Countdown to the Oscars: Best Supporting Actress

Alicia Vikander is the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars for her performance in The Danish Girl.

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 this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are:

Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara for Carol

Rachel McAdams for Spotlight

Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl

Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs

We can quibble all day over the meaning of “supporting actress” – or more specifically, as this award is officially known, Best Actress in a Supporting Role. I have written a few times throughout this season that while category fraud is common, this year, it has felt rampant, resulting in nominations in this category for two actresses who are unequivocally co-leads in their films.

Anyone who has seen either Carol or The Danish Girl could be forgiven for wondering whom exactly Mara and Vikander are supporting. The same question could be posed, however, for Leigh in The Hateful Eight. The movie is essentially about her, and there is a scarcely a scene in which she does not appear. Each of these actresses has delivered a tremendous performance, but every one of them should have been considered for Best Actress.

Oh, well, no turning back now. It is a campaign strategy that sometimes works and sometimes does not. Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock), Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind), and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) all have supporting Oscars for leading roles. However, the first actress we will discuss today can tell you about what happens when the season has its own plans, campaigns be damned.

Kate Winslet for Steve Jobs – Winslet, a seven-time nominee now, earned her only Oscar win for Best Actress in The Reader, this despite master awards campaigner Harvey Weinstein pushing Winslet as a supporting actress. He and many others thought she might have a better chance at the win in the supporting category. There was also some consideration of her clearly leading performance in that year’s Revolutionary Road costing her votes. Ultimately, the Academy nominated her in the proper place for The Reader, and she won because the work was deserving.

This time around, there is no question of category placement. As Joanna Hoffman, Winslet is among the people swirling around the vortex that is Steve Jobs at the center of this film. She is his right-hand woman, his confidant, and his moral center. When he loses his way, she is there to tell him so, and while she cannot always correct his course, she is never afraid to tell him he is wrong.

Most of the other characters in the film are there to be bowled over by Jobs – either awed by his brilliance or cowed by his power. Hoffman is there to stand up to him, and Winslet gives the character a unique blend of inner strength, personal ethics, and business savvy that makes Hoffman memorable and effective. Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay does not always give her the best material, but Winslet takes all that muddled dialogue and creates a real person to whom we can relate and for whom we have sympathy.

Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl – I said back in April last year when I reviewed Ex Machina that 2015 would be a coming-out party for Vikander. Ten months later, I feel safe in saying I was correct. Apart from stunning work in Ex Machina and her nominated performance in The Danish Girl, she also delivered standout turns in Testament of Youth and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Next year, we should see her in Justin Chadwick’s Tulip Fever, Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans, and Paul Greengrass’ Jason Bourne. It seems she is just getting started.

Holding nothing against Eddie Redmayne’s commendable work, The Danish Girl belongs to Vikander. As Gerda Wegener, the wife of someone going through a major life transition, hers is the experience through which the audience understands the story. We understand her confusion, frustration, and hurt over losing the person she thought of as her husband. As Lili’s transition takes over their lives, Gerda’s life and work is put on hold. In showing this pain and struggle, Vikander shoulders as much of the success of the film as Redmayne but has received much less of the credit. An Oscar win would go some way toward righting that perception.

Rooney Mara for Carol – Make no mistake, Carol is about Therese (Mara) as much as if not more than it is about Carol (Cate Blanchett). There is definitely more politicking involved here than with Vikander’s category misplacement as the film’s awards team likely believed Blanchett and Mara would split votes in the lead category. So, Blanchett – the veteran, a seven-time nominee, and two-time winner – was pushed for lead while the young ingénue, herself a previous nominee for David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, was shoved aside in supporting. In any event, the work is highly deserving of any recognition.

Over the course of a love affair, Mara takes Therese from a shy, innocent girl to a confident, world-weary woman. Therese is never more or less than quiet and reserved, but Mara makes us feel the inner turmoil she wrestles with as she experiences thoughts and feelings she never knew were inside her. Early on, the film seems to be about Carol’s influence over Therese, but as the story progresses, we come to realize it is really about what Therese wants out of her life and what she feels about Carol. Mara sells Therese’s dilemma beautifully with stoicism, grace, and tenderness.

Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight – Not one of those three adjectives could be used to describe Leigh’s unhinged performance as Daisy Domergue, but the work sure is something to behold. Leigh plays Domergue like a woman possessed, but behind the bitterness, sarcasm, and yeah, hate, there lies intelligence, cunning, and strength that let the audience know why so many people are concerned with taking this woman to hang. She takes insult after insult, beating after beating, and she still stands up to spit blood and bile back at her captors.

It is an entirely different look for Leigh, who to this day probably remains best known for her early role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She has spent her career carving a niche in the independent and art film world, and she has excelled in such films as eXistenZ, Margot at the Wedding, and Synecdoche, NY. Here, she lets loose with the rage and demonic force of someone who cannot help but fight, no matter how dire her circumstances. The Hateful Eight is a film about villains, and she may be the biggest villain of all, which just makes her the most fun to watch.

Rachel McAdams for Spotlight – A bit of a surprise nominee, though not wholly out of thin air, McAdams’ nomination seems like evidence of Spotlight’s overall strength with Academy. She plays journalist Sacha Pfeiffer, who is smart, determined, and empathic in the pursuit of the most difficult story of her career. In keeping with the general theme of Spotlight, her work is not flashy but effective. She knows that no matter what she is going through, the story is not about her. It is about the victims and survivors whose suffering she is trying to bring to light.

McAdams shines most in the one-on-one interviews she conducts with survivors, particularly the first, which takes them from a coffee shop to a walk in the park, past one of the many Catholic Churches that litter Boston’s streets. McAdams is expert at showing how Pfeiffer gets the source to trust her and open up about things he has told almost no one in his life. Her heroism comes from the fact that she is not using this man for her own gains. She genuinely wants to help him and all others in his situation the best way she knows how – with the power of the truth.

The final analysis

At the beginning of the awards season, when it looked as though Vikander and Mara would end up in the supporting category, most pundits had this down to those two with a slight edge to Mara for appearing in the more popular Carol. It was not an unreasonable assumption, and most of that has come to pass, except Vikander has really started to run away with things. It is not exactly cut and dry, though, as Winslet won both the Golden Globe and the BAFTA for her performance, while most of the early season critics’ awards went to Leigh and Vikander but for Ex Machina.

The trouble with predicting Winslet, who would be a good bet based on those two major awards, is that she was not nominated against Vikander’s The Danish Girl performance, which was considered a leading performance by both organizations. The only major place they were nominated against each other was the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which Vikander won. I expect that ultimately to be more predictive of the Oscars and for Vikander to win on the strength of her performance, the fact it is a leading role, and her overall body of work this year.

Will win: Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl

Should win: Jennifer Jason Leigh for The Hateful Eight

Should have been here: Günes Sensoy for Mustang

Tomorrow: Best Supporting Actor

New movie review: Spotlight

The team comes together in writer-director Tom McCarthy's masterful Spotlight.

Spotlight is an American masterpiece. As a journalist, the true story of the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting team uncovering the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal fills me with pride. As a human, however, it fills me with shame and disgust. This is among the darkest chapters in our shared cultural history, and it is ongoing. Every day in every part of the world, new victims come forward, and we are confronted with the painful reality of a system and a society that has allowed this to continue.

The concerted effort to protect pedophile priests in the Catholic Church has been described as a conspiracy of silence, but few can agree on the members of the conspiracy. The church wants the public to believe this is the work of “a few bad apples,” a phrase repeated throughout the film. The evidence suggests the entire church is corrupt all the way to the top. Common sense, however, tells us systems take their power from people – in this case, the parishioners.

“If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village to abuse one,” says Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), the lawyer for the victims. Like that, we are all implicated. Even the venerable Globe is not without blood on its hands as we learn the paper had the all the pieces needed to break the story years before the Spotlight team but refused to put them together. No one wants to acknowledge the abuse because to do so is to recognize a fundamental flaw in ourselves. Knowing everything, we still did nothing.

It is a common trick in movies like this to use one or two people to represent large numbers of victims – the old adage, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic,” comes to mind. Writer-director Tom McCarthy thankfully avoids this trap, and we watch the team interview survivor after survivor after survivor, establishing both the pattern and scope of the abuse. They are not just numbers. They are real people with families and friends and lives. They feel regret and shame and anger, and we in the audience feel anger for them as we come to know each and every one of them personally.

