‘The Revenant’ Barrels Through the BAFTA Awards

This year’s awards season has been a special treat due to the absence of a clear-cut frontrunner, with The Big Short, Spotlight, The Revenant, and Mad Max: Fury Road all in relatively close competition — up until very recently, at least. While early nominations were split between these four heavy-hitting movies, The Revenant has broken out in recent weeks as the various awards-giving bodies have had their ceremonies. Artistic intention be damned, the sheer technical bravado of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s western may be enough to push it through to a big victory on Oscar night, if last night’s showing at the BAFTAs is any example.

The grueling survival tale won big at Britain’s most prestigious awards ceremony last night, taking home the Best Film prize and earning individual awards for Iñárritu and leading man Leonardo DiCaprio in the Director and Leading Actor categories, respectively. The film also picked up a couple more victories in the technical fields, winning the Sound and Cinematography prizes. (Of particular note is The Revenant’s director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki, who stands to win an unprecedented third consecutive Oscar for Cinematography, having already been recognized for his work on Birdman and Gravity.) Fury Road came off the rosiest after The Revenant, winning in four of the technical categories, confirming that the film’s best shot at a higher-profile win would be for director George Miller, who could give Iñárritu a run for his money. The highlight of the evening was a surprise recognition of Force Awakens star John Boyega as the recipient of the Rising Star award, handed out to a British actor destined for greatness. Take a look at the full list of winners below: