'The Artist' tops the Golden Globes, but what does it mean?

Los Angeles: Starring starring Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, French Silent film, The Artist won the most awards at the ceremony ahead of the Oscars next month. The film won on three categories: best musical/comedy, best musical/comedy actor and best musical score. In close competition is The Descendants that won the dramatic-actor Globe for Clooney.

The Artist is a romance film, about a Hollywood silent movie star, George Valentin, whose career takes a hit after the coming of the talkies.

In an interview with The Guardian, director Michel Hazanavicius said that when he told his friends about his plans to make a silent film, they laughed. But after two spy thriller pastiches, the director made the film as a tribute to his love for pre-talkie films he would watch with his grandfather. “I was a crook,” says Hazanavicius. “I stole the format and made a modern movie from it.” he told the paper.

In an odd year, the Golden Globes had the chance to shake things up and throw momentum in unusual places. Instead, they gave us business as usual, Hollywood Foreign Press Association-style.

Most of the usual suspects won, nobody built much of a head of steam, and the handful of unusual choices can be all-too-easily traced to the organisation’s typical tendencies and biases.

The Artist went into the Globes as a prohibitive favourite and came out of the ceremony as the big winner on the film side, with three awards. But its performance was far from a sweep: The writing and directing categories, for which it was nominated, went to Midnight in Paris and Hugo, respectively.

The Descendants began the night as the consensus runner-up in the Oscar race and ended up the runner-up in Globes, winning two: Best Motion Picture — Drama and Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama (George Clooney).

More often than not, the Motion Picture Drama winner goes on to be named Best Picture at the Oscars, and The Descendants certainly kept itself in the race. But once again, it took second place to the black-and-white silent film.

If there was a bigger winner than The Artist, it was probably the man who released the film, Harvey Weinstein. His Weinstein Company not only led all companies with six winners, but he was singled out in a number of speeches – including Best Actress in a Drama Meryl Streep’s, where she said “I’d like to thank my agent and God – Harvey Weinstein.”

What do the results tell us about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s  (HFPA’s) taste in movies?

Not much. They like things that other people like: The Artist, The Descendants, Clooney, Streep, Michelle Williams, Octavia Spencer …

But they also like to spread things around. The first nine movie awards went to nine separate films; it wasn’t until two-and-a-half hours into the show, when The Artist won Best Actor – Comedy or Musical (Jean Dujardin) to go with its earlier Globe for music, that one film racked up a second award.

One of the problems with using the Globes as an Oscar precursor is that they separate the big awards into drama and comedy/musical categories, so they have twice as many winners.

Another problem with using the Globes as an Oscar precursor is that Oscar voters – who’ve already turned in their nominating ballots, and who won’t receive their final ballots for another three weeks – don’t really care what Globes voters like.

With inputs from Reuters.