned Best Director and Best Picture, as well as being the film for which the Frances McDormand earned her third Best Actress Oscar. Those who were a part of the late surge in the gambling market for The Father star Anthony Hopkins in the Best Actor category were proven correct, the Welshman earning the award above early favourite Chadwick Boseman, who was nominated for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

The 2021 ceremony was low on spectacle and high on speeches, with each winner being allotted an unusually long amount of time to accept their awards. Among the most memorable were Yuh-Jung Youn, whose acceptance speech for Supporting Actress was as memorable as her speech at the 2021 BAFTAs, and that of Tyler Perry who was one of the first recipients of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, the other being The Motion Picture Film & Television Fund.

The winners of the 93rd Oscars are:

BEST PICTURE – NOMADLAND
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

DIRECTING – CHLOE ZHAO (NOMADLAND)
Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round)
David Fincher (Mank)
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)

CINEMATOGRAPHY – ERIK MESSERSCHMIDT (MANK)
Sean Bobbitt (Judas and the Black Messiah)
Dariusz Wolski (News of the World)
Joshua James Richards (Nomadland)
Phedon Papamichael (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE – ANTHONY HOPKINS (THE FATHER)
Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal)
Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom)
Gary Oldman (Mank)
Steven Yeun (Minari)

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE – FRANCES MCDORMAND (NOMADLAND)
Viola Davis (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom)
Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday)
Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman)
Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman)

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – DANIEL KALUUYA (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH)
Sacha Baron Cohen (The Trial of the Chicago 7)
Leslie Odom, Jr. (One Night in Miami)
Paul Raci (Sound of Metal)
LaKeith Stanfield (Judas and the Black Messiah)

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – YUH-JUNG YOUN (MINARI)
Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)
Glenn Close (Hillbilly Elegy)
Olivia Colman (The Father)
Amanda Seyfried (Mank)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON, FLORIAN ZELLER (THE FATHER)
Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman, Lee Kern (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)
Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)
Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami)
Ramin Bahrani (The White Tiger)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – EMERALD FENNELL (PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN)
Will Berson, Shaka King (Judas and the Black Messiah)
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Darius Marder, Abraham Marder (Sound of Metal)
Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM – ANOTHER ROUND
Better Days
Collective
The Man Who Sold His Skin
Quo Vadis, Aida?

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM – SOUL
Onward
Over the Moon
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Wolfwalkers

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – MY OCTOPUS TEACHER
Collective
Crip Camp
The Mole Agent
Time

FILM EDITING – SOUND OF METAL
The Father
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
The Trial of the Chicago 7

PRODUCTION DESIGN – MANK
The Father
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
News of the World
Tenet

COSTUME DESIGN – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
Emma
Mank
Mulan
Pinocchio

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
Emma
Hillbilly Elegy
Mank
Pinocchio

VISUAL EFFECTS – TENET
Love and Monsters
The Midnight Sky
Mulan
The One and Only Ivan

ORIGINAL SCORE – TRENT REZNOR, ATTICUS ROSS, JON BATISTE (SOUL)
Terence Blanchard (Da 5 Bloods)
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross (Mank)
Emile Mosseri (Minari)
James Newton Howard (News of the World)

ORIGINAL SONG – “FIGHT FOR YOU” (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH)
“Hear My Voice” (The Trial of the Chicago 7)
“Husavik” (Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of the Fire Saga)
“Io Si (Seen)” (La Vita Davanti A Se)
“Speak Now” (One Night in Miami)

ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND – SOUND OF METAL
Greyhound
Mank
News of the World
Soul

ANIMATED SHORT FILM – IF ANYTHING HAPPENS I LOVE YOU
Burrow
Genius Loci
Opera
Yes – People

LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM – TWO DISTANT STRANGERS
Feeling Through
The Letter Room
The Present
White Eye

DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT – COLETTE
A Concerto Is a Conversation
Do Not Split
Hunger Ward
A Love Song for Latasha

JEAN HERSHOLT HUMANITARIAN AWARD – MOTION PICTURE & TELEVISION FUND

JEAN HERSHOLT HUMANITARIAN AWARD – TYLER PERRY

Recommended for you: 2021 Oscars Best Picture Nominees Ranked

In 2021, no less than 4 of the 8 films nominated for the year’s biggest film award are directed by debut directors, indicating not only a shift within the industry, but hope that the artistry of prior years and decades can be maintained moving forward, and proving that filmmakers with strong ideas are always worth producers risking their money and reputations on.

