This year's Golden Globes was a test to see if Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another is still riding on an unstoppable train, similar to one that Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer rode on in 2023, observes Aseem Chhabra.
This past week before the Golden Awards ceremony took place in Beverley Hills, an unarmed woman in Minneapolis was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.
Meanwhile, over 200 Iranians protesters have been killed across Iran trying to change their repressive regime.
But as they say in Hollywood, the show must go on.
R Scott Gemmill, executive producer of The Pitt acknowledged our troubles times, while accepting the Globe for Best TV Series, Drama.
'We live in a very divided country and world right now,' he said.
'But I think cinema -- and I call TV cinema too -- brings us all together, not just as audience, but as a community. We show people what we can do when a bunch of individuals, hundreds of us, have a common goal, and work together with decency and humanity, just acceptance and respect for each other. We can do amazing things. So thank you for that.'
This year's Golden Globes was a test to see if Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another is still riding on an unstoppable train, similar to one that Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer rode on in 2023.
Before the Golden Globe ceremony started, this was one big question in a lot of people's minds, especially after One Battle After Another won the top Best Picture Critics' Choice Award and similar recognitions by other leading critics groups.
In fact, ever since the film was shown to journalists and influencers last September, many people had rather prematurely anointed it as the Best Film of 2025.
So today's news is that there is a very good chance OBAA will continue on this winning train ride.
It lost two crucial acting awards races -- Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy (a very gracious Leonardo DiCaprio stood up to applaud the Marty Supreme winner Timothee Chalamet) and Best Supporting Actor where two nominees from the film Benecio Del Toro and Sean Penn lost to the veteran Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard who won for the Norwegian/Danish/Swedish film, Sentimental Value. Skarsgard earlier won a Globe for HBO's Limited Series Chernobyl.
But today, OBAA won the Best Screenplay and Best Director awards for Anderson, and also Best Supporting Actress Award for Teyana Taylor.
Taylor's was the first award announced at the ceremony and it opened the door for the others that followed through the evening.
Eventually, Julia Roberts announced OBAA as the winner in the Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. But she took a little while to make the announcement, dragging on the suspense as she kept talking about losing the Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama, trophy for After The Hunt to Jessie Buckey who is superb in Hamnet.
Chalamet edged out DiCaprio for the Globe, and he may just win the actor award presented by the Screen Actors Guild.
Brazilian actor Wagner Maura's Golden Globe win in the Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama category (for The Secret Agent) could provide a stiff Oscar competition for Chalamet.
The Golden Globes voters are mostly foreign journalists.
But the Academy's enhanced foreign membership could favour Wagner over Chalamet, even though he is very popular outside the US for films like the Dune franchise.
The Academy members are voting for the Oscar nominations starting January 12. Their votes could get influenced by the final outcomes at the Golden Globes ceremony.
There were quite a few other deserving winners at the Golden Globes ceremony.
The remarkable British mini-series Adolescence won four trophies -- for the Best Limited Series, Best Performance by a Male Actor (Stephen Graham), Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Owen Cooper) and Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Erin Doherty).
Rose Byrne won the first award for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You at the Berlinale in February 2025. The film premiered a month earlier at the Sundance Film Festival. She has since then been consistently carrying the torch for her outstanding performance in the film.
If OBAA had not been made in 2025, the year would have belonged to Hamnet, Chloe Zhao's heart-wrenching story about the deep loss William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes experienced and the good that came out of it.
Shakespeare wrote his most famous and saddest play The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark after the loss in his life.
So it was no surprise that Hamnet won the Golden Globe for the Best Motion Picture, Drama with Zhao and Producer Steven Spielberg celebrating the honour with a very excited cast.
Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
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