Sally Hawkins
Age: 37
Film: Blue Jasmine
Role: Ginger, the meek, well-meaning, slightly insecure, San Francisco working class woman who gives her financially ruined and psychologically destroyed sister Jasmine a place to stay as the latter attempts to recover from a mental breakdown in the wake of her husband’s arrest for white collar crimes. Despite the resistance, resentment, and outright abuse Ginger receives from both her own boyfriend and Jasmine herself, she refuses to demonize her sister and endures her often vicious criticism because she can see that Jasmine is mentally ill and needs help.
Nomination History:
This is Hawkins’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win
Cate Blanchett has been the front runner for the Best Actress Oscar since way back before every single one of the year’s Best Picture nominees released to theaters. By now, everybody in the entertainment industry has heard about Blue Jasmine, and it’s a safe bet that quite a few Oscar voters actually bothered to watch Woody Allen’s San Francisco set remix of A Street Car Named Desire. That’s great news for Sally Hawkins because she has a huge amount of screen time as Jasmine’s more ordinary sister Ginger, a complex, largely sympathetic character Hawkins brings to life with the perfect blend of craft and sincerity.
Too bad Cate Blanchett didn’t have a juicy, acclaimed role in 2008’s Happy Go Lucky. Maybe if she had, Hawkins would have gotten the Best Actress nomination that she deserved for playing the relentlessly optimistic Poppy so memorably.
Hawkins is one of those actresses that everyone who follows the Oscars has known for years. (Sometimes I get frustrated when disinterested journalists refer to such performers as virtual unknowns. I want to scream, “How can you call X an unknown when s/he’s almost been nominated for an Oscar fifty-seven-hundred-thousand times?”)
Probably better known in England, Hawkins is one of those talented, prolific professionals who has been circling a nomination for several years now like a hungry shark. Finally a more aggressive shark (Blanchett) has bared her teeth and taken a bite out of that Oscar, and Hawkins is able to follow the blood and claim the share of the spoils that she deserves at last.
Entitled shark metaphors aside, it’s nice to see Hawkins finally getting the Academy’s attention. What’s even nicer is that they’ve chosen to pay attention at a moment when she’s really, really good. As anyone who’s seen Blue Jasmine knows, Cate Blanchett’s exceptional performance drives the film. The problem is, Jasmine’s so big and intense and detached that she seems to be driving the film right off the side of the road, and over the edge of the earth, straight into another plane of existence. We’d never be able to take a breath or orient ourselves if not for the calming presence of Ginger. Blanchett may drive Blue Jasmine, but Hawkins grounds it.
She gives the same type of quiet, understated-yet-powerful performance we saw last year from Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook. (Yes half the people in the room are having a mental breakdown, but there’s always time for crabby snacks!) An ordinary character might not seem very glamorous or desirable—until you pair her with a foil who has repeatedly failed at being ordinary.
As I watched Blue Jasmine, I kept noticing that as played by Hawkins, Ginger seems like a character in a movie. She likes to eat and drink with friends. She has small mannerisms, the kinds of details a movie camera notices. She lives in a tiny home in a colorful neighborhood. She seems conspicuously American (maybe even vaguely Italian American, like a very subdued version of Marisa Tomei or Talia Shire). She frets about love and wonders if she’s really found the one. She’s rather like a character in a romantic comedy or a quiet little indie drama.
In stunning contrast, Cate Blanchett’s Jasmine is clearly the creature of theater, the protagonist in some five act tragedy by Tennessee Williams, the waking nightmare of Eugene O’Neil, leaping full grown from the split head of Aeschylus.
Ginger gives off a vibe that suggests, I wish I could star in Sleepless in Seattle, but I know I’m not that important, whereas Jasmine is simultaneously playing every major role in Macbeth, completely unaware that anything even exists outside her spotlight.
Everybody notices what Blanchett is doing because she’s the “big” one, but if you really pay attention, you’ll also see that Hawkins is actively doing the complementary “small” thing.
Hawkins’s performance is also key to the film’s success because Ginger is the one person who finds the true Jasmine worth rehabilitating. For most of the film, Ginger is in conversation with Jasmine (either literally with words back and forth or more symbolically with the interplay of the characters). From one point of view, Jasmine is incapable of gaining insight from interactions, and is basically talking to herself from the beginning of the movie to its end. If you think of it this way, Blue Jasmine only exists because Ginger initially believes there’s something to be gained by attempting to interact with her sister. The movie ends when Ginger disengages. Jasmine hasn’t actually changed. Whether Ginger has changed is debatable, but she’s definitely learned (along with the audience) that conversations with Jasmine always go nowhere.
If played badly, Ginger’s character could ruin the delicate balance of the movie by becoming distracting. The character has to be just as big and complex as Jasmine, only this complexity is located within. Jasmine is so narcissistic that she’s not just the center of her universe, she is her universe. Ginger has to be just as complicated as Jasmine but less intent on advertising her inner turmoil because of her respect for others and her innate sense that she is not terribly important. She’s Jasmine’s opposite, and yet she’s also Jasmine’s sister. Hawkins plays this difficult part so well that she makes it look deceptively easy. I personally love the scene where she puts on her new perfume, though the phone call that happens just a bit later is probably the showier moment.
Why She Might Not Win
In my estimation, Hawkins is least likely to win Best Supporting Actress this year. As far as I can see, it’s between Nyong’o and Lawrence (and Nyong’o has the edge), with the real possibility of an upset by Julia Roberts (because 1) She’s a huge star making a comeback and 2) She actually gives the strongest performance of her career). Even if none of these three wins (which seems impossible) at eighty-four and in a scene stealing role, June Squibb seems the next most likely victor (though there’s only a very slim chance of that). This is the Oscars, of course, and anything is possible, but in a category jam-packed with scene stealers, Hawkins is more of a scene partner, doing her own quiet part to help showcase Blanchett’s eye-catching lead performance.
In Hawkins’s case, though, the nomination already feels like a huge win. She’s has been doing Oscar caliber work for some time, and the Academy has finally recognized her. This can only mean good things for her.
Jennifer Lawrence
Age: 23
Film: American Hustle
Role: Rosalyn Rosenfeld, the charming but unstable young wife of con-man Irving Rosenfeld. Though Irving is no longer in love with Rosalyn, he stays with her out of fear for the safety of her young son since she’s incredibly reckless and, when left to her own devices, repeatedly starts fires, wrecks cars, and blows up small appliances by accident. A bit more naïve than she realizes, Rosalyn is in the dark about the specific details (and the immense scope) of her husband’s shady deals, but she’s perfectly aware that Irving loves his mistress and is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep her husband from divorcing her.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 2013 for Silver Linings Playbook (2012).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Winter’s Bone (2010).
Why She Should Win
Jennifer Lawrence is such a scene stealer in American Hustle that she somehow manages to steal even the scenes she’s not in. In a film centered on forgers, con-artists, grafters, and other crooks, Lawrence basically steals the entire movie. That’s quite an impressive heist considering that her character isn’t even involved with the film’s intricate central plot.
The scene that my stepson affectionately calls “Katniss and the Science Oven” is so fantastic and popping with comedic energy that it’s a hilarious delight to watch (over and over) even divorced from any framing context. (I know, because my stepson laughed hysterically when we watched the clip again and again, and he hasn’t even seen the movie.) And on top of her obvious flair for comedy, Lawrence handles several intensely dramatic moments equally well.
In American Hustle, Amy Adams plays a mature, experienced, streetwise woman with a canny knack for reading people, a keen intelligence for mind games, and a strong, driving instinct for survival. How likely does it seem that a twenty-three-year-old girl would know just what to do to unnerve and startle her? As perfectly played by Lawrence, Rosalyn may be out of her depth in the dangerous, high stakes world of her husband’s shady deals, but despite the fact that she doesn’t fully understand the game, she knows exactly how to play her hand, and what she’s playing for. There’s something vaguely Shakespearean about the character. Rosalyn knows how to turn her weaknesses into strengths and also how to expose and prey upon the weaknesses of the stronger, wiser, older characters around her. She’s beautiful, dangerous, and vulnerable, and she’s played by a ridiculously talented, highly attractive, twenty-three-year-old movie star.
Watching the maturity, confidence, and sound instinct that Lawrence brings to her roles now, I can only imagine the amazing work she’ll treat us to as her career continues (assuming that she doesn’t burn out and retire early after a nervous breakdown). Most twenty-three-year-olds would not have the maturity to play an emotionally disturbed widow or the mother of a school aged child, but Lawrence pulls it off.
Young, beautiful, charming, witty, vivacious superstars who can actually act are exactly the people who win Oscars, Best Supporting Actress Oscars, particularly.