The Academy’s selection of best feature films this year is an eclectic mix of the phenomenally written, movingly performed and surgically directed, and in this edition of Ranked we here at The Film Magazine are looking at each to judge the order in which these films excel, analysing each in terms of overall quality and cultural relevance.

Follow The Film Magazine on Twitter to never miss another list like this one.

8. The Trial of the Chicago 7

The Trial of the Chicago 7 Review

The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a timely and arguably powerful court room drama released during an era in which films of its type are few and far between, and those with high budget ensemble casts seem to have been absent from our screens for over 20 years.

It’s a film with tremendous upside, bringing attention to a historical US issue that can be applied to the nation’s struggles today, and it features effortless transitions from comedy to drama in easy to digest but moving sequences, the likes of which have become typical of writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s politically fused but Hollywood-leaning sensibilities.

Sorkin has long been considered a master of American drama, his work hugely respected and certainly recognisable. His characters quip, they talk over one another, tensions escalate through words alone, and then like the crescendo of his own orchestra they come to a boil, producing thought-provoking and often powerful moments. In The Trial of the Chicago 7 this is precisely what is offered, Sorkin making the real-life trials of the Chicago 7 (a group accused of conspiracy, riot and more for attending the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago) one of his most authorial works to date.

Like many of Sorkin’s previous pieces, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is filled with statements but equally palatable, it is political but wholly agreeable and very much reinforcing of American exceptionalism and faith in the nation’s guiding principles and the ways in which they are enforced through law. Unlike some of his award winning work of years past, his writing isn’t directed by an expressionistic filmmaker but by himself, The Trial of the Chicago 7 thus lacking the touches of perspective-shifting cinematography, set design and blocking that are present in many of the other 2021 Best Picture Oscar nominees.

7. Sound of Metal

Sound of Metal Review

Sound of Metal is being correctly lauded as a technical triumph. Its sound design takes you inside the head of its punk rock drummer protagonist who suddenly begins to lose his hearing, loud crashes of drums and cheers from crowds replaced with dead silence, the ringing of his eardrum, muffled thuds and indistinguishable speech. For 2 hours, you experience what you believe to be an actuality of deafness, and you grow attached to the protagonist suffering to accept it.

Riz Ahmed is magnetic as the addict who feels his life is being ripped away from him, his character design from the ripped t-shirts and heavy boots of his wardrobe to the antagonistic designs and slogans of his tattoos and stand out bleach blond hair, and further still to the nuances of Ahmed’s own soft boil anger and inherent insecurity, make for a wholly believable character, an interesting and identifiable protagonist.

Away from the technical triumphs of sound design, costume design, hair and performance, Sound of Metal follows the fairly basic narrative structure of the nomad reacquainting himself with the world, albeit in a way that is forced by a disconnection from it, Ahmed’s Ruben substituting living in isolation with his partner in an RV to living around others in a commune, his hair being shaved into its natural colour, Ruben literally selling the products of his dream (and deafness) to try and find a new normal in a space closer to the “real world”, and thus finding himself in the process. It’s a structure that has little time for tackling issues of finance, and as such glosses over some of the biggest hurdles newly deaf people face, specifically in the United States. Here, Ruben conveniently passes over the obstacles of finding emotional support, finding financial help to access that support, and finding tens of thousands of dollars for surgery, and as such there is little by way of wider contextualisation of Ruben’s journey as a newly deaf man, Sound of Metal squarely focused on the played out formula of the on-screen addict, its text concluding with the apropos yet emblematic message of self-acceptance healing all wounds, physical and otherwise.

Some of Sound of Metal’s parts are the best around, and there’s no doubt that as a feature drama debut for Darius Marder it excels beyond all expectations and proves the first glimpse of a potentially prominent screen artist, but it’s not the nuanced, different and/or surprising offering that some of 2021’s other Oscars Best Picture nominees are.