In an early sequence, expertly assembled by editor Tom McArdle, the film cuts back and forth between interviews with two victims. Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) speaks with a middle-aged gay man about his abuse at the hands of a priest who earned his trust little by little before exploiting it. At the same time, Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) hears the story of a younger, married working-class man and the priest who abused him in the wake of his father’s death.

These two men could not be more different, but their stories are distressingly similar, to the point where one wonders if a priest’s copy of the catechism comes with a handbook for abuse. We meet more survivors, whose experiences differ in the details but the cumulative effect of which leads us to only one conclusion. The church’s abuse robbed these people of their innocence, their trust, and their faith in god, and the hypocrisy at the center of it all is a legal and moral wrong that went willfully unchecked for too long.

If this all sounds like a tragically bleak tale, it is, but under the masterful direction of McCarthy, working from a script he co-wrote with Josh Singer, it never feels like a slog. Quite the contrary. Spotlight is a riveting legal thriller and excellent journalistic drama on par with the classic All the President’s Men. The film plays off the audience’s own sense of right and wrong, and though we know the abuse will be brought to light, we sit glued to our seats, breathlessly anticipating the moment when the Globe fires the first shot to bring down this system.

Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, and Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight.

So few films understand the mechanics of journalism, and even fewer seem to try. Spotlight, for which McCarthy collaborated closely with the staff of the Globe, gets it. This film knows what it is like to pore over the stacks in search of one piece of information. This film knows what it is like to go door to door with a pad and pencil in your hands, seeking answers from people who do not want to talk to you. This film also knows an editor will get annoyed if you use “golf” as a verb. The Globe in this movie has the feel of a real newsroom, and it is refreshing to see that feeling accurately depicted on screen.

Moreover, the cast, which also worked closely with those being portrayed, feels like a news team. In these people, I recognize the personalities and professionals I have worked with throughout my career. Ruffalo nails the style of a hard-nosed reporter who puts the story above all else. Michael Keaton is perfect as Spotlight Editor Robby Robinson, who must at all times keep the bigger picture in focus. John Slattery is great as Globe Editor Ben Bradlee Jr., who knows how important it is to check every fact and cover every base. McAdams, Tucci, Liev Schrieber, and Brian D’Arcy James are all excellent, as well. This cast is perhaps the best evidence yet for the need of an ensemble award at the Oscars.

They are helped by a tremendous screenplay that seems to understand how each of these characters would speak. McCarthy and Singer shift seamlessly from the heightened, condescending manner of the clergy to the workingman vernacular of many of the victims, hitting every other level in between. Compare that to something like an Aaron Sorkin script, in which every character sounds as witty and didactic as Sorkin, and you understand how rare it is to see real people interact how they might in life.

The film’s facility with language and understanding of human connection should be no surprise, though, coming as it does from McCarthy, whose filmography is full of compassionate, lonely people trying to find their way in life. McCarthy is the same writer-director who brought us the excellent trio of independent films The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win. Even his most recent effort, the critically derided The Cobbler, displays the same care for building character and motivation McCarthy has always shown.

McCarthy is perhaps best recognized as an actor in films such as Meet the Parents, Syriana, and Good Night and Good Luck or television shows such as The Wire and Boston Public. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing Pixar’s magnificent Up. His directorial efforts, however, have rarely garnered much attention, despite being generally well liked. Spotlight could change all that. McCarthy has deserved larger recognition for his work behind the camera for years, and this should be movie that brings it to him.

While Spotlight is a quintessentially American film, its story is global as we are reminded at the end by a series of title cards listing the cities all over the world in which major sex abuse scandals have been uncovered. One is too many. That the final list names too many cities to count is disgraceful. Against this international backdrop, the Globe’s victory in highlighting abuse in Boston parishes may seem small, but its larger triumph is to force us to see what we would rather not. Knowing what we know now, we can never look away again, and it is incumbent upon us to pick up a torch, shine a light, and guide the way to providence.

See it? Yes.

New movie review: A Most Wanted Man

Philip Seymour Hoffman leads a team of spies in A Most Wanted Man.

There are times when it is easy to feel sorry for ourselves and what we will never have. How many more great songs would Kurt Cobain have recorded? How many more great books would John Kennedy Toole have written? And how many more great performances would Philip Seymour Hoffman have given?

