Paul Thomas Anderson refuses to discuss politics following Baftas victories: “I’m a filmmaker”
After his hugely successful night at the Baftas, One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson shut down talk of politics, stating, “I’m not a politician, I’m a filmmaker.”
One Battle After Another was the big winner at the Baftas, scoring a total of six wins across the 14 categories it was nominated across the ceremony.
For Anderson personally, he was bestowed with the honour of ‘Best Director’ with the film also clinching the prize for ‘Best Film’.
While One Battle After Another, based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, deals with political themes, which are increasingly relevant amid the ongoing situation with ICE in the United States, Anderson explained following the ceremony that he prefers for his art to do the talking on his behalf.
Upon being asked whether film industry figures should speak on politics, Anderson batted away the question by replying, “I’ll ultimately fail here, in this situation.”
He elaborated (per The Independent), “Where I have confidence that I won’t fail is by making a film. I have significantly more confidence in myself communicating my feelings about the world through the film, and I think that’s what we’ve done with this film.”
Anderson continued, “Trying to find intelligent things to say in this form wouldn’t be – I’m not a politician, but I’m a filmmaker, so [I] try to do it through the work.”
Overall, the Baftas, in comparison to other film awards, were low on political moments. Notably, Akinola Davies Jr, who won the ‘Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer’ alongside his brother Wale Davies for their work on My Father’s Shadow, used his speech to say, “Archive your loved ones. Archive your stories yesterday, today, and forever. For Nigeria, for London, the Congo, Sudan, free Palestine.”
However, the BBC chose to edit this part of his speech from the broadcast, with a spokesperson later clarifying to Deadline, “The live event is three hours, and it has to be reduced to two hours for its on-air slot. The same happened to other speeches made during the night and all edits were made to ensure the programme was delivered to time.”
There has been a rise in discussion surrounding filmmaking and politics in recent weeks after Berlin Film Festival jury president Wim Wenders said in response to a question about Gaza at a press conference during the event, “We have to stay out of politics because if we make movies that are dedicatedly political, we enter the field of politics.”
Last week, an open letter was signed by more than 80 stars of the screen, including Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Angeliki Papoulia, Peter Mullan, Adam McKay, and Mike Leigh, criticising the Berlin Film Festival for its position on Palestine.
Today (February 23rd), Nick Cave used his newsletter to show support for Wenders and expressed his hopes that the director’s comments “will encourage artists to feel confident expressing how they truly see themselves, in all their radical complexity and diversity, to say, ‘This is what I am. This is how I feel.’”
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