2006 National Society of Film Critics Awards Winners
The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC), composed of 58 U.S. critics mostly based in New York City and Los Angeles, has chosen Guillermo del Toro’s Spanish-language dark fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth as the best film of 2006.
Set in 1940s Spain, Pan’s Labyrinth tells the story of a girl (Ivana Baquero) who finds herself living in two worlds: One of Fascist horror above ground, one of dark magic below ground. Also in the cast are Sergi López, Ariadna Gil, Doug Jones, and Maribel Verdú, none of whom made the NSFC’s list of winners or top runners-up. (In the last couple of decades, acting categories have tended to be restricted to English-speaking roles.)
The last time the NSFC chose a foreign-language production as best film of the year was six years ago, when Edward Yang’s Taiwanese family drama Yi Yi: A One and a Two… came out on top. Before that, one would have to go back to Akira Kurosawa’s Ran in 1985. (From its inception in the mid-1960s up to the mid-1970s — perhaps a time when U.S. critics were less concerned with being Oscar bellwethers than with choosing the year’s top cinematic achievements — most NSFC best film winners were non-English-language productions. Only one of those, Costa-Gavras‘ Z, went on to receive a best picture Oscar nomination.)
Curiously, this year’s two best film runners-up were also shot in a language other than English: Cristi Puiu’s Romanian dark comedy The Death of Mr. Lazarescu and Clint Eastwood’s Japanese-language World War II drama Letters from Iwo Jima. (According to The Envelope’s Tom O’Neil, the two runners-up actually were the leaders in the initial voting rounds.)
Most of the other winners were the (by now) usual suspects: best actress Helen Mirren for The Queen; best actor Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland; best director Paul Greengrass for United 93 (Guillermo del Toro tied in second place with Martin Scorsese, for The Departed); best screenplay for The Queen’s Peter Morgan; best cinematography for Children of Men (Emmanuel Lubezki); and best non-fiction film for Davis Guggenheim’s global warming warning An Inconvenient Truth.
Despite her best actress Oscar push, Meryl Streep (above, with Anne Hathaway) was appropriately chosen best supporting actress for both The Devil Wears Prada and A Prairie Home Companion. This year’s NSFC awards were dedicated to the recently deceased director of the latter (mess of a) film, Robert Altman.
The best supporting actor was Mark Wahlberg, who has been receiving much critical praise for his — in my view, ineffectual — performance as a tough cop in The Departed. But then again, better Wahlberg’s stilted line delivery than Jack Nicholson’s disgraceful scenery swallowing.
Additionally, the NSFC honored David Lynch’s Inland Empire as best experimental film, and Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 resistance drama L’Armée des ombres / Army of Shadows (right, with Simone Signoret), which shared the Film Heritage Award with New York’s Museum of the Moving Image for its presentation of the first complete U.S. retrospective of the works of Nouvelle Vague filmmaker Jacques Rivette.
Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver, the runaway favorite in the foreign-language field until U.S. critics began opting for Letters from Iwo Jima and Pan’s Labyrinth, failed to show up among the top three picks in any of the NSFC categories. (An unfortunate omission, if I may add.)
Also missing in action was Clint Eastwood’s other World War II drama, Flags of Our Fathers.
In The Envelope, Tom O’Neil explains that only 45 of the NSFC’s 58 members participated in this year’s voting. Of those, only 21 were present at Sardi’s restaurant in New York City, where the voting was conducted. Proxy votes of absent members only count on the first ballot — this year, the only categories decided in the first round were actress, screenplay, and cinematography.
Assuming that most — if not all — of those present at Sardi’s are New York-based critics, the strangest thing about this voting system and its ensuing results is that several New York Film Critics winners failed to come out on top in the NSFC lists, e.g., director Martin Scorsese (NYFCC) vs. Paul Greengrass (NSFC); supporting actor Jackie Earle Haley vs. Mark Wahlberg (NSFC); foreign-language film L’Armée des ombres (NYFCC) vs. the (foreign-language) best film Pan’s Labyrinth (NSFC).
It’s unclear whether New York critics changed their minds after a few weeks (the NYFCC results were announced on Dec. 10) — or perhaps after a few drinks — or if they simply wanted to spread the wealth around after catching up with more year-end releases. In any case, if there’s no clear winner on the first ballot, New York City critics tend to, quite literally, have the last say on the NSFC’s top picks.
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Tags: Anne Hathaway, Army of Shadows, Cristi Puiu, Film Awards, Guillermo del Toro, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Pan's Labyrinth, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, The Devil Wears Prada
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They should have listed the runners up in the foreign language category. That’s silly that they choose to completely ignore them.