Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Actress

The nominees are:

Cate Blanchett in TÁR

Ana de Armas in Blonde

Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie

Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once

I have been covering the Oscar race in one capacity or another for 14 years now. In that time, there has never been an acting race this strange or this close. There have been surprises, certainly. Olivia Colman’s 2018 Best Actress win springs to mind immediately. Maybe Best Supporting Actress in 2013 felt this close, with Jennifer Lawrence and Lupita Nyong’o going down to the wire. But, this is infinitely closer and, again, stranger than that.

It started at the nomination stage with Andrea Riseborough’s moderately surprising nomination. She was, after all, nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards. But, the film world blew up and pretended like the nomination had manifested from nothing. Collusion and improper campaigning accusations were thrown around, and the Academy was essentially forced to investigate. They found nothing because there was nothing. 

It’s a good performance by a popular actor in an independent movie. Her team’s grassroots campaign had a helluva lot more integrity than most studio campaigns, for which millions of dollars are thrown around in hopes of getting this kind of recognition. That ultimately was what it was all about. The wealthy studios, who got so used to working this system to their advantage, got outplayed and they didn’t like it. It was a manufactured controversy from the word go.

The part of it that was not manufactured and had nothing to do with campaign procedures was the perception that Riseborough’s nomination specifically came at the expense of either Daneille Deadwyler or Viola Davis, two performers of color who gave brilliant performances in critically acclaimed films. Again, not Riseborough’s fault, but it served as further proof that we are hardly out of the #OscarsSoWhite days. Truly, if you saw Deadwyler’s performance in Till, there’s virtually no way to leave her off your top five. My guess, the still heavily white Academy didn’t watch it.

Once we got through all of that hullabaloo, Cate Blanchett continued to pick up every award under the sun for one of the great performances of the 21st century. When she picked up the BAFTA, her victory seemed all but assured. Truly, if Renee Zelwegger in Judy was undeniable, there was nothing going to stand in the way of this coronation.

Then, Everything Everywhere All at Once began to steamroll everything. It was already strong as the leading nominee at the Academy Awards. It won the DGA and PGA, all but cementing its status as the one to beat for Best Picture. When the Screen Actors Guild Awards arrived, the film was a freight train barrelling downhill. It won the most SAG Awards ever, including ensemble and leading actress for Michelle Yeoh. 

It felt like something had shifted. All of a sudden, Everything Everywhere All at Once wasn’t going to be just another Best Picture winner. It started down a path of historic victory, which is where we are now. And, due to a quirk of the schedule, it picked up all this momentum just before ballots were in hand. In a lot of years, the votes would already have been cast before the SAG Awards, but not so this year. This year, voters watched one movie win every award under the sun, then received their ballots. The face of that movie: Yeoh. So, how could the momentum not sweep her up, as well?

I could go through all the stats. In the face of all of this, they’re not particularly convincing. We’ll throw out the Golden Globes because they’re wonky and strange and not representative of much of anything. Let’s look at SAG and BAFTA, our favorites. We’ll use 2007 as the cutoff point because that was the year BAFTA really announced itself as the place to look for surprises. 

If you have forgotten, 2007 was the year Best Actress was supposed to go to Julie Christie for Away from Her and Supporting Actress was a race between Ruby Dee in American Gangster and Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone. Christie and Dee won their respective SAG categories and were favored at the Oscars. The BAFTAs went to Marion Cotillard for La Vie en Rose and Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton, in actress and supporting actress, respectively. Cotillard and Swinton, of course, went on to win the Oscars.

The next year, SAG went with Meryl Streep in Doubt for actress, while the BAFTA went to Kate Winslet in The Reader. Winslet won the Oscar. In 2009, SAG got it right with Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side, while the BAFTA went to Carey Mulligan for An Education. All three matched in 2010 on Natalie Portman in Black Swan. The next year, Viola Davis won the SAG for The Help and Streep won the BAFTA for The Iron Lady. Streep won the Oscar. It flipped again in 2012, when Emmanuelle Riva won the BAFTA for Amour and Jennifer Lawrence won SAG and the Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook.

