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| Emma Stone is nominated for Best Actress for her role as Mia Dolan in La La Land. |
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 Actress
The nominees are:
Isabelle Huppert for Elle
Ruth Negga for Loving
Natalie Portman for Jackie
Emma Stone for La La Land
Meryl Streep for Florence Foster Jenkins
One woman wants to act, and another just to sing. One is
burdened by the shattered dreams of a nation, while another is held down by
that nation’s history of prejudice and injustice. Another seeks to explore her
deeper self after a brutal act uncovers hidden desires she never knew. In a
Hollywood system that often marginalizes women and trivializes their stories
and experiences, it is refreshing to celebrate a list of films that put their
female performances front and center.
Among this group are five wonderful performers all at
different stages in their careers. Streep is of course a living legend with
three Oscars to her name and an inspiration to anyone who dreams of acting.
Portman is the Oscar winner and former child star who has grown up before our
eyes and now delivers the performance of her career in the role of a lifetime.
Huppert and Negga are both first-time nominees, but while
Huppert is already a goddess of world cinema, Negga is only now beginning to
garner the recognition she deserves. Finally, there is the ingénue,
Stone, who is just 28 but made her feature film debut a decade ago and has an
Oscar nod under her belt already. It is a remarkable group, among the best the
Academy has ever put together, and the only shame is that one must be declared
the winner above the others.
Emma Stone for La La Land – For whatever else the
Academy looks for in performances, members really love to see themselves on
screen, or rather, their ideal selves. The character of actress Mia Dolan is
nothing if not an actor’s ideal self. She is young, pretty, talented,
motivated, and devoted. She dreams big and chases those dreams with the kind of
tenacity we all wish we possessed. She tries and fails, tries and fails, and
tries again because for her, there is little else but the dream.
How perfect then that the character is portrayed by Stone,
who is about as close to those ideals as a real person could comfortably come.
She has been magnificent before in films like Irrational Man or Birdman,
for which she received her first nomination, but this is a more challenging and
abstract role than she has ever been asked to play. In many ways, Mia is hope
come to life, optimism incarnate. Her experience is what we imagine it is like
to dream so big. We know it cannot be easy, or always fun or rewarding, but if
we dream for the right reasons, then we do so because it is necessary.
Stone is tasked with portraying all of this, and while the
ups and downs of being an actor must be very close to her heart, she must also
be all things to all people in this role. She is not only what we think of the
character but what we think of ourselves. It is truly an unfair burden to place
on a performer, to ask that she embody the character and the audience, but
Stone is up to the task. She encounters hope and despair; she loves, and she
loses; she laughs, and she cries; she sings, and she dances; but most of all,
she dreams.
Natalie Portman for Jackie – As an actress portraying a
woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders, Portman carries the weight
of history on hers. There is no easy way to step into the shoes of one of the
20th century’s most famous and influential figures. It requires the actor to
disappear, as all great performances do, but it also requires the subject to
emerge. It is not enough for the actor to hide behind a costume or an accent or
a physicality. Oh, all of these are parts of the performance, but it takes a
special act to embody the full nature of someone like Jacqueline Kennedy. If
there is one thing Portman is and always has been as a performer, it is
special.
I have written at length about Portman’s performance, which
is one of the great screen portrayals of a historical figure. I will not go on
much here, then, except to say that for an hour and 40 minutes, Jackie becomes
a living, breathing person again, and that is all thanks to Portman’s
performance. This is not some dryly historical interpretation of a famous
person but rather a complete abstraction, as Portman removes the associations
and clichés and cultural baggage, beginning anew with the raw portrait of a
grieving woman who summons the strength to persevere and to thrive.
Portman earned her first Oscar nomination in 2004 at the age
of 23 for Closer, but she was
thereafter mostly associated either with her role in the Star Wars prequels or as cinema’s preeminent manic pixie dream girl
in Garden State. She won the Academy
Award for Best Actress in 2010 for Black
Swan and has remained mostly out of the public eye since, apart from a few
choice roles and her supporting appearances in Marvel’s blockbuster Thor movies. Jackie, then, marks a triumphant return to the Oscars for Portman
and serves as a reminder she is one of the most talented performers working
today.
Isabelle Huppert for Elle – Some
nominations inspire spontaneous cheers in my home when they are announced, like
Charlotte Rampling last year for Best Actress for 45 Years, Inherent
Vice for Best Costumes, In Bruges for Best Original
Screenplay, and so on. Add Huppert to that list. For all the complaints – an
annual tradition around the Oscars – about the Academy not casting a wide
enough net and failing to look outside a certain subset of films, nominations
like this serve as proof of the Academy’s willingness to reward brilliant work,
no matter where it must be found.
