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| Michael Shannon is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work in Nocturnal Animals. |
Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the
Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check
back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s
24 categories and more.
Best Supporting Actor
The nominees are:
Mahershala Ali for Moonlight
Jeff Bridges for Hell or High Water
Lucas Hedges for Manchester by the Sea
Dev Patel for Lion
Michael Shannon for Nocturnal Animals
This is an unusual year in that none of the characters
portrayed by these five men is a villain. Supporting Actor generally is the
home of the villain at the Oscars. There was a run from 2007-2009 when Javier
Bardem (No Country for Old Men), Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight),
and Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) won this award for playing
over-the-top, larger-than-life villains who steal their respective films right
out from under the heroes. Just two years ago, JK Simmons swept up every award
in sight for his mercilessly villainous role in Whiplash.
The reasons for this over-representation of villainy seem
clear enough. From the earliest films noirs through the Bond villains of the
1960s right on through to today, writers have crafted their antagonists as
witty, urbane, fun, and out-sized, while actors dig right in every time,
chewing up scenery and stealing the show. Villains have always been big, and
the Academy loves to reward big. How wonderful, then, this year, the actors
went another way.
Beyond not being villains, it would be hard to characterize
any of these performances as any one thing. They are complex, three-dimensional
portraits of mostly good people trying to do the best they can in worlds of
limited options. The five nominated actors here do not so much steal the show
as weave themselves into the fabric of the stories being told. They disappear
in their roles and resurface in these characters to give us a better
understanding of their points of view and their experiences.
Mahershala Ali for Moonlight – In a
year of complex character studies, few characters are as complex or as studied
as Ali’s Juan, a kind-hearted drug dealer who befriends and scared, lonely
young boy. There is never any question of Juan’s status within his community –
he is a kingpin and rules over all he surveys. He commands respect at every
turn and gets it. He lives a hard life on hard streets in hard times, but he
refuses to let his circumstances make him a hard man. Such is the power of a
script that exists solely to force the audience to confront its prejudices and
preconceived notions.
None of this would land as well, however, without Ali’s
strong, confident performance at its heart. He infuses his character with a
gentleness you would not expect. He displays a tenderness he not only refuses
to bury but even seems eager to share. Ali is quiet and still, communicating in
small gestures and nods, letting the world – and thereby, the audience – come
to him. Juan only appears in the first of the film’s three acts, but Ali’s
performance makes us feel both his absence and his impact throughout the rest
of the story.
Dev Patel for Lion – I complain
every year about category fraud, and I promise – or warn, as the case may be –
I will rail about it tomorrow, when we discuss Best Supporting Actress. The
fraud here is more subtle. Lion is the story of Saroo Brierly
and his long journey to find the family he lost. The film’s opening 45-50
minutes concern Saroo’s early life, and in these passages, he is played
wonderfully by Sunny Pawar. The second half of the film – more than, if we wish
to count minutes – is the adult Saroo’s search for his family, when he is
portrayed by Patel. But make no mistake: This is Patel’s film, and he carries
it magnificently.
It is sometimes baffling to me the way these things go down.
Patel faced the same scenario in 2008, when he was campaigned in Supporting
Actor for Slumdog Millionaire despite being the demonstrable lead
of the film. The difference is he was not nominated then, and he is now. However,
he was deserving then, and he is deserving now. To focus too much on these
awards distinctions, as I have done, perhaps distracts from Patel’s powerful
work in Lion.
He must embody both sorrow and rage, grief for the family he
lost and anger at the world that would allow this to happen. He is by turns the
well-adjusted adopted son of Australian parents and the mournful, emotionally
guarded orphan torn from his family. Patel is remarkable in all facets of this
character, and were it not for the fact American films rarely cast actors of
Indian heritage in leading roles, he would be a much bigger star even than he
is. Let us hope such casting prejudices change and Patel soon takes his rightful
place among the acting elite.