After winning the SAG, Lupita Nyong’o seems to have a better shot at a win this year, but thanks to the winter Olympics, the Oscars don’t happen until March 2, and there’s a long time between now and February 25 when final ballots are due. Some may argue that Nyong’o is far more deserving, but deserving is only a small part of it. You don’t win an Oscar for being deserving by some aesthetic standard. You win because the members of the Academy vote for you.
Why She Might Not Win
If Jennifer Lawrence wins, I will be delighted because I loved her performance, and I think she’s awesome. Part of me really, really wants her to win and can’t stop cheering her on. (Neither can my stepson. I’ll have much happier children if both “Katniss” and the creative team behind Frozen have the best night possible.)
But another part of me feels deeply conflicted about that impulse. When I consider Lawrence’s situation, I honestly think for the sake of her own personal sanity, she deserves to lose. (I don’t mean that her performance is unworthy. I mean that a loss now might make coping with her out-of-control celebrity easier in the long run.)
Normally I don’t buy into these kinds of silly arguments, but Jennifer Lawrence is so young! At the tender age of twenty-three, she’s received her third Oscar nomination, and she just won Best Actress last year! The combined popularity of X-Men and (especially) The Hunger Games has made her a huge megastar with tons of fans and more dedicated haters than even Julia Roberts. (Spend a few minutes googling Julia Roberts and this will begin to seem increasingly impossible. Anonymous internet users routinely attack Roberts with such vitriol that you’d swear she’d personally killed their mothers and picked her teeth with their bones.)
A win for Lawrence would be good for me, but I’m not convinced that it would actually be good for her.
Still if the worst ordeal the poor girl has to endure in her life is winning a second Oscar too young, then she’s probably going to be just fine.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s still far too early to know who will win Best Supporting Actress this year. If you forced me to gamble with my own money, I’d pick Lupita Nyong’o for reasons I’ll discuss next. But don’t count out Jennifer Lawrence. Lots of people love her, and a win for her is a win for the widely enjoyed American Hustle.
If Lawrence does win, she’ll be the youngest two-time Oscar winner ever. She’d also be the first woman to win back-to-back Oscars since Katharine Hepburn in 1968, the first person since Tom Hanks in 1995. Of course, Hepburn and Hanks both won consecutive Oscars for two lead performances, and a win by Lawrence this year would be in supporting. But considering that two Oscars of any kind is two more Oscars than most actors win in a lifetime, the achievement would still be pretty staggering.
Lupita Nyong’o
Age: 30
Film: 12 Years a Slave
Role: Patsey, a miserable woman enslaved on the same cotton plantation as lead character Solomon Northup in the antebellum South. Despite her enduring work ethic and modest, chaste behavior, Patsey is regularly raped by the man who owns her and (as a result) constantly subjected to every kind of physical and psychological abuse thinkable by her master’s cruel, unhinged, jealous wife. Unlike Solomon, Patsey doesn’t have the possibility of rescue to sustain her. In fact, every possible comfort she might cling to is cruelly taken from her time and again. She has nothing, not even soap. And there is nothing Solomon can do to save her.
Nomination History:
This is Nyong’o’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win
Forget about Patsey for a moment. First let me tell you all about Lupita Nyong’o.
I’ll start with the good things. She’s lovely, young, attractive, elegant, well spoken, erudite, smart, grounded, polite, sincere, gracious, charming, poised, humble, professional, talented, respectful, kind, and educated. In fact, Patsey is the very first role she’s played since her recent graduation from the Yale School of Drama. Another fun fact for you is that at the SAG awards, she had on the most beautiful dress that has ever existed in the history of awards shows. (Well, maybe Bjork’s swan was once more beautiful in life. I never met it in person, so I really can’t say. But Nyong’o’s dress was seriously breathtakingly gorgeous, and this is coming from somebody totally disinterested in fashion.)
Okay. Now I’ll move on to the bad things about Lupita Nyong’o. Brace yourself.
Are you ready?
Well, guess what? (You’ve probably guessed already by now.) There are no bad things about Lupita Nyong’o.
Seriously. There is literally nothing not to like about Nyong’o. She is just a flat out lovely person. I mean for starters, she looks gorgeous. And then when she starts talking, it gets even better because it’s quite obvious within seconds that she’s very smart, thoughtful, grounded, and gracious.