The next five years in a row, they all matched. Then came the Colman-Glenn Close race, when the world expected Close finally to win a long-overdue Academy Award for The Wife. Instead, Colman, BAFTA in hand, shocked the world. They matched on Zelwegger in 2019. Then in 2020, SAG went with Davis again, this time for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. BAFTA and the Academy went with Frances McDormand in Nomadland. Last year, SAG picked the winner with Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but that film had not been released yet in England and was not eligible for the BAFTA.

It should be noted that no actress this century has won the Academy Award for Best Actress without winning at least one or the other of the SAG award or BAFTA. So, we can pretty safely discount Riseborough, Ana de Armas, and Michelle Williams, but we already knew that. If we’re reading all the stats correctly, Blanchett has the numbers on her side. But as the poet said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once – Yeoh is a legend. There are no two ways about it, and her resumé speaks for itself. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Memoirs of a Geisha. Crazy Rich Asians. She’s already in the Mummy franchise, the Kung Fu Panda franchise, and the MCU. Next up, she will be joining the Avatar universe, and she’s doing the highly anticipated film adaptation of Wicked. She can and has done it all.

She is as much an action star as a dramatic performer, and Everything Everywhere All at Once is really the first time since Crouching Tiger in 2000 that she has been allowed to flex both muscles at once. She gives it everything she’s got in a career redefining performance that will most likely net her an Academy Award. As much as I prefer Cate Blanchett’s performance this year and as much as I feel like Everything Everywhere All at Once flounders as a film, it would be hard to begrudge Yeoh her flowers.

Cate Blanchett in TÁR – The fascinating thing to me about all of this is that in actually watching TÁR, this feels like a no-brainer. Blanchett is one of the finest actresses of her generation – probably of any generation – and this is the best she has ever been. There is no one capable of doing the things Blanchett can do when she’s working at this level, and the character of Lydia Tár practically demands she raise her game to heights heretofore unimagined.

Blanchett plays Tár as a wrecking ball, destroying everything in her path but without the self-awareness that a wrecking ball swings back the other way. She destroys her own life and looks outward for anyone to blame but herself. She doesn’t mind being thought of as a mad genius, but at the end of the day, she’s really just mad. Blanchett never takes a wrong step in guiding the audience down the path of decadence and self-destruction. We’re passengers. Blanchett is the conductor, and she takes us places no actor has ever gone before.

Ana de Armas in Blonde – I really wanted to like Blonde. I greatly enjoyed director Andrew Dominik’s two previous films to this one, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly. The casting of Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe is inspired. And, the behind-the-scenes pedigree is undeniable. The film, however, forces one to wonder what the hell any of these people thought they were doing. This is a disaster of epic proportions. 

The shame is that de Armas is damn good in the movie. She puts her whole self into the performance, mind, body, and soul. Unfortunately, over and over, Dominik proves that the only thing he is interested in is the body part of that equation. De Armas and the filmmakers are completely at odds over the film’s portrayal of Monroe. Somewhere in de Armas’ version, there is a good movie. Virtually none of that makes it into the movie we got. The nomination is earned as much for the performance as for what de Armas endured to bring anything resembling a human portrait out of the process. She deserved better.

Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans – Speaking of actresses nominated by the Academy for playing Marilyn Monroe, we come to Williams. This is the performers’ fifth nomination, including that 2012 Best Actress nod for My Week with Marilyn. She has yet to win, and she’s not really in the running this year, but she will get over the hump someday. She’s a magnificent actress, the Academy loves her, and still just 42, she has a lot more career in front of her.

All that said, I am not entirely sold on the Mitzi Fabelman character in Steven Spielberg’s film. Williams does a fine job with the role, and the sequence of her dancing on the family camping trip is a true standout scene from the year. But, I don’t see the depth in the character that Spielberg must have been hoping to bring out. She borders on one-note, a bit of a flibberty-gibbet who is just as likely to bring home a monkey as the groceries. Being that the whole movie revolves around Sammy Fabelman’s feelings about his mom and dad, there wasn’t enough there there for it to come together, despite Williams’ best efforts.

Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie – This is the performance there was so much fuss about. The poor, alcoholic screw-up trying to reconnect with family is nothing we haven’t seen before. Riseborough does it better than most, committing fully to the bit, but the movie doesn’t give her anywhere to go. She is hung out to dry, so to speak, playing the same scene over and over with different characters. First with her son. Then, her old friends. Then, her new boss. Then, strangers. It gets old quickly.

Riseborough’s portrayal of an alcoholic perpetually sinking to rock bottom feels true and lived in, lacking in the histrionics of most Hollywood portraits of the disease. If nothing else, To Leslie is evidence of the possibilities for Riseborough’s career as a leading lady. She has been a supporting player in a number of great films over the years such as Never Let Me Go, Birdman, and The Death of Stalin. If she ever gets to be the lead of a great movie worthy of her talents, this won’t be the last time we see her at the Oscars.

The final analysis

I don’t think anyone is going to argue that Michelle Yeoh is better in Everything Everywhere All at Once than Cate Blanchett is in TÁR, for whatever it means to compare art and performances. But, Yeoh is the performer of the moment. It is her time. Blanchett’s got two Oscars, and though the Academy is not above handing out a third – Frances McDormand just won her third – there is a sense that she’s been rewarded. All the stats be damned, the sentiment and the momentum are with Yeoh.

Will win: Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Cate Blanchett in TÁR

Should have been here: Mia Goth in Pearl

A note about my favorite snub: Both Ellen Burstyn and Linda Blair got Oscar nominations for The Exorcist. Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie made it in for Carrie. Hell, Kathy Bates won Best Actress for Misery. So, where are our modern horror nominations? This is a longer discussion, but the point is Mia Goth is on another level in Pearl. From dancing by herself in the cornfield to delivering that minutes-long monologue at the dinner table to that final shot, Pearl is a wholly unique creation that could only have been brought to life by Goth.

Next time: Best Picture

New movie review: Birdman

Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thompson, who cannot bear to look at the man in the mirror in Birdman.

What we talk about when we talk about fame depends largely on when we are talking about it. A thousand years ago, the question may have been: Are you a member of a royal family or perhaps an explorer? A hundred years ago, are you in politics or some kind of war hero? Twenty years ago, are you on TV or the covers of magazines? Today, have you gone viral or how many followers do you have?

If it has not already, the phrase “Twitter followers” will soon be redundant. There are more people being followed on Twitter and more followers than many major religions can boast. The world of social media is a religion unto itself, full of arbitrary rules, rituals, hysteria, exploitation, abuse, worship, true believers, and those just dipping their toes in the water. The one thing it cannot offer – what most religions purport to offer – is any lasting meaning.

So what of art and artists and their search for a deeper truth? Is it even out there to find, or is it simply too ephemeral to grasp? In a hashtag democracy, in which influence and importance are measured in charts of trending topics, what does it take to create something of value? If it cannot be validated or dismissed in 140 characters, does it even have value? These are the preoccupations of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dazzling new film Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

The director of Biutiful and the communication-breakdown trilogy of Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, Iñárritu has always made films about humans’ deep desire to connect with one another and their tragic inability to do so. Now, he drops his latest movie into a world in which it is easier than ever to make connections with people around the globe, but Iñárritu and co-writers Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, and Armando Bo tackle head on the inherent superficiality of those connections.

Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thompson, an actor famous for a superhero franchise he made two decades ago but who now wants only to leave a legacy of honesty and artistic integrity. In that pursuit, he mounts an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” on Broadway. It is a telling choice for a man who equates respect and admiration with love, though what he desires is all three.

