As Oscar front-runner Brady Corbet took the stage to accept his New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film for The Brutalist, he shared a story about losing his house in a fire prior to making Vox Lux. The home he shared with his wife and collaborator, Mona Fastvold, was suddenly gone — they lost so much, production on the film was delayed for years, and now, as he stood upon the stage, Los Angeles was on fire, with countless people, artists and not, feeling what he felt all those years ago.
The New York Film Critics Circle Awards are often a pretty light affair with winners preselected and announced by past collaborators or famous friends (or, in the case of Claire Danes introducing Best Supporting Actor winner Kieran Culkin, both). But even with its usual air of relaxed joviality, it was clear to see that people’s thoughts were elsewhere, distant, and distracted — unsure of what this award means, if anything, in the context of devastation.
It’s not uncommon for winners at awards shows, televised or not, to speak to issues near to them, as documentarian Kirsten Johnson spoke to the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the West Bank prior to announcing Best Non-fiction Film to the directors of No Other Land (who could not attend). Much of Wednesday night’s awards show was tinged by the heartbreak and disaster out in Los Angeles, the likes of which may be unfolding for the rest of the week, if not beyond. While a string of awards shows have been postponed in one way or another — SAG nominations delivering virtually, Critics Choice and AARP Awards delayed, Oscar nominations pushed another week — there’s no geographic necessity in pushing the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. But to sit there, knowing what the opposite side of the country is going through, did feel undeniably weird and off-key to be celebrating anything, let alone the achievements in an industry often so cut off from the rest of the world.
Jim Jarmusch, there to introduce Best Screenplay winner Sean Baker, spoke out against the country’s allergy to “woke,” insisting that it was actually time for everyone to “wake up” and see that what was happening was a product of our own making. (“Did Jim Jarmusch think he was on TV?” I heard an attendee say as I left.)
No speaker was more overcome than Best Actor winner Adrien Brody, choked up and shaking, unable to square the nature of the pride in his award with the destruction happening out West. He rendered himself speechless, but to his credit, what was there to say? There certainly was still a sense of celebration: a standing ovation for Mike Leigh, a hearty laugh at Sean Baker ribbing New Yorker critic Richard Brody, All We Imagine As Light director Payal Kapadia expressing her bafflement that Jodie Foster approached her at the Golden Globes that weekend. Film celebrates, to some degree, the power of an image, but the powerful images were nowhere to be found at the NYFCC Awards. The pictures in everyone’s minds were from much smaller screens: footage of burning homes and landscapes on social media, the horrific decimation spreading without containment. If there was a common cause to the evening, it was that there is a world beyond just films and filmmakers worth saving.
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