Recommended for you: 21st Century Best Picture Oscar Winners Ranked

Shown across a combined 2 hours and 45 minutes of primetime weekend television, the EE BAFTAs celebrated the very best of cinema from 2020 and the early months of 2021, with Oscars front-runner Nomadland earning wins in a number of major categories including Best Film, and Bukky Bakray (Rocks) earning the EE Rising Star Award in a heart-warming moment that included the young actress receiving hugs from loved ones during her acceptance speech.

The broadcasted ceremony featured live performances from within the Royal Albert Hall by Celeste, who was performing her song “Hear My Voice” from The Trial of the Chicago 7, as well as Corinne Bailey Rae who performed a duet of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” with One Night In Miami star and Supporting Actor nominee Leslie Odom, Jr., who was performing from a studio in the United States. Liam Payne performed via augmented reality to begin the show.

With UK cinemas closed for most of the past year, the 2021 BAFTAs featured a preview for the films to come throughout 2021 and had a prolonged In Memoriam segment to celebrate the lives of the filmmakers and industry professionals who we’ve lost since last February’s ceremony.

Whilst the ceremony itself was stripped back and toned down, there were still a number of moments worth remembering, including a moving acceptance speech by Thomas Vinterberg when his film Another Round won the award for Film Not In the English Language.

The winners of the BAFTA Film Awards 2021 are: 

BEST FILM – NOMADLAND
The Father
The Mauritanian
Promising Young Woman
The Trial of the Chicago 7

OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM – PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Calm with Horses
The Dig
The Father
His House
Limbo
The Mauritanian
Mogul Mowgli
Rocks
Saint Maud

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE – ANOTHER ROUND
Dear Comrades!
Les Misérables
Minari
Quo Vadis, Aida?

DOCUMENTARY – MY OCTOPUS TEACHER
Collective
David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet
The Dissident
The Social Dilemma

ANIMATED FILM – SOUL
Onward
Wolfwalkers

DIRECTOR – CHLOE ZHAO (NOMADLAND)
Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round)
Shannon Murphy (Babyteeth)
Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Jasmila Žbanić (Quo Vadis, Aida?)
Sarah Gavron (Rocks)

LEADING ACTRESS – FRANCES MCDORMAND (NOMADLAND)
Bukky Bakray (Rocks)
Radha Blank (The Forty-Year-Old Version)
Vanessa Kirby (Pieces of a Woman)
Wunmi Mosaku (His House)
Alfre Woodard (Clemency)

CASTING – ROCKS
Calm with Horses
Judas and the Black Messiah
Minari
Promising Young Woman

LEADING ACTOR – ANTHONY HOPKINS (THE FATHER)
Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal)
Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom)
Adarsh Gourav (The White Tiger)
Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round)
Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS – YUH-JUNG YOUN (MINARI)
Niamh Algar (Calm with Horses)
Kosar Ali (Rocks)
Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm)
Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah)
Ashley Madekwe (County Lines)
Yuh-jung Youn (Minari)

SUPPORTING ACTOR – DANIEL KALUUYA (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH)
Barry Keoghan (Calm with Horses)
Alan Kim (Minari)
Leslie Odom, Jr. (One Night in Miami)
Clarke Peters (Da 5 Bloods)
Paul Raci (Sound of Metal)

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY – EMERALD FENNELL (PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN)
Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm (Another Round)
Jack Fincher (Mank)
Theresa Ikoko, Claire Wilson (Rocks)
Aaron Sorkin (The Trial of the Chicago 7)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY – FLORIAN ZELLER, CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON (THE FATHER)
Moira Buffini (The Dig)
M.B. Traven, Rory Haines, Sohrab Noshirvani (The Mauritanian)
Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)
Ramin Bahrami (The White Tiger)

CINEMATOGRAPHY – JOSHUA JAMES RICHARDSON (NOMADLAND)
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
The Mauritanian
News of the World

PRODUCTION DESIGN – MANK
The Dig
The Father
News of the World
Rebecca

COSTUME DESIGN – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
Ammonite
The Dig
Emma.
Mank

