By Seth Lukas Hynes
The 82nd Golden Globes took place on January 6, and I have mixed feelings about the results.
Comedian Nikki Glaser, the first solo female host in Golden Globes history, overall did an excellent job. Glaser cleverly poked fun at the nominees, the entertainment industry and celebrities in the audience with cheeky, often searing humour without being cruel, and she frequently made fun of herself (her brief self-deprecating musical number ‘You’re Going To Be Pope-ular’, a riff on Wicked and Conclave, made me laugh out loud). The only joke Glaser may have gone too far with was when she mocked Stanley Tucci in the context of Diddy parties; Tucci is a treasure and incomparable gentleman, so to associate him, even as a joke, with the exploits of a sexual predator felt kinda mean.
I was overjoyed to see Demi Moore win Best Actress (Musical/Comedy) for The Substance. Moore’s inspiring speech hailed her Golden Globe, which is her first ever major acting award, as the long-awaited recognition of her worth in the career she loves, when a producer long ago told her she would only be a popcorn actress, and she espoused self-love and affirmation for everyone watching: ‘You can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’
Many of the night’s big winners hadn’t yet been released in Australia or still aren’t out at time of publication: Conclave won Best Screenplay; The Brutalist won Best Director, Best Actor (Drama) for Adrien Brody and Best Picture (Drama); Emilia Pérez won four Globes, including Best Picture (Musical/Comedy).
I wish Substance writer-director Coralie Fargeat had won Best Director or Screenplay for her smart, shocking, tightly-directed triumph, although she did win Best Screenplay at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
One gripe I have with the Golden Globes was that Best Supporting Actress did not go to Margaret Qualley (instead going to Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez). I will bang this gong until the end of time, but like Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott in Possessor and Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in The Tragedy of Macbeth, Moore and Qualley’s performances in The Substance are so deeply complementary that it’s only logical to award them together.
However, Qualley’s loss may further the themes of the film. In The Substance, Elisabeth’s younger clone Sue rockets to stardom in the industry that discarded Elisabeth because she was “too old”, leaving her behind and horrifically mutating her body in the process. While Moore and Qualley had a very supportive relationship on-set and the film takes a stand against such destructive competition, you could view Moore winning her Globe as Elisabeth metatextually getting back at Sue.
Dune, Part 2 director Denis Villeneuve was also alarmingly absent from the Best Director category.
I was confused to see Kinds of Kindness, a great film that I just couldn’t squeeze into my top ten, receive only one nomination: Best Actor (Drama) for Jesse Plemons. Kinds of Kindness is a dark satire (and therefore comedy), not a drama, but more importantly, why wasn’t Emma Stone nominated? Stone delivers an equally varied and compelling trio of performances, leading one short and in supporting roles for the other two (the inverse of Plemons’ contribution), so Stone should, by rights, have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
With the Golden Globes gone, I now await the Oscars in March with both excitement and trepidation.