At best, these questions are unfair, and at worst, they diminish the value of the work we do have. Cobain gave us some of the best rock music of the 20th century. Toole gave us one of the most insightful comic novels ever penned. And Hoffman, well, that is another matter altogether.

With performance after performance in film after film, Hoffman elevated acting to the level of art. He was not simply one of the best of his generation. He set the bar for his generation. The work he left behind will be studied and dissected for years to come, and in Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man, he has delivered one final masterwork.

Based on the novel by John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man is an international spy thriller for the post-9/11 world. But this is not Jason Bourne or James Bond. Modern spy movies have become overly obsessed with the bomb going off, while showing little concern for the business of preventing it. Corbijn’s film, adapted by Andrew Bovell, finds the tension in that trade.

Of course, the pieces are all there for a traditional action-suspense film – shadowy government agencies, elite teams of spies, suspected terrorists, and figures of international high finance. Year after year, we have watched filmmakers assemble these parts into rote drama and uninspiring action. But the artists behind A Most Wanted Man find a new way to fit the puzzle pieces together, producing a picture of true depth and intelligence.

This will come as no surprise to those who have followed Corbijn’s feature film career. From the gorgeous biopic Control to the classically European thriller The American, Corbijn has an almost unparalleled facility for subverting genre. He eschews the shallow tropes and tricks of lesser films in favor of taking audiences on a trip into the murky depths of the human psyche. In Hoffman, he finds the perfect vessel for just such a journey.

Hoffman plays Gunther Bachmann, the leader of a team of spies tasked with tracking terrorist activity in Germany. As the film opens, Issa Karpov (played by Grigoriy Dobrygin), a Chechen convict, illegally enters the country after suffering untold tortures in a Russian prison. We learn that Karpov’s now-deceased father amassed a fortune profiting off terrorist activities, and Karpov has come to Germany to collect his money. Rachel McAdams plays the human rights attorney helping him in his quest, and Willem Dafoe is the banker who holds the key to the fortune.

As a Muslim with family ties to terrorism, Karpov becomes priority No. 1 for Bachmann’s team as they try to make connections to a larger ring of terrorists and their financial backers. Robin Wright appears as an American intelligence official with a keen interest in anything Bachmann’s team uncovers.

In short, there are a lot of moving pieces, as loyalties shift and motivations come into and go out of focus. Corbijn keeps these plot mechanics running smoothly as he delves deeper into what makes these people tick. While the action is an expert recreation of the business of spying on an unknown and unknowable enemy, the film comes most to life in the small moments that illuminate the characters.

As Bachmann takes a cigarette break on the balcony, he looks out over the land he has sworn to protect. It becomes clear that when you have made your life’s work the safety of an entire nation, work never stops. But in the modern world, the war on terror is increasingly borderless, meaning people such as Bachmann truly bear the weight of the world on their shoulders.

Hoffman slides into this milieu like a bullet going into the chamber. He plays Bachmann as a towering figure who still cannot stand taller than the bureaucracies that govern him, and when he tries to step beyond the walls, he finds only more walls. This is Hoffman at the height of his powers, projecting a weariness that only people who have seen the worst of this world can understand.

The performances all around are solid with McAdams a particularly pleasant surprise as a would-be idealist who cannot outrun a growing pessimism based on all she sees and experiences. One wishes Dobrygin had been given more to do as the most wanted man of the title. Too often he reads like a cypher onto which the rest of the characters project their own feelings about life. Still, Dobrygin does an admirable job of portraying a man so threatened by the world, he hardly realizes the threat he poses.

If the film has a flaw, it is the failure to address the implications of domestic spying or the ramifications of the war on terror. The introspection of the characters does not extend to the world they inhabit as it does in, say, the great German spy film The Lives of Others. It could be argued that these characters would not be able to see beyond their world, beyond the walls within walls, to take an objective view of the work they do. They simply are doing a job, and the onus is on the audience to parse its meaning.

None of this is to say the film is overly cerebral. The excitement is there, right down to an electrifying final sequence that will leave you gripping your arm rest. This is a smart thriller for smart audiences who crave substance as much as suspense. More than that, however, it is a fitting swan song for Hoffman, an actor who always gave us everything he had. How lucky we are to have received it.

See it? Yes.