I Swear’s Robert Aramayo had a happy moment at BAFTA, but the night belonged to Paul Thomas Anderson | film

TIt turned out to be a very British night for the Baftas – in fact, more British than usual. It started with Hollywood stars being served hilarious British snacks, which they had no more idea existed than they had about life forms on Saturn’s moons. Emma Stone got in some hula hoops, Timothée Chalamet had a bag of Scampi fries, and Leonardo DiCaprio got his laughing stock around the flapjack hoopnob.

Another British thing was the appearance of the Prince and Princess of Wales on the red carpet (the former was the president of BAFTA); Their presence imposes that other terrible British tradition on everyone, as if in a Mike Leigh movie, and avoids the topic. Everyone is trying not to talk or think about the elephant in the room or the elephant that fell and got hurt in the speeding car on the way home from the police station. Well, at least William never liked him.

And a British star gave us the biggest surprise: Hollywood stars in the best leading actors list such as DiCaprio and Chalamet were sensationally defeated by rising Englishman Robert Aramayo, who took home the first acting award alongside rising star BAFTA. This was for his brilliant performance in the wonderfully warm and emotional film ‘I Swear’ about the life and times of Tourette’s Syndrome campaigner John Davidson, who struggled all his life with his condition and people’s attitudes, and was also in the audience. It was a well-deserved feel-good moment that night (I was also hoping for an award for Peter Mullan who plays Davidson’s big-hearted mentor) and a moment to remind us that the BAFTAs can sometimes reward British films at the expense of Hollywood.

Otherwise, the night went resoundingly into Paul Thomas Anderson’s dizzying counterculture fantasy Battle by Battle, a cheesy, realistic dream of the Trump resistance and Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in a semi-fictional America. Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor for his role as a swaggering reactionary military man dedicated to eliminating subversives, and his pugnacious, dead-eyed face and bob haircut bear an eerily similar resemblance to the real-life Trump face of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Border Patrol Commander, Greg Bovino. It was Anderson’s moment of instinctive zeitgeist intuition.

It’s perhaps disappointing that Josh Safdie’s stunning sports comedy Marty Supreme, with Timothée Chalamet as the bantamweight champion, didn’t bother the scorer at all. But the gorgeous Irish actress Jessie Buckley has scooped a long-awaited BAFTA award for her role as Agnes (or Anne) Hathaway in the meditative drama Hamnet. (It’s a film that has suffered the typical backlash at this year’s openings, from people declaring that they were not convinced that Hamnet’s death had anything to do with the play. I’m not convinced, either — but that’s not the point of this passionate, daring film.)

That night, director Ryan Coogler’s almost uncategorizable vampire thriller Sinners, which was among other things a satirical attack on white consumption of black culture, showed it was a genuine contender for three Baftas including Best Supporting Actress Lonemi Mosaku. This film showed that sinners still cross the road. There will be a lot of smart money on a big hit at next month’s Oscars. Elsewhere, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein took home three BAFTA Awards, which recognized the film’s beauty and complexity.

The International Film Award went to Joachim Trier’s family drama Sentimental Value, a film that was much talked about among BAFTA voters but, in my view, not on the same level as his previous film, The Worst Person in the World. I was delighted to see the Outstanding British Debut BAFTA Award – a BAFTA award that usually means a lot to the winner’s career – go to Akinola Davies Jr’s wonderful and very personal film My Father’s Shadow.

The night and the bragging rights belong to Arameo. But the overall winner was that wonderful director Anderson, who seems to become more complex and ambitious with every film he makes.