This feels like an interim year for the Golden Globes

Well, nobody could accuse the Golden Globes Foundation — as they are now called — of predictability. Of the films that have been nominated for the ceremony on January 5, the frontrunner is Jacques Audiard’s much-discussed crime musical Emilia Pérez with ten nominations, including Best Film (Musical or Comedy), Best Director and Best Supporting Actress for its stars Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana. The movie, which has met with enormous controversy in some circles because of its unfettered approach to social mores — not least having a trans woman, Karla Sofía Gascón, in the lead — is undeniably a bold and distinctive film that indicates that this is a year of risk-taking rather than complacency. But to what end?

There are some nominations that feel pre-ordained (of course Denzel was going to be nominated for his ripe, scenery-chewing performance in Gladiator II, a movie that otherwise barely got a look in) and others that nobody could have predicted even a couple of years back. Demi Moore and Pamela Anderson were recently regarded as washed up, even cautionary tales, but now both are proudly returned to prominence and award nominations, Moore for The Substance and Anderson for The Last Showgirl. And the serious-minded bent continued to many of the other films singled out. The likes of Conclave, The Brutalist and Anora — none of them big commercial plays — have all been nominated for multiple awards, several of which they may win. Only Wicked is flying the flag for conventional big-budget Hollywood filmmaking, and is inevitably going to lose to Emilia Pérez.

The television awards, meanwhile, are more straightforward. Shōgun will almost inevitably walk away with Best Drama series, and only a fool would bet against Baby Reindeer repeating its success at the Emmys, so Richard Gadd, at least, will be preparing to celebrate. Personally I’d love to see some love for Slow Horses, by far the outstanding (and still slightly undersung) show of the past few years, but the nominations for Gary Oldman as Best Actor and for Best Drama — as well as the show’s semi-concealed star, Jack Lowden — were highly deserved.

Otherwise there were lots of interesting oddities here and there. The Globes have always been, to put it bluntly, a star-fucker’s paradise, and there are a lot of big names being nominated for roles that may not necessarily have attracted attention in other years — Kevin Kline, Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem and Allison Janney, Oscar-winners all, are nominated for roles that are hardly their best or most striking. And it will be fascinating to see, given the new climate in politics, if the two nominations that the anti-Trump drama The Apprentice received translate into awards on the night, and if so whether that could be seen as a symbol of defiance.

Yet it’s doubtful whether many of the awards this year are likely to tip the dial one way or the other. Last year represented the canonization of Christopher Nolan, currently the most esteemed director in Hollywood, and his near-billion-dollar grossing masterpiece Oppenheimer. This year, save Wicked, there is no such behemoth to lure in casual viewers, in large part because the various writers’ and actors’ strikes put back production on films for several months, or longer. Therefore, this feels like an interim Globes, a quirky throat-clearer before something more straightforwardly commercial happens next year. What that will be, and what films will be recognized then, we shall have to wait and see.