Here’s what I mean when I say she’s grounded. In her little Q&A session after the SAGs, someone asked her how difficult it was for her to go through the experiences depicted in 12 Years a Slave, in which Patsey undergoes nonstop physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. I have heard her answer variations of this question several times now, and I must say I’m impressed.
Often when actors are hoping for an Oscar, they really play up the anguish they felt, their Method acting, their extreme physical suffering (as they lost/gained weight/pretended to be blind/lived with wolves/didn’t cut their toenails). You hear them talk about getting inside the heads of the characters and torturing themselves for months, being so tormented and broken by the project’s end that they had to go to rehab or a sanitarium or now they’re dead. I don’t doubt for even a moment that it’s emotionally draining to be an Oscar caliber actor, so please don’t think I’m insulting actors or their work, but what Nyong’o said really impressed me because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone answer the question precisely as she did before.
She said, “I couldn’t sentimentalize the pain that I would have to go through because I had the privilege of doing it in an imaginary world, and I was representing someone who actually lived through those atrocities. So being aware of that made it very practical and very doable, not to say that it was easy, but I was privileged to do so.”
Usually young actresses getting their first taste of fame do not speak with such intellectual and emotional maturity, such a grounded sense of self. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to insult actresses. It’s just that Nyong’o amazes me. Speaking well under pressure is so difficult, particularly when you’re young and achieving massive career success so early in your career.
Doesn’t she make an excellent point, though?
What happened to Patsey is so horrible that any movie made about it must be rated R at the very least. This young woman’s daily life was so atrocious that we don’t think children should be allowed to see it. And she’s a real person, one of innumerable others who suffered unjustly. But while making the film, Nyong’o wasn’t suffering (and is the first to say so). She was acting, and she clearly takes the job very seriously. Wouldn’t you? She is doing her part to honor Patsey’s memory, to speak out against the injustice of her suffering, by portraying the truth of what happened to her on the screen.
I’ve heard people say that 12 Years a Slave is “hard to watch.” So much suffering. Such atrocities. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to deal with it.
Guess what? Patsey didn’t want to deal with it either. But she had to. Every day, all the time, and presumably for her entire life. Nyong’o has really hit on something here. When we watch 12 Years a Slave, no matter how uncomfortable its content makes us, we must remember that we are not the ones suffering. When we watch the suffering of others, we are not the ones going through an ordeal. Now granted, if the film is well made and we are not sociopaths, we should experience deep emotions, stirrings of empathy, perhaps even catharsis. But we have not suffered. We have simply done the people who have suffered the courtesy of acknowledging their suffering, admitting that their suffering existed. And so much the better for our own humanity if we watch and think, Oh my God! Nobody should have to go through that! Slavery is horrible! Slavery is wrong! Can you believe that it still exists today in some places, in some forms? We think it can’t happen to us, but Solomon thought it couldn’t happen to him, too! What if it can happen to anybody? We should make sure it never happens to anyone ever again.
When we think these things, responsible, respectful actors like Nyong’o have done their jobs well, and Patseys of the world have not suffered in vain. Their suffering has at least one purpose. By acknowledging it and thinking about it, the rest of us realize how evil and wrong it is to treat any other person as something lesser. Now granted, audiences learning from the suffering of the slaves depicted in this film does absolutely nothing to improve the lives or alleviate the torment of those now long deceased slaves. But at least it brings honor to their memories. The realities of slavery are not often talked about because it is a dishonorable, shameful practice. But it is not the slaves who are dishonorable. On the contrary, they are the ones who have been dishonored, and refusing to acknowledge the realities of what they suffered because it is unpleasant or obscene dishonors them further. (This same kind of truth applies to other atrocities—rape, for example—as well.)
Once you start thinking such things, it becomes almost impossible to deny Lupita Nyong’o the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She just has such a respectable claim to it. She’s emerged from nowhere and stepped comfortably into the spotlight with no hesitation, gliding from interview to interview with grace seldom seen in Hollywood since Audrey Hepburn. And she always seems to say the perfect thing.
Plus her performance is magnificent. The late scene with the soap is riveting and the earlier scene when she begs Solomon for a favor is heart-breaking. And I think the fact that she nails Patsey’s dialect gives her an even greater edge. (You know it’s helping her chances when people listen to her speak in person and realize that she has such a proper, almost British sounding accent and was born in Mexico and raised in Kenya.)