MAKE UP & HAIR – MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
The Dig
Hillbilly Elegy
Mank
Pinocchio

EDITING – SOUND OF METAL
The Father
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
The Trial of the Chicago 7

ORIGINAL SCORE – JON BATISTE, TRENT REZNOR, ATTICUS ROSS (SOUL)
Mank
Minari
News of the World
Promising Young Woman

SOUND – SOUND OF METAL
Greyhound
News of the World
Nomadland
Soul

SPECIAL EFFECTS – TENET
Greyhound
The Midnight Sky
Mulan
The One and Only Ivan

BRITISH SHORT ANIMATION – THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT
The Fire Next Time
The Song of a Lost Boy

BRITISH SHORT FILM – THE PRESENT
Eyelash
Lizard
Lucky Break
Miss Curvy

OUTSTANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER – REMI WEEKES (HIS HOUSE)
Ben Sharrock, Irune Gurtubai (Limbo)
Jack Sidey (Moffie)
Theresa Ikoko, Claire Wilson (Rocks)
Rose Glass, Oliver Kassman (Saint Maud)

EE RISING STAR AWARD – BUKKY BAKRAY
Conrad Khan
Kingsley Ben-Adir
Morfydd Clark
Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO BRITISH CINEMA – NOEL CLARKE

BAFTA FELLOWSHIP AWARD – ANG LEE

Promising Young Woman (2021)
Director: Emerald Fennell
Screenwriter: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Adam Brody, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Molly Shannon, Max Greenfield, Chris Lowell

Statistics vary depending on location, but, on average, one in every five women will experience some form of sexual assault in their lifetime. It’s a staggeringly high percentage, but one many people will not find surprising. Sexual assault is a pandemic in its own right. Yet, instead of reporting the daily figures on prime time news each day, or orchestrating a worldwide effort to bring it to an end, we allow women to walk home with keys clenched between their knuckles as we redundantly remind them not to invite unwarranted sexual attention through their personal fashion preferences – as if this will be enough to keep them safe. 

When it happens to you, it doesn’t happen how you thought it might, and the world doesn’t react how you assumed it would. Just look at somebody like Brock Turner, who, after committing a violent sexual assault on an intoxicated fellow student – a crime ordinarily punishable with a fourteen-year sentence – served only three months in prison: the lenient verdict a product of white privilege and the judge’s own feeling that Brock, a swimming champion, would be negatively impacted by lengthy imprisonment. We live in a world where an accusation or conviction of assault is now deemed just as brutal and life-altering as assault itself; a dynamic Emerald Fennell explores the hypocrisies of in her debut feature, Promising Young Woman. In one scene, a so-called ‘nice guy’ suggests to Cassie, our promising young woman in question, that it’s a guy’s worst nightmare to be accused ‘like that’. To this, Cassie replies: ‘Can you guess what every woman’s worst nightmare is?’.

Cassandra Thomas (Carey Mulligan), a thirty-year-old barista and med-school dropout, comes to a stalemate with life. Consumed by a seven-year-old ‘incident’ involving her childhood friend Nina, Cassie isolates herself from the possibility of functioning like a regular person. We never hear the specifics of this incident; what exactly happened to Nina is left vague in an attempt to mimic the experience of disregard felt by actual victims of assault. Do you remember the name of Brock Turner’s victim? Instead, Cassie, like Frances McDormand’s Mildred in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, dedicates her time to tactically seeking out a form of, not revenge, but justice – a way to do something material with the pain of her trauma. To highlight that people capable of assault can look like anyone, be of any age and from any background, Fennell has Cassie loiter inside nightclubs, using herself as inebriated bait, to which predatory men, in all of their forms, gravitate. Cassie frightens the boys when she reveals herself to be sober – a fact many of them find to be a turn-off anyway. However, no matter how many deviant men she teaches a lesson (a notebook she keeps as record speaks to a high volume of them), the catharsis she yearns for never arrives. That is until a chance meeting with a former classmate, Ryan (Bo Burnham), provides Cassie with an access route to a more exact and tenacious form of vengeance. 

