Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actress

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 Actress

The nominees are:

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart for Spencer

We saved the best for last, as far as these acting categories are concerned. For once, a truly wide-open race. I have spent almost 4,000 words talking about the acting categories already this year and have mentioned the BAFTAs over and over again. If it wins the BAFTA, it wins the Oscar. Well, we cannot rely on that here. Why? Because not one of the performers nominated for the Academy Award this year was also nominated for the BAFTA.

Going back to 1990 – before that, eligibility deadlines just don’t line up in a way that makes the data useful – this has never happened. Not once. The closest approximation is 2003, when the organizations matched just one nominee – Naomi Watts in 21 Grams. That year, the BAFTA went to Scarlett Johansson for Lost in Translation, while the Academy went with Charlize Theron in Monster (Note: At the BAFTAs, Theron was not eligible until 2004, when she lost to Imelda Staunton for Vera Drake). 

We are not flying blind, per se – Jessica Chastain won the Screen Actors Guild award and the Critics’ Choice – but we are missing our most significant bellwether. As a result, the predictions are all over the map, with support spread out across three or four of these nominees. For our purposes, what this means is one fun race right down to the end. By the way, for those curious, the BAFTA this year went to Joanna Scanlon for her work in the British drama After Love.

Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye – Tammy Faye Bakker, as portrayed in this film, is an enigma for our times: a completely sincere person. It would seem her love of people is surpassed only by her love of god. Her desire to spread a message of acceptance and understanding (through Christian faith) runs up against the money- and power-hungry men in her life, including her husband. It is a fascinating story in a film that could have been better, but what is not in question is Chastain’s commitment to the role and passion for bringing it to life.

Though she had been around for a while before, Chastain broke onto the scene in a big way in 2011, when five films in which she had a role were released. Most importantly, she starred in the Palme d’Or winning The Tree of Life, the critically acclaimed Take Shelter, and the popular hit The Help, for which she earned her first Oscar nomination. She is a remarkable performer who brings intensity and drive to everything she does, and here, she applies that intensity and drive to a role that requires every ounce of her talents. She proves more than up to the task.

Penélope Cruz for Parallel Mothers – A four-time nominee who previously won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Cruz has never been better than she is in Pedro Almodóvar’s latest film. She plays Janis, a single pregnant woman who befriends a younger unwed mother-to-be. I will not reveal more than that since the movie’s secrets are among its great pleasures, but suffice it to say, Janis is presented with a moral dilemma no one should ever have to face.

Cruz plays this conflict wonderfully, showing the depths of Janis’ moral questioning with little more than a shift in her tremendously expressive eyes. One thing that has defined some of Cruz’s most memorable characters has been the sense of energy and motion the actress imbues them with, particularly in her previous Oscar-winning role. For Almodóvar, she drops all artifice and affectation, utilizing stillness and silence in ways we are not used to seeing from Cruz. In this silence, however, Cruz is able to speak volumes.

Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter – Colman delivered one of the most memorable and rewatchable Oscar acceptance speeches in recent times when she won Best Actress for The Favourite in 2018. Among the standout lines from that speech was when she addressed her children watching at home, saying “This is not gonna happen again.” Little did she know. Now, after a Supporting Actress nomination last year and another leading nomination here, it seems almost inevitable that it will happen again, if not this year, then someday.

For my money, her work in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s stunning directorial debut is the best of the nominated bunch. She plays a woman on holiday, haunted by her past and beset by dread of the nefarious characters around her. She is not without sin, and there is never a moment in Colman’s performance that belies that fact. She is wounded but also capable of wounding. While her actions may on the surface seem inexplicable, Colman makes us understand what could drive this woman to do the things she does and hurt the people she hurts.

Kristen Stewart for Spencer – What a wild ride this awards season has been for Stewart, who after getting close on a couple of occasions, now has her first Academy Award nomination. As we talked about with Will Smith in King Richard, sometimes a performer and a part just seem to add up to an Oscar. That was the feeling around Stewart playing Princess Diana when the first trailer for Spencer dropped. Then, she won handfuls of critics awards, and the buzz would not die down. That was until she missed out on a SAG nomination and a BAFTA nomination. After that, it was an open question of whether she would even be Oscar nominated, let alone in line for the win. Now, here we are.

To her credit, Stewart has remained mostly nonchalant about the whole thing, blasé when it seemed she might miss out but humble and grateful when she made the final list. Her work in the film is sometimes uneven, but the longer you watch, the more she forces you to get on her wavelength. This is not the Princess Diana we all knew from the papers and the pictures, but rather a private Diana, dealing with demons and devils all around her. For bringing us into the world of the unseen Diana, Stewart deserves this recognition. 

Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos – If you enjoyed Being the Ricardos, I am sorry if it seems like I am down on the film. The truth is I really feel nothing about it one way or the other. The film is not engaging enough to have strong feelings about, which is a fatal flaw of a different kind. It seems Kidman was always going to be nominated for this performance, which has the patina of something like Renée Zellweger’s recent Oscar-winning turn in Judy. Like that performance, this is a serviceable imitation of life, but it never really goes deeper than that.

The biggest problem, though, is that it just isn’t funny, and Kidman does not have the comedy chops to make the material funny. Lucille Ball is famously one of the funniest people in the history of television, so casting a talented dramatic actress in a bland day-in-the-life story does no one any favors, least of all Lucille Ball. Kidman is too cerebral, and to some degree, that is what the movie asks her to be, but it is wrong for the character and frustrating to watch.

The final analysis

I try not to read too many other sites when I am writing my pieces and making my predictions. Just enough to stay informed but not enough to be influenced. I confess, however, that I have read a lot about this Best Actress race, and what I have read has left me more confused than when I started. So, let’s reason this out together.

Who won what? Kidman won the Golden Globe, which was meaningless this year. Colman and Stewart each won a handful of minor critics awards, while Cruz won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association award and the National Society of Film Critics award, two of the biggest around. Then, there is Chastain, who as mentioned, has won the SAG award and the Critics’ Choice. The signal is all over the place.

It would be foolish to discount how helpful making a big, televised speech can be, which tips things in Chastain’s favor. Stewart is probably too young for the Academy to go that direction, and she will have other chances. The only arguments I am seeing for Cruz and Colman – other than the obvious quality of the work – is that they are both well liked by a broad selection of Academy members. But, perhaps the similarity of their narratives works to cancel them both out, which brings us back to Chastain.

With everything I have witnessed this season, I just don’t see a compelling enough argument in any other direction, and some of the buzz around the other performances could really just be boredom with the frontrunners leading to wild second guessing. I will be okay if I get this wrong, but for now, I am sticking with Chastain.

Will win: Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Should win: Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter

Should have been here: Rachel Sennott for Shiva Baby

Next time: Best Director

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Score

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 Original Score

The nominees are:

Don’t Look Up

Dune

Encanto

Parallel Mothers

The Power of the Dog

With the rise of world music and the advent of increasingly experimental approaches, Original Score has trended toward becoming one of the most fascinating and fun categories each year at the Oscars. So, of course, it will not be awarded on the live show. Remember 2010, when the producers of the show opted to highlight the Score nominees with a series of interpretive dances? I complained a lot about that, then, finding it silly and tonally strange. Now, I would take interpretive dance in a heartbeat if it meant getting the awards on the broadcast.

Once again, the logic of luring viewers to the show by stuffing the three-hour broadcast with popular films that have nothing to do with the Oscars does not really hold when you cut categories such as this. Look at the last three winners: Soul, a Pixar film scored in part by Trent Reznor; Joker, a billion-dollar-grossing comic book movie the Academy would kill to feature on their show; and Black Panther, one of the most popular and successful films ever made.

Now look at this year’s nominees: Dune, a widely admired science-fiction blockbuster; Encanto, one of the most buzzed-about Disney films of recent years with a wildly popular soundtrack (which we will talk more about in our next entry in this series); Don’t Look Up, one of the most watched movies in Netflix history, starring one of the biggest actors in the world; The Power of the Dog, another popular Netflix entry with music by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood; and Parallel Mothers, which while perhaps a niche box office film, features music by one of the most well known composers in the Spanish-speaking world and could easily help draw the global audience the Academy desperately needs.

The Power of the Dog – I was watching There Will Be Blood over the weekend, and it made me mad all over again that Greenwood does not already have an Oscar. That score is one of the great modern pieces of film music, but due to the Music Branch’s arcane rules, it was not even eligible for a nomination. He has not composed too many scores in the interim, mostly working with Paul Thomas Anderson or Lynn Ramsay. Then, this year, we got three. Lucky us. He worked again with Anderson on Licorice Pizza, wrote the towering score for Spencer, and crafted this beautiful, daring piece of music.

A twisty, unnerving tale, The Power of the Dog requires music that creates a mood and an atmosphere, rather than driving the action or playing the emotions. Greenwood’s disturbing, out-of-tune piano tracks provide the perfect background, helping Jane Campion’s film take the audience to places darker than we would otherwise dare. As viewers, we are never sure of our footing in this story, and the haunting melodies of the score keep us constantly off balance. One wishes Greenwood would compose more, if only so we could have more music like this at the cinema.

