Preview: Loser Takes All

Stella Papamichael 's overview of this year's nominated films.

Forget the popcorn, pass the Prozac. According to this year's BAFTA nominees, there is little hope for humanity; only war, fear, suspicion, greed and paranoia. Of course that about sums up the backstage ambience in any given year, but those dark themes are pushed to the fore in 2008. The filmmakers might only be responding to current crises, but would a single ray of hope be too much to ask for? Or does a happy ending mean you'll be going home without the gold?

Hotly tipped with 14 nods, including Best Film and Best British Film, is wartime drama Atonement. Director Joe Wright heaps a burden of guilt on a young girl's shoulders when a lie lands her sister's lover on the killing fields of France. Best Supporting Actress contender Saoirse Ronan excels as Briony, but what if Wright had cast Abigail Breslin? Last year's Best Supporting Actress nominee for Little Miss Sunshine would only have to smile, say sorry and all would be forgiven. How could those star-crossed lovers (fellow nominees Keira Knightley and James McAvoy) possibly resist? Then again, a wartime drama called Apology doesn't have quite the same gravitas. And those observations on the great class divide mightn't be as potent if wiped away by a cheeky grin and a group sing-song.

Briony at least has the decency to be plagued by remorse. By contrast, Best Actor nominee Daniel Day-Lewis shows no mercy whatsoever as corrupt oil man Daniel Plainview in epic drama There Will Be Blood. He stops just short of bombing the beejesus out of a small, dustbowl town in his quest to get at the black stuff. It is a performance so steeped in malice and misanthropy it makes JR Ewing look like Dudley Do-Right. Among nine nominations, Paul Thomas Anderson is also up for Best Film and Best Director. But would the film have made such an impact if Plainview was an eco-warrior striving to curb the emission of greenhouse gases? Well, probably not. In the world of movies, the face of pure evil is strangely alluring.

Javier Bardem plumbs similar depths of depravity in No Country for Old Men, relentlessly pursuing Josh Brolin with a souped-up cattle prod to retrieve a briefcase full of cash. Filmmaking duo the Coen brothers - like fellow nominee Paul Thomas Anderson - make the most of the vast desert landscape to comment on the aching emptiness brought on by insatiable greed.

But the feeling also resonates amid the urban sprawl in Ridley Scott's crime epic American Gangster (named in the Best Film category). Then there is corporate greed, as seen in Tony Gilroy's courtroom drama Michael Clayton. George Clooney's soul-searching lawyer shows BAFTA that one man can make a difference - or at least give it a shot. Perhaps it's this cautious optimism and lack of all-out thrills that means Michael Clayton doesn't get a look-in for either Best Film or Best Director.

It's not all bad news for Tony Gilroy though. He's in the running for Best British Film as co-writer of The Bourne Ultimatum. Although it boasts more death-defying feats than Michael Clayton it is spiked with the same mistrust of big institutions. Director Paul Greengrass even makes allusions to the 'climate of fear' post-9/11. It just wouldn't resonate as deeply if Bourne suddenly regained his memory and remembered where he stashed that winning lottery ticket.

The post-9/11 malaise might also explain why German drama The Lives of Others, about routine espionage in '80s East Berlin, has made an impression on the academy. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is up for Best Director and Best Screenplay whilst the late Ulrich Mühe is recognised in the Best Actor category for his turn as a workaday Stasi spy obsessed with the exploits of a local writer. If he'd just gotten out a bit more and found himself a girlfriend, we wouldn't have been so moved.

Life under the Stasi may have been grim, but according to BAFTA's top picks for Best British Film, living in the UK is no bed of roses either. Even rock stars have it hard. Control tells the harsh life story of ill-fated musician Ian Curtis in a grimy monochrome print. Let's face it: Had this been the glossy portrait of a pop star who channelled his depression into music, went mainstream and married Gwyneth Paltrow we'd be throwing popcorn (and/or Prozac) at the screen.

In Eastern Promises director David Cronenberg reveals the plight of Russian immigrants against a bleak London skyline. It just wouldn't hit home if the sun was shining and Naomi Watts' midwife worked in a hospital that topped the NHS league tables.

Shane Meadows taps more directly into the current hysteria over immigration with a flashback to a concrete grey housing estate in the '80s in This Is England. If the violence culminated in a group hug, this wouldn't be a BAFTA-worthy film, but an ad for fizzy cola - with added artificial sweetener.

Mary Poppins may have taught us that a little sugar helps the medicine go down, but we all know that too much can make you sick. Furthermore, the great British public refuse to be nannied in this day and age. BAFTA's shortlist for 2008 aims to get at the truth, whatever the cost, and the truth hurts. And frankly, the more it hurts the better your chances of bagging a gong. That's why, when all other hope in this crazy world is lost, Joe Wright will be sitting in the stalls of The Royal Opera House with a quietly confident smile on his face...