In fact, Nyong’o’s performance is much better than the movie itself. (12 Years a Slave is Oscar-worthy for sure but does have its flaws whereas Nyong’o’s performance is basically perfect.) A win for Nyong’o would not only honor her performance, but also the film, her own admirable self-presentation, and, most importantly, the memory of Patsey and others like her.
Nyong’o is right. She is not suffering. She is doing honor to the memory of those who have suffered. It’s such a mature, thoughtful, refreshing stance. That coupled with a strong, memorable debut film performance practically guarantees her the Oscar.
Why She Might Not Win
I can think of two scenarios that might deny Nyong’o a win.
1) Jennifer Lawrence (because she’s so popular and a huge scene-stealer in a broadly liked film) or Julia Roberts (because she’s doing her best work ever) might win instead. I mean, it doesn’t matter how deserving you are or how many votes you get if somebody else ends up with one vote more.
2) Some controversy about the film might creep up and make voting for Nyong’o seem unsavory. 12 Years a Slave is about slavery, after all, a topic which is always (understandably) sensitive. Does making a movie about slavery honor the memory of those abused, or is it more about celebrating and assuaging white guilt? 12 Years a Slave takes a complex look at slavery. Michael Fassbender’s character does monstrous things, but clearly the institution of slavery has done him no favors, either. To say that being owned by Edwin Epps is not good for his slaves is probably the understatement of the year, but clearly owning other human beings has taken its toll on Epps as well. If 12 Years a Slave shows anything clearly, it’s that the institution of slavery is bad for everyone. When societal norms insist that something intrinsically morally disordered is actually good for us, usually what results is a big catastrophe for everyone. How could anyone object to messages like slavery is evil, being sold into slavery could happen to anyone, and all people must be treated with equal human dignity? Well surely nobody (in the mainstream) objects to any of that, but the problem is, films are an art form and don’t communicate their themes to the audience using bullet points. When films tackle complex and emotionally charged topics like this, even if the filmmakers have the best of intentions, the message they intend is not always the message that every audience member takes away. Look at what happened with Zero Dark Thirty last year. Something similar could potentially happen here and complicate things for Lupita Nyong’o, though given the grace and thoughtfulness of her self-presentation, I also think it’s possible that she could emerge from any controversy surrounding the film completely unscathed.
Julia Roberts
Age: 46
Film: August: Osage County
Role: Barbara Weston, the oldest child of emotionally disturbed, chemically dependent parents who live in a dark, stuffy house in Osage County, Oklahoma. One August, when her sister Ivy calls with the news that their father has disappeared, Barbara takes her teenaged daughter and estranged husband back to her childhood home to help her cancer-stricken mother deal with the situation. Unfortunately, her mother is a sadistic, bigoted, manipulative, cruel, mentally ill drug addict. So the visit doesn’t go well.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 2001 for Erin Brockovich (2000).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Pretty Woman (1991).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Steel Magnolias (1989).
Why She Should Win
In August: Osage County, Julia Roberts gives what is her best performance ever by a very wide margin. I’ve always liked Roberts and enjoyed her work, but I had no idea she was capable of delivering a performance of this caliber. Before seeing the film, I had Roberts pegged as a dark horse whose immense super stardom and long absence from high-profile roles could give her a chance at winning Best Supporting Actress this year if the vote split between Lawrence and Nyong’o—or if Academy members got bored with the stale state of the race in February and just wanted to shake things up a little.
She’s a huge star for a reason. I expected her performance to be good. But I never dreamed that she would be so good that she might win the Oscar simply because she deserves it based entirely on merit. I can’t speak for the Academy, of course, but if I were the one handing out Oscars, Julia Roberts would win Best Supporting Actress. No contest.
Now will she win? I, frankly, have no idea. It’s so early in the race. If this Oscar season is like all the others, in the coming days, all kinds of crazy, ridiculous, drummed-up controversies will start popping up all over the place. (And they’ll all be weird. Each one will start with something incontrovertibly horrible—you know, torture, rape, genocide, racism, slavery, Hitler—but if you scratch the surface, you’ll quickly find that the only thing tying these awful subjects to the person being criticized is an unfortunate choice of gown, a slip of the tongue, the wrong pair of shoes, a bungled knock-knock joke. Just wait.)
Roberts is so charismatic that she could probably win over the movie audience simply by walking around being Julia Roberts and convincing us that she’s taking the role seriously. Instead she gives us total authenticity. It’s the opposite of showy. It just feels real.
