The Golden Globes ignored politics. But their biggest winner is exploiting today’s miserable turmoil Golden Globe 2026

nWith the political landscape of the contemporary United States looking like an endless series of militaristic PR coups for the Trumpian right at home and abroad, it is only fitting that Paul Thomas Anderson’s astonishing, enigmatic counterculture epic Battle After Battle — with Leonardo DiCaprio as a clueless, disheveled ex-revolutionary — should cement its current standing as one of the leading films of this awards season: winning four Globes including Best Musical or Comedy and Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson — whose fluency, productivity and expertise. Pure technique and ambition make him arguably America’s preeminent filmmaker. The excellent Teyana Taylor took home the award for Best Supporting Actress.

This is a cinematic spectacle in which no mainstream directly attacks the Trump regime (like, say, Ali Abbasi’s satirical Trump biopic The Apprentice) but there is something in Anderson’s film that inhales and senses both the current feverish mood of reactionary hysteria and the tension and depression of those opposed to it. Sean Penn wasn’t nominated for any Globes last night for his turn as the optimistic, pathetic Colonel Lockjaw in battle after battle, an oppressor despised by his masters, but I see a great deal of Lockjaw in Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, the disposable courtiers who barely stand directly behind the president at public events.

The “yin” to the “yang” of that picture was Chloe Zhao’s passionate romantic fantasy Hamnet, which won Best Drama and Best Actress for Jessie Buckley as William Shakespeare’s wife Agnes, or for Anne Hathaway: a well-deserved Buckley Award, she was the heart and soul of a film that boldly, perhaps even heretically, returned to the past, meditatively invented William and Agnes’ suffering at the death of their son, and created a new narrative fueled by this bereavement in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Or even composed it, almost line by line.

It’s not meant to be a documentary, but rather a kind of popular myth: to some, Hamnet is pedantic and forced, but I responded to his violence, creative intelligence and mystery, and it’s great to see Buckley rewarded at the Globe Awards.

Elsewhere, Josh Safdie’s hellzapoppin’ pingpong comedy Marty Supreme earns Timothée Chalamet his first lead in a musical or comedy after years of loss — a delightfully stunning performance from Chalamet, his needy hyperactivity and charm meshing perfectly with the rest of the film. What an amazing and special actor, Chalamet, full of energy and a movie star like a guitar string.

Nervousness and intense anxiety were also the keyword for the performance as Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, where she won Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, beating out big hitters like Cynthia Erivo and Emma Stone. 2026 is certainly a miserable year for this kind of existential angst.

It was great to see two Globe Awards go to a film I thought was the best last year: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian film The Secret Agent, about a scientist on the run from the authorities in 1970s Brazil – it was Best Non-English Language Film and tonight Wagner Moura won Best Actor in a Drama for playing the title role. The top male acting contenders may have all been in the musical/comedy category, but it was nonetheless great to see such an excellent actor take home an award.

This was a good list for an awards ceremony that had been marred by various Golden Globes scandals over a lack of diversity in membership and bribery, although the resulting awards were not much different from those offered by other awarding bodies and sometimes more diverse. Tonight some will be very disappointed that Ryan Coogler’s Sinners wasn’t more rewarded than it was – Sinners wasn’t my favorite Coogler film, though I think it’s a shame that Delroy Lindo couldn’t get a supporting actor Globe for his performance.

This was a smart, serious list of award winners, leaving the Oscar field open between Battle After Battle, Hamnet, and a delirious Marty Supreme.