For this role, Keaton is playing so many layers with such deftness and acuity that the onus is on the audience to keep up as he steps in and out of depression, madness, and mania. Thompson is a man who struggles everyday with who he is, who he was, who he wants to be, and whether he has any choice in the matter. Only an actor as comfortable in his own skin as Keaton could portray a character so uncomfortable in his.

Put another way, Keaton disappears into the role of an actor playing a character he wrote to be autobiographical while remaining true to his source material, and at the same time, he is haunted by the power of a role he cannot escape. If that description is difficult to decipher, it is not half as difficult as it would be to perform, but Keaton makes it look easy. He hits every nuance in every beat without ever giving the audience the sense the wheels are turning. It is instinctual. It is feral. It is brilliant.

To find one performer in a film acting on that level is a small miracle. To find a whole cast matching that energy and intensity, well, that is Birdman. While Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Ryan, and Andrea Riseborough are doing invaluable work on the margins of the story, Edward Norton and Emma Stone shine in key supporting roles, respectively, as an actor whose only obligation is to the truth and a daughter whose truth may be too much to bear.

There is no real villain of the piece, just a lot of people trying their best to be honest to themselves or lying to themselves about how much honesty they want regardless of who gets hurt in the process. Norton’s consummate stage professional Mike Shiner is the epitome of this. Brought in as a replacement in Thompson’s production, Shiner is a magnificent actor who makes the play better but whose every action undermines the heart of what Thompson is trying to create.

Norton is excellent every time he creates havoc for everyone else by searching for his own truth, but his best moments are the quiet rooftop conversations he shares with Stone. Stone is Sam, Thompson’s drug addict daughter who is fresh out of rehab. Sam and Mike try to connect, they try to be honest with each other, but they cannot.

They resort to truth or dare – a wonderful metaphor for people’s inability to tell the truth without playing games – and much to Sam’s chagrin, Mike chooses truth every time. Truth is all that matters to him, even though, as he says, he only ever finds it on the stage. Sam wants dare. She wants excitement. She wants something more than words.

This is why, when her father comes to her to apologize for not being there for her, she can take no more. She erupts like a volcano spewing vitriol. She strikes him where she knows it will hurt the most: his irrelevance. He does not matter and never will matter. He does not have Twitter or Facebook, she says. He is not a trending topic. His play could run forever, and no one will care because it will never get a million views on YouTube or feature on some popular reality series.  

She intends to cut him to the bone and does, but in the same breath, she delivers an ironic indictment of her own generation. By tearing her father down for failing to keep up with the culture, she is exposing just how perverted and backward that culture has become. It is less a turning point than a statement of purpose, clueing the audience into the meaning of what has come before and what is yet to come.

In these moments, Stone is perfect, and when she reaches the point where she knows she has gone too far, she stops, but the camera holds on her face. Tears well in her eyes, but she cannot cry. She meant what she said but hates that she said it. She hates that she meant it. The beginning of an apology escapes her lips: “Dad …,” she says. But she cannot go on, and he does not turn to her. She has shamed herself more than him and slinks out of the room, leaving her father to slip deeper into the madness that has enveloped him.

He is falling, and nothing can stop him. That propulsive downward spiral is matched by Iñárritu and director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki’s shooting style. Except for the prologue and a single climactic montage, the whole film is structured and shot to look like one unbroken take. The few edits employed are seamlessly integrated into the camera movements, and though the story takes place over days, each new scene plays out uninterrupted in real time.

What this means for viewers is that they dive headlong into the action, and for two hours, they never get a chance to breathe. The anxiety builds for the audience and the characters in equal measure, and because the camera never looks away from the pain, the guilt, and the shame, the audience does not get to avert its eyes either.

This is what it is to create, to pour your heart into something, to spill blood for something. Most of us never look up from our phones or our laptops or our televisions long enough to experience anything so unremittingly real. But Iñárritu has been through it, and he knows the feeling of constructing truth out of nothingness. Keaton and the rest of the cast know that feeling, too. And now, because we have the chance to live the process with Riggan Thompson, maybe we in the audience can get a little closer to knowing that feeling.

See it? Yes.