Huppert’s work in Elle is undeniably
brilliant. It is also brave, dangerous, and compelling. Huppert plays Michèle
Leblanc. When the film opens, Michèle is brutally attacked and raped by a
masked intruder in her home, but Huppert never portrays the character as a
victim. She is the master of her fate, taking control of a situation that would
be permanently scarring for most. This is an attitude she carries in both her
personal and professional life, and in her uncomfortable interactions even with
friends and family, Huppert shows us how difficult it must be to be this person
all the time.
Director Paul Verhoeven’s film gives the character license
to be mean, to be angry, to be petty, and Huppert seizes that license and runs
with it. Huppert plays Michèle like a woman ready to chew up anything and
anyone in her path, despite dealing with the aftereffects of her attack, which
are not what the audience expects nor what Michèle likely imagined. It is a
supremely confident, consistently surprising performance from one of the best
actresses of her generation.
Ruth Negga for Loving – How wonderful would it be
to live in a world where such stories needed no telling because such atrocities
never occurred? What a beautiful dream that is. The truth, however, cannot be
denied that at one time in this country, marriage between people of different
races was outlawed. The dastardly things this says about the nation are too
many to count. Mildred Loving never wanted to make history by ending this
hideous practice. She just wanted to marry the man she loved and live in the
state she chose.
Negga’s performance beautifully captures the irony that one
need not be a radical person to change the world when simply living your life
is a radical act. Negga’s work is more subdued and unassuming than her
nominated peers, but it is no less powerful. Mildred is not a meek figure but
rather quiet and resolute, which is how Negga portrays her. She knows what she
wants, and with righteousness on her side, she sees a path to attain it. These
stories need telling because these atrocities occurred, but how wonderful it is
that people like Mildred Loving exist to stand up and declare what is right
when so many others were so afraid.
The Ethiopian-born, Irish-raised Negga is a celebrated stage
actress and is a prominent performer on UK television, and while she has
cropped up in films like World War Z
and Warcraft, she is probably best
known to American audiences for her role on the TV show Preacher. It is my sincere hope this recognition and this
performance allow her to scale the highest peaks of the industry and bring her
the kind of prominence she deserves.
Meryl Streep for Florence Foster Jenkins – Sitting on
the coffee table in front of me as I type this is the latest book on Streep,
covering her early years in Hollywood. Written by Michael Schulman, it is
aptly, and cheekily, called Her Again:
Becoming Meryl Streep. In accepting her Best Actress Oscar for 2011’s The Iron Lady, her third Academy Award, Streep
mused half of America must be thinking, “Oh, no. Her. Again.” Whether that assessment
was correct then, America has had many more chances to think such things with
Streep picking up another three nominations since, including this one. That
brings her record total to a nice, round 20.
It becomes easier with each one to dismiss the work. Streep
is something of a Hollywood institution and an Academy Awards fixture. Since
her first nomination – in 1978 for The
Deer Hunter – there have been more years in which she has been nominated
than in which she has not. On its face, that seems absurd, and I am sure we
will get all the familiar jokes about it at this year’s ceremony. The fact is
sometimes the Academy really does seem to nominate her just for doing work and
being Meryl Streep, as I complained on this site two years ago. Happily, I can
report this is not a case such as that.
Now, Florence Foster
Jenkins is by no means a good movie, nor is it worthy of the performance
Streep delivers in the title role. Florence is a wealthy music patron with
dreams of singing opera. She has no vocal ability to speak of but uses her
money and influence to give performances to her friends and hangers-on. If you
will pardon the expression, Streep gives a full-throated performance here,
diving into Florence’s character as a woman who lacks talent but is gifted with
deep wells of breathless enthusiasm and confidence. The movie’s message is
objectionable – it wants to say, “Pursue your dreams no matter what,” but
instead says, “Rich white people can have anything they want.” However, Streep’s
performance is golden and this nomination hard-earned.
The final analysis
It initially seemed like this would be a competitive year in
this category with Portman and Huppert earning most of the critical plaudits
while Stone carried nearly every scene of the popular Best Picture frontrunner.
Right around the time Huppert beat out Portman for the Golden Globe, though,
Stone began building steam. She picked up her own Golden Globe, the BAFTA, and
the SAG award. She will also be rewarded for providing the heart and soul of
the likely Best Picture winner. Huppert could play spoiler, but expect this to
be Stone’s night.
Will win: Emma
Stone for La La Land
Should win: Natalie
Portman for Jackie
Should have been
here: Viola Davis for Fences
Tomorrow: Best Actor
