Thanks to the little people
Live coverage of the Baftas was surprisingly sketchy, despite the ceremony's rehabilitation as the "British Oscars" and relocation to the Royal Opera House - as opposed to that sticky-carpeted do at the Odeon Leicester Square which Bruce Willis might (hopefully!) attend to lend authority to the proceedings. Colin Paterson held the fort for 5 Live. "This is just your sort of night," said John Pienaar back in the studio, "because you're half geek, half luvvie." There was a wounded pause, as - possibly - Colin wondered why people had to be so cruel.
Frustrated by this thin brew, your reviewer was forced to switch on the television, to find Mark Kermode in a tux reflecting on proceedings. "Reflecting", like "garner" and "helm", is a word used particularly in relation to film, a world wherein, more than any other, everyone is forced to stand around lying their heads off. Kermode claimed recently on the Today programme, discussing the Oscar nominations: "Well, you know, Avatar is really not that bad, it's actually pretty good . . ." and Hmph didn't say, as he might to the secretary of state who's just told a terrible fib, "Now that's just not true, is it, Mark? How can you have got so ambassador-for-British-film-criticism-ishly distant from the things that make you happy that you expect us to believe that?" But then Kermode's blokeish approach has increasingly been to subdivide a film into component parts and give these ticks out of ten, as though reviewing a car.
The following morning, both Radio 4 and the World Service kept playing 24-year-old Carey Mulligan's Best Actress acceptance speech over and over ("the beautiful Carey Mulligan . . . that dress", sighed Sarah Montague), quivering not merely with the scale of the kid's charisma, but at the terrifying "Dame Carey" timbre of her voice ("Goodness, Bafta . . . I never dreamed . . ."). Mulligan's is a voice that seems to have been there for ever, like Deborah Kerr's or Olivia de Havilland's - a voice that carries a great freight of history, and one well used, it seems, to casting itself over a marvellous career, as Vanessa Redgrave had done on receiving her Bafta fellowship, talking nobly about Larry, and a brother who died too young in the Pacific.
Otherwise, a little documentary about the Ballets Russes' pre-First World War residency in England stole the week ("What Did Britain Do for Diaghilev?", 23 February, 11.30am). We learned that one of the prima ballerinas, Hilda Munnings from Essex, was forced to change her name to Hilda Munningsova for authenticity, and that once when she was dancing and her silk drawers fell down, she just kicked them stylishly into the wings.
Frequently those attending the ballet were as alluring as the dancers. During one gala performance in celebration of George V's coronation, the house lights were kept on so those on stage could ogle the magnificence of the imperial audience, and especially the Indian rajas into whose beards were woven pearls and "fierce flashing jewels". The 1950s recordings of the en pointe genius Nijinsky actually speaking were thrilling. "A lady asked me for a rendezvous in Regent's Park," he recalled. "And her eyes glistened with suppressed tears."
Unable at that time to speak much English, he cut off a rose petal from his costume and handed it to her, thinking: "Friends may fail you. Art never will." Right on, Vaslav.
Radio 5 Live, Radio 4, World Service