We follow Cassie as she comes up against the guilty faces of her past. She confronts them with manipulation, fear and threat, forcing them to acknowledge their roles not only within the sexual assault of her friend but within the system of rape culture as a whole; a system that fails to hold men accountable for their crimes. Promising Young Woman does this with tact, slowly dismantling the layers of shame-culture and victim-blaming that normalise sexual violence. Cassie’s plot for justice highlights all those responsible: from the perpetrators themselves to disbelieving classmates, and education professionals who choose to turn a blind eye and disregard their duty of care. Cassie comes for all genders and ages; anyone whose silence, prejudice or failure to act has long enabled the cycle to continue. The film encourages self-introspection, too, forcing us, with its nuanced exploration of these themes, to ask ourselves if our own actions and opinions have a place in the ruling toxicity of normalised sexual violence.

Fennell and costume designer Nancy Steiner – who received acclaim for her work on Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides – use style and fashion to subvert the typical expectation of a woman on a mission such as Cassie’s: blood, gore and practical dress, the classic symbology of the ‘revenge’ narrative, is actively lacking. Instead, Steiner dresses Cassie in bubble-gum pinks and pretty florals, her hair neat, her make-up done, her nails painted, her outfits beautifully executed with details and accessories to match. Fennell weaponises Cassie’s femininity and the effeminate connotations of the colour pink; the aesthetically pleasing stylisation of Cassie’s wardrobe serving as armour against the weaponry and semantics of rape culture.

The effort to subvert genre continues through savvy casting decisions. Men we usually associate as loveable and, more importantly, harmless, crop up throughout the film: millennial treasure and stand-up comic, Bo Burnham; silly and eccentric Max Greenfield of ‘New Girl’; Superbad’s McLovin aka Christopher Mintz-Plasse; the puppy-eyed Chris Lowell of ‘GLOW’, and teen heartthrob of ‘The O.C.’, Adam Brody. With the presence of these much-loved, lusted after men, Fennell toys with our preconceptions of what we expect males in (and surrounding) sexual violence narratives to look like – they can be anyone, any age, or people we know and even admire. Other supporting actors feel complimentary of the film’s aesthetic in a variety of ways. The decision to cast Jennifer Coolidge as Cassie’s Mother feels like a particular stroke of genius: her comedic, chick-flick legacy gifts the film a glamorous and nostalgic tone. Laverne Cox, Alison Brie and Connie Britton bring a concoction of talent; they are the mixer to a perfect, pink cocktail, respectively adding sweet, sour, and bitter flavours into the mix. 

However, by far the most crucial player is Carey Mulligan. Known for her exquisite character work in independent film (Paul Dano’s Wildlife, Lone Scherfig’s An Education), Mulligan often gravitates toward complex female characters. As Cassie, Mulligan makes moves to untangle the knots of Hollywood’s perception of femininity. Her characterisation work isn’t as black and white as a hero looking for revenge upon a villain. Instead, Cassie is messy; she pushes the boundaries; she steps out of the acceptable space female characters usually operate within. Mulligan explores these shades of grey expertly, dark and threatening when she needs to be but comical enough to keep up with Burnham’s effortless wit. Mulligan’s work here highlights just how much a woman must sacrifice in order to bring rapists to justice.

Fennell filters every detail through a highly exceptional and boldly cinematic narrative, exposing the very real-world double standards and gross judgemental attitudes surrounding rape. Even the film’s soundtrack, which includes Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind’ and a sinister string version of Britney Spears’ ‘‘Toxic’’, works to exacerbate Fennell’s vision. Hilton and Spears have their sexuality and mental health discussed like cheap gossip on a global scale; the stories behind their music further highlights all women’s struggle for control over their agency. Fennell uses these details to rewrite the script and confront dismissive, ingrained attitudes to all things considered ‘girly’. 

Given the extent to which Promising Young Woman asks its audience to confront their beliefs and behaviour, the film will be a complicated watch for many. Yet, like it or not, it’s time we bring this conversation into the mainstream. Sexual assault doesn’t just happen to women as conventionally attractive as Margot Robbie; it’s an issue anyone can come into contact with. Let this film act as a means to silence dismissive voices and teach the importance of believing women.

24/24