Oscars Analysis: How has The Artist Triumphed so Utterly?

A few months ago, The Artist's success was unimaginable. How has it come to pass?

It has become easy over the last few months, as The Artist has been celebrated by every single awards ceremony in existence, to forget quite how extraordinary its success is. To remind us of that fact, let’s put it in plain terms. A black and white,almost completely silent film has just won the Oscar for Best Picture. Had someone predicted this 12 months ago, they would have been laughed out of Tinseltown.

The Best Picture Nominees Ranked and Reviewed

The Best Picture Nominees Reviewed Ahead of Tonight's Oscars

9. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Truly one of the worst Best Picture nominees ever, Stephen Daldry’s cold and irritating post-9/11 dirge is boring, manipulative and features the most annoying child character for quite some time. To get on this year’s list, 5% of Academy voters had to put the film as their first choice. How they could do that for this tripe and not for films such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or We Need to Talk About Kevin is just beyond the comprehension of the sane and rational.

BAFTA Preview: Best Film and Full List of Predictions

In a battle of two much-admired films, the sheer amount of love for The Artist will carry the day

The Oscars have a list of nine films for Best Picture. BAFTA has five films in its list for Best Film. BAFTA’s list is better, for BAFTA includes The Artist and The Descendants, two of the finest films you’d wish to see, the worthy The Help, which was surprisingly nominated ahead of Hugo, and it includes Drive, one of the most brilliantly well-executed films of the year, and, of course, it is the only major awards body to have given a nomination to the best film of 2011, namely Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

So, who will win?

BAFTA Preview: Best Actor

In the first part of Reel 6's week-long preview of the BAFTAs, it's Oldman vs. Fassbender for Best Actor

The BAFTAs are the awards body which gets the nominations right. On the whole, that is. Though they occasionally over reward the British contingent when the awards are handed out, they do at least recognise more of the very best in film than Oscar actually does. No category represents this better this year than Best Actor.

BAFTA is in line with everyone else in appreciating the excellence of George Clooney (The Descendants) and Jean Dujardin (The Artist), who appear to be the two battling it out for the Oscar. They have also been charmed by Brad Pitt (Moneyball), but it is two Brits (well, a Brit and an Irishman) who seem to be in pole position for the BAFTA.

Review: The Descendants

Alexander Payne's latest is a funny and moving masterpiece

Director: Alexander Payne

Screenwriter: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon, Jim Rash, based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings

Cast: George Clooney (Matt King), Shailene Woodley (Alex King), Amara Miller (Scottie King), Nick Krause (Sid), Beau Bridges (Cousin Hugh) and Robert Forster (Scott Thorson)

Plot: A father's life is thrown into turmoil when his wife is plunged into a coma and he has to take care of his children, right at the point that he has to make a major financial decision. On top of this, he discovers that his wife has been having an affair, and resolves to go and find the man she was sleeping with to tell him about her condition.

Running Time: 114m 54s

Certificate: 15 - Contains Strong Language

Alexander Payne is the master of the mid-life crisis. Whether it was Matthew Broderick’s disillusioned high school teacher in Election, or Jack Nicholson’s bewildered widower in About Schmidt, or Paul Giamatti’s lonely wine-snob in Sideways, Payne focuses on middle-aged men who still haven’t worked out love, life and, quite often, death.

In The Descendants, he is on familiar territory once again. George Clooney plays Matt King, a real estate lawyer, whose wife has been plunged into a coma after a boating accident, right at the point that he, the sole remaining trustee of thousands of acres of virgin Hawaiian land, has to decide who he’s going to sell it to before the trust dissolves. Stale love and wrangling about property: it’s what I’m expecting from my fifties.

Comment: Oscar Nominations

Oscar gets all nostalgic and plucky Brits do well in a surprising list of nominations

I really must apologise to the neighbours, because when Gary Oldman’s name was read out as an Oscar nominee for Best Actor I gave an almighty cry of “Yes!”. After weeks of being snubbed by awards bodies in the States, though the BAFTAs were far more appreciative of one of the finest films of last year, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy finally got some recognition. Okay: three nominations is not enough in my estimation, but it is more than I was hoping for.

Film Review of the Year 2011

The temptation to do a Top Ten of the year list is great, but it is easily outweighed by my certain knowledge that I am unable to draw up a satisfactory version: many of 2011’s best films have not yet received a release here, and I am still catching up on a couple. All that is left for me to do is list of some my best and worst moments in my cinematic year in 2011.