What can an awards show even do right now? With everyone freaking out over which jokes are O.K., fretting about whos going to get offended by what, a supposedly light and cheery evening like the Golden Globes was confronted with an almost impossible task! How does anyone celebrate a year in movies and television when everything is so booby-trapped and bad?
Im being facetious here; hyperbolic, too. Of course there is a way—many ways, maybe—to mix frivolity with gravity at the current moment, as there has been in most rough patches of human existence. Its just that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association—perhaps cowed by the Academys current Oscars-host debacle—played it so safe on Sunday night youd think that doing an awards show in 2019 is a feat even more insurmountable than the one seen in the boggling rock-climbing documentary Free Solo.
In hosts Sandra Oh and Andy Sandbergs lukewarm opening speech, they joked that they were about to go hard on Hollywood—then gushed out a barrage of obsequiousness, praising nominees as if charter members of those A-listers respective fandoms. Which was a cute gag, but also too safe a play. One thing about all the cultural queasiness currently unsteadying Hollywood is that people are angry, and righteous anger can be a great, cathartic source for comedy. Pushing back against the hegemony—specifically that of straight, white, male dominance—might have been just what the audience craved to help cut through all the dense unease enveloping their industry, as old and damaging norms are challenged and upended.
But that was not the incisive or even daring position the Globes angled themselves toward this evening. Which wasnt the shows job, exactly. But coming a year after Oprah Winfrey issued her seismic, coulda-been-campaign-announcement Times Up speech, this years Globes felt frustratingly muted.
Some folks did dimly reference the evenings context. Lifetime-achievement winner Jeff Bridges spoke to the power of the individual voter, by way of a tortured but then sorta elegant ship-rudder metaphor. Sandra Oh took a solemn pause at the shows opening to recognize the remarkable diversity (for a Hollywood awards show, anyway) of this years nominees. Supporting-actress winner Regina King pledged to only produce projects with a 50 percent female crew going forward. H.F.P.A. president Meher Tatna mentioned her organizations institutional investment in ennobling and empowering journalists, a necessary mission especially in the wake of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggis murder.
Christian Bale won best actor in a musical or comedy for the alternately championed and reviled Vice, in which Bale plays the pretty much universally reviled (I wish, anyway) Dick Cheney. He joked that maybe hed play recalcitrant obstructionist Senator Mitch McConnell next, while thanking Satan for the inspiration. That was about as acutely negative as the evening got. The rest was warmed-over and carefully kind—blundering, even, in its inexact upbeatness.
As a whole, the show dangled in a kind of hesitant limbo, proceeding like normal while, outside, the winds of insistent change battered the walls of the Beverly Hilton, and the rest of town. Maybe it was just an absence of Oprah—and its a lot to ask any awards show to have an Oprah event every year—but the Globes this year were lacking, despite doing nothing that felt like a specific, glaring misstep.
Well, O.K., there were some big wins that rankled. Green Books successes in screenplay, supporting actor, and best-motion-picture comedy or musical marred the evening some. While Mahershala Alis tightly controlled performance is no doubt another strong addition to his stellar acting portfolio, he plays a character, the late pianist Dr. Don Shirley, whose family has publicly, critically rejected the veracity of the film. Thats a condemnation that certainly falls heavier on the (white) screenwriters—including director Peter Farrelly and Nick Vallelonga, whose father is played in the film by Viggo Mortensen—than on Ali.
Maybe the H.F.P.A. thought that this particular controversy could be tempered some by having executive-producer Octavia Spencer, as much an awards darling as theres been this past decade, present the film. Or maybe—and more likely—they didnt consider the controversy. Either way, there was something disconcerting about Green Books victories—a film troubled by valid criticisms that were glossed over in the blinkered spirit of celebration. That was a familiar sensation this evening.
Because there was also Bohemian Rhapsody, which took home a maybe-only-sorta-surprising best-actor trophy for Rami Maleks lightly pink-washed turn as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and a truly jaw-dropping win for best drama, a bizarro upset that—despite the films massive box-office success—is not likely to repeat at the Oscars. Here was a film credited to its fired director Bryan Singer, the subject of accusations of sexual misconduct, that sailed past all the arbiters of decency—so supposedly alert and sensitive in this scrutinized era—toward a big, gushy triumph. (Singer has denied the allegations.) That stung, for both its obliviousness to the world surrounding the evening and, far more cynically, for its flouting of the expected awards-season story line.
The Globes arent a terribly useful predictive tool for the Oscars—in terms of winners, at least—so we probably dont need to spend much time sifting through those tea leaves. But if certain films and performances gained or lost momentum tonight, we maybe most chiefly (and positively) need to talk about Glenn Close, a surprise-ish winner for best actress in a drama who, in her rousing and emotional speech, turned the themes of her film, The Wife—detailing a woman asserting her authority and authorship after years of ceding the spotlight to her undeserving husband—outward, into a broader narrative about women re-framing the prescribed and limiting roles imposed on them for centuries.
That impassioned speech, both personal and expansive, undeniably resounded. It just may have secured an Oscar win for a famous also-ran. And it rescued a ceremony that was both soft-pedaling and creepingly regressive from outright disaster. Leave it to a stalwart industry icon in her 70s, supposedly denied her true due all these years (though, blessed with many “lesser” awards along the way), to add some hearty voice to a ceremony that was largely allergic to taking a defiant stance. We shouldnt have to ask so much of Glenn Close after all these years. But its nice that we can still nonetheless rely on her to deliver, as shes done for so long.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Richard LawsonRichard Lawson is the chief critic for Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theatre. He lives in New York City.
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