Jeff Bridges for Hell or High Water –
An interesting bit of Academy Awards trivia: Katherine Hepburn holds the record
for the longest span between an actor’s first and last nomination – 48 years
from Morning Glory in 1933 to On Golden Pond in
1981. Bridges, now on his seventh nomination, earned his first in 1972
for The Last Picture Show, 45 years ago. If things keep going the
way they have been, this will not be his last nomination, and we will not see
that last nomination hopefully for a long, long time.
In the current decade, Bridges has settled into a
comfortable groove, playing tough, grizzled men who cannot afford to show
weakness but whose world weariness has taken a toll. He won his first, and to
date only, Oscar for just such a role in Crazy Heart and was
most recently nominated for perhaps the most grizzled hero of all, Rooster
Cogburn in True Grit. In Hell or High Water, he offers
a new take on this archetype as a southern lawman whose only purpose is justice
in a world that no longer seems to know what that word means.
Lucas Hedges for Manchester by the Sea –
Bridges had already secured three nominations by the time fellow nominee Hedges
was born in 1997. It calls to mind, for me at least, the time in 1999 when
Michael Caine, during his acceptance speech for The Cider House Rules, shouted out his co-nominees, including an
11-year-old Haley Joel Osment, there for The
Sixth Sense. It is one of the things that makes the Oscars ceremony so
beautiful, the different generations of artists all coming together to
celebrate each other’s work.
Hedges is wonderful in Manchester
by the Sea as Patrick, a teenager whose father dies unexpectedly and is left
in the care of his uncle (Casey Affleck). Hedges brings to the part the right
mixture of general teenage angst and self-centeredness and more specific,
restrained grief over the loss of his father. His breakdown scene while putting
meat in the freezer – reminding him of his father’s body being kept on ice
until the ground thaws enough to bury him – is one of the great moments in
cinema this year. Though his feature credits to this point represent a limited
list, including small parts in Wes Anderson’s two most recent films, Hedges’
future seems limitless.
Michael Shannon for Nocturnal Animals –
I have spent a fair amount of space on this site over the years talking about the
greatness of Michael Shannon. He is among my favorite performers working today,
and he will win an Oscar sooner or later. He should have been nominated last
year for 99 Homes, and it is hard not
to think this nomination, though deserving in its own right, is a make-good for
his just missing the nod last time.
No matter. Make-good or not, Shannon commands the screen
with his intimidating frame and overwhelming presence, taking over as the
skewed moral center of Nocturnal Animals.
He plays Bobby, a lawman helping Jake Gyllenhaal’s character seek revenge
against the men who wronged him. In an otherwise uneven film, all of the
performances are great, but Shannon stands tall above them all. Audiences are
instinctively drawn to this mysterious live wire of a character, and Shannon
masterfully pulls us deeper into his web like one of Bobby’s ill-fated criminal
targets.
The final analysis
This category presents an interesting conundrum this year.
The signs point to Ali. He was the critics’ favorite choice for supporting
actor, and he won the Screen Actors Guild award. On top of that, Moonlight is a clearly beloved film, and
the character of Juan and Ali’s performance in the film’s early passages are
unforgettable.
However, apart from the Screen Actors Guild, the two biggest
Academy Award precursors are the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs. Ali was beaten
to the Golden Globe by Nocturnal Animals
star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is not nominated here, and to the BAFTA at
yesterday’s ceremony by Patel. Now, Patel is British, and it is possible the
British Academy was looking to reward one of its own, but it certainly gives us
pause in predicting this category.
Perhaps the BAFTAs are an indication Patel has the momentum
and the inside track to the Oscar, though he has picked up almost no other
awards this season. Perhaps the frayed nature of the precursors with three different
actors winning at the three different shows suggests anything can happen, such
as a Shannon or Bridges win. But maybe – and I think this is most likely – the
winds really are blowing the direction they are pointing, and these other
victories are simply misdirection on the road to Ali’s well-deserved coronation.
Will win: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight
Should win: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight
Should have been here: Ben Foster for Hell
or High Water
Tomorrow: Best Supporting Actress
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