Dune – Hans Zimmer is a living legend. He has just one Oscar from 11 nominations (The Lion King in 1994), but for years, he has stood at the forefront of changing what a blockbuster score can sound like. His collaborations with Christopher Nolan on the Dark Knight trilogy, as well as Inception, have created the modern template for big-budget movie music, which is all the more remarkable when you consider just how radical and inventive his scores have been. 

That long tradition continues with Dune, a film for which Zimmer chose to invent whole new instruments to convey the otherworldliness of the story. Though on its surface Dune is a sci-fi/action picture, you will not find any of the classic John Williams-style brass leading the way. Instead, Zimmer gives us something deeper, more experimental, and evocative of the feeling the characters would have in being so out of their element. This is not a score of adventure but of trepidation and dread, and that is precisely for what the film calls.

Encanto – History all around with this nomination. Germaine Franco is just the 10th woman ever nominated in any of the Musical Score categories at the Oscars. She is the only Latinx woman ever nominated and the first Latinx woman to join the music branch of the Academy. We can chat all day about why it took so long and the need for further representation in this branch, but none of that takes away from Franco’s tremendous accomplishment.

How wonderful, then, that her nomination comes for a Disney animated film score that is so un-Disney like. All credit to Zimmer’s winning The Lion King score and the great Alan Menken, who really set the Disney standard with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, but Franco’s score represents a refreshing change of pace from that Disney house style. Franco, who is Mexican-American, brings in instruments that beautifully reimagine the rhythm and feel of the film’s Colombian setting. She organically fills in the spaces of these characters’ lives with music that does not overwhelm like so much animated music before but rather enhances. 

Don’t Look Up – Known for his moody, atmospheric scores for Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, Nicholas Britell goes a wholly different direction for this sprawling satire, and the result is thrilling. In a movie about the threat of global disaster and the possible end of all life on earth, one would probably expect the music to be big, booming, and ominous – honestly, resembling something Zimmer might do for a Nolan film. But, the Don’t Look Up soundtrack has far more in common with the poppy jazz of Rolfe Kent’s Sideways score than that of Interstellar.

Britell gives us the kind of jaunty horns and fleet-footed percussion that would sound right at home on a breaking news alert from hell, and in many ways, that is precisely what the movie is. The whole point of Don’t Look Up is to get your attention – that is what the characters want to do in the movie, and that is what the filmmakers want to do on a metatextual level – and Britell’s abrasive, contrapuntal jazz is the perfect accompaniment for a PSA at the end of the world. 

Parallel Mothers – The way we talk about the collaboration between Steven Spielberg and John Williams is how we should talk about Pedro Almodóvar and Alberto Iglesias. Starting with The Flower of My Secret in 1995, Iglesias has provided the scores for 12 films by Almodóvar, who in turn has been the most popular and successful Spanish filmmaker in the world. Shockingly, despite that popularity and success and three previous Oscar nominations, Iglesias has never before been recognized by the Academy for a collaboration with Almodóvar.

For anyone unfamiliar with their collaborations or with Almodóvar’s work in general, they are often pitched at a very melodramatic emotional register, and Parallel Mothers is no exception. It takes a special kind of composer to work within these unique parameters, and Iglesias has always proven adept at suggesting emotion without overplaying his hand. Whether in the more propulsive, synth-driven compositions or the subtler, string and piano sections on the soundtrack, Iglesias is an expert at cluing the audience in to the emotion of a moment while never revealing the whole game.

The final analysis

If it is not evident, I love every one of these scores. Each would be a deserving winner, and for different reasons, I would be thrilled to see any one of these composers on stage with the award. However, this is not about what I want to happen but what I think will happen.

Parallel Mothers, despite a Best Actress nomination for star Penélope Cruz, is probably too little seen to challenge for the win. Britell will have his moment someday, but given the competition, it does not seem likely it will be this year. Despite a lovely score, Encanto has a much better shot in the Original Song category, and I would bet on the Academy to award it in only one of the two music categories.

That leaves us with Zimmer for Dune and Greenwood for The Power of the Dog. Zimmer beat Greenwood to the BAFTA, the Broadcast Critics Award, and the Golden Globe (which is not worth much in and of itself, except as evidence that a group of people may pick Dune when presented with both choices). Zimmer has been on the awards circuit, doing press and promoting the hell out of his work, while Greenwood – as you might expect from the guitarist of Radiohead – has been less like that. 

In the end, though, it probably comes down to the work itself. The Power of the Dog may be too subtle, too insular for voters. It does not scream out for recognition. On the other hand, Dune is a massive undertaking. Zimmer poured everything into it, and it shows. That kind of work often gets rewarded by the Academy, and I expect it to be so rewarded again.

Will win: Dune

Should win: The Power of the Dog

Should have been here: Shiva Baby

Next time: Best Original Song