The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.
Best Supporting Actress
The nominees are:
Jessie Buckley for The Lost Daughter
Ariana DeBose for West Side Story
Judi Dench for Belfast
Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog
Aunjanue Ellis for King Richard
Right now, only two characters in history have ever earned multiple performers an Oscar. That will no longer be true after Sunday night. As it stands, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro each won an Academy Award for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, respectively, and Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) and Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) won for playing the Joker. Both characters are villains who do untold amounts of violence to those around them. How cool is it, then, that the next character to join this lineage will be a smart, strong woman who refuses to submit to the violence around her?
One further note, while we are on the subject, each of these character pairs – Vito Corleone, Joker, and West Side Story’s Anita – functions in a slightly different way. Brando and De Niro were playing the same person at different points in his life. Ledger’s and Phoenix’s versions of the Joker are radically different interpretations operating in their own universes. Meanwhile, Anita, played in 1962 by Rita Moreno and this year by Ariana DeBose, is the same character in the same story but with 50 years of extratextual pop culture history and baggage.
Ariana DeBose for West Side Story – I love the tradition of the previous year’s opposite sex winner presenting the award to the new winner, and it will be fun to watch Daniel Kaluuya present an Oscar to the first queer, Afro-Latina recipient in Academy history. Still, part of me wishes they would get Moreno to do it. It would be a beautiful, full-circle moment, connecting past to present and highlighting the best of what the Oscars represent.
In any event, DeBose is magnificent as Anita. The Broadway veteran is, of course, an accomplished singer and dancer, so the character was always in good hands with this casting, but DeBose brings passion, ferocity, and a whole lot of fun to her interpretation. “America” is a show-stopper, like always, and as mentioned in the Costume Design piece in this series, the image of DeBose twisting and twirling in that yellow dress will be one of the iconic, lasting images of the year in cinema. But, the performance is more than that, and every moment DeBose is on screen, it feels as if she is capturing something special.
Aunjanue Ellis for King Richard – Ellis has the misfortune of coming up against an unstoppable awards juggernaut in DeBose, but her performance as Oracene Price is no less worthy of praise and recognition. She is more than the supportive wife to an inspiring man – a character we have seen too many times before. She embodies power and determination, qualities that she passes on to her daughters, and she fights for her rightful place at the table as an equal partner in the raising of two of the best athletes on the planet.
The kitchen confrontation with Richard (Will Smith) is Ellis’ Oscar scene, and she knocks it out of the park, but the strength of that scene does not come out of nowhere. Instead, Ellis spends the entire film building the internal world of the character, giving us subtle clues to her thoughts and feelings, so that when she is given license to unload all of that, the audience knows exactly where she is coming from.
Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog – Dunst is part of the fabric of Hollywood at this point. She has been making movies most of her life, and it seems almost impossible she has not been recognized by the Academy before this. Few actors in film history have handled the transition from child star to grown performer so well, parlaying the Spider-man franchise into the opportunity to work on fascinating, challenging films such as Melancholia, Midnight Special, Woodshock, and this picture.
She is great as Rose, a woman being emotionally terrorized by her new brother-in-law and thwarted in every attempt she makes to reclaim her life. Dunst is allowed to play notes all over the emotional scale in this performance, and she hits every one with subtlety and grace. In a career of excellent roles in films as diverse as Marie Antoinette, Bring It On, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this is the best part Dunst has ever played, and she absolutely makes it her own.
Jessie Buckley for The Lost Daughter – It is fun to catch a performer just before she takes off into the stratosphere. In 2018, we attended a screening of Wild Rose in Los Angeles, where Buckley stayed on afterward for a Q-and-A and to perform several songs off the soundtrack. If the movie hadn’t already done so, watching her speak and perform in person made it clear: This woman was going to be a star. Since then, she has appeared in the Oscar-winning Judy, Charlie Kaufman’s experimental puzzle box I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and this project, among others. Her star is only getting brighter.
As the younger version of Olivia Colman’s Leda, Buckley perfectly expresses the pent-up frustration of wasted talent and the desire to reclaim your life when circumstances conspire against you. The freedom she experiences when away from her children is palpable, and Buckley communicates this with the slightest change in gesture and smallest modulation of her voice. She represents so many young mothers, struggling to maintain their identity and individualism in a culture that wants to define them by their motherhood. I cannot wait to see what Buckley does next.
Judi Dench for Belfast – From four first-time nominees to the legend Dame Judi Dench. This is Dench’s third nomination for Supporting Actress and eighth overall. She previously won the category for Shakespeare in Love back in 1998. This is her first nomination since Philomena in 2014, and who better to guide her back to the Academy Awards than longtime friend and collaborator Kenneth Branagh? The two have known each other for 35 years, and this is the fourth film Branagh has directed in five years to feature Dench.
Their lengthy creative partnership almost certainly contributed to the ease with which Dench slides into the role of Granny, grandmother to the Branagh stand-in Buddy during The Troubles in 1960s Ireland. As a woman who refuses to be forced from her home despite escalating violence all around her, Dench conveys the quiet resolve at the heart of the character with equal parts wisdom and whimsy. The scene on the bus gives Dench one of the best showcases she has had in years, and she proves once again why she has been so successful for so long.
The final analysis
Two words: Ariana DeBose.
Will win: Ariana DeBose for West Side Story
Should win: Ariana DeBose for West Side Story
Should have been here: Riley Keough for Zola
Next time: Best Actor
No comments:
Post a Comment