From the minute Barbara stepped through the front door of her oppressive childhood home, I believed the character completely and got lost in her story. My favorite part of the movie—and in fact, a cinematic moment that I won’t soon forget—comes after the fight at the funeral dinner when Barbara attacks her mother in attempt to take away her pill bottle. It’s not just that we get to watch two huge, respectable movie-stars have a knock down fight—though, I must admit, that’s pretty compelling—but the way Roberts plays the scene that follows is just so incredible, so raw, so real, and so convincing. I would have given her the Oscar right then, though hearing her talk about where her mother hid her pills, and watching her trying to protect her sister by any means necessary removed what few lingering doubts I had about the awesomeness of her performance.
Why She Might Not Win
At this point, everybody is talking about Nyong’o and Lawrence, but Oscar ballots aren’t due until February 25. That is a really, really long time from now, and the Academy’s opinion always seems to shift radically at the last minute. Also problematic is the fact that while both Roberts and Streep got acting nominations, neither critics nor the Academy truly embraced August: Osage County as a whole. Fans of Tracy Letts’s much longer, Pulitzer winning stage play found plenty to criticize about his much abbreviated screenplay. And even those unfamiliar with the play (like me for example) have the sense that though August: Osage County offers great parts for actresses, it still doesn’t quite add up to a great film.
If we’re talking about the merits of the performance alone, though, I can think of only one reason Roberts might not deserve to win.
Is she really the Best Supporting Actress?
The part of Barbara is huge. (I didn’t count the lines, but it feels as big as Streep’s part, even though Barbara is not as “big” a character as her mother.) Plus she’s probably the most sympathetic character in the film, despite her flaws. I have read that in the stage play, Barbara has a few more pronounced flaws, but in the film, Letts (probably wisely) gives us no real reason to turn against Julia Roberts. Whatever her failings, she exits the film with our sympathies and well wishes.
Is Barbara the protagonist? Well, she’s without question at least the co-protagonist. Very few successful Hollywood films have more than one female lead, so it’s understandable if many film goers view Julia Roberts as the movie’s only protagonist and see Streep’s character as supporting. (I mean, we don’t want to be stuck in Violet’s life. We’d prefer to take our chances with Barbara, no matter where she’s heading. She’s our protagonist of choice, for sure.)
Much earlier in the year, I heard rumors that the studio planned to campaign Streep in supporting and Roberts in lead. Knowing nothing at all about the film, I announced immediately to everyone within earshot, “That is the worst strategy ever! Streep needs to be in lead or there’s no way both of them will be nominated!” Just use your common sense! It doesn’t matter which character is more sympathetic. If Meryl Streep is in your movie with at least half the dialogue as the showiest character, you push her in lead and put her female co-star in supporting.
Ordinarily, I get really annoyed by category fraud, but in this case, I think it’s a waste of time to fret over which character is the true protagonist. Either way, Meryl Streep is the star. Therefore, by default, Julia Roberts (though she is also a star) is supporting her. When it comes to the Academy Awards, Meryl Streep is the magical exception to many rules.
I remember people complaining about Streep being nominated in lead back in 2007 for The Devil Wears Prada. There were a lot of complaints that Miranda Priestly is not the star character in the movie, but I’m afraid she is when Meryl Streep is playing her. Don’t get me wrong, Anne Hathaway is very charming in her part, but her character doesn’t even make the title. (I guess they could have called it, The Devil and the Pleasant Girl Who Realized She Did Like Her Boyfriend After All.)
So maybe it is category fraud for Roberts to be in supporting, but nobody in his right might could sleep at night after campaigning Roberts in lead and Streep in supporting, so in this case I think it’s forgivable. I do hope Roberts wins because I honestly feel she gives the strongest supporting performance. And I feel less bitter about the performance being classified as supporting since all of the other women nominated in this category this year also have huge, scene-stealing parts.
I mean, Sally Hawkins is clearly supporting Cate Blanchett, but she’s supporting her through the whole movie, and it’s a Woody Allen movie, not like Battleship or The Expendables where it’s mostly just one-liners and stuff blowing up. There’s more than enough wonderful dialogue and inner turmoil to go around. Jennifer Lawrence and Lupita Nyong’o both steal the focus from the Oscar nominated protagonists of their respective films. And several of the very strongest scenes in Nebraska give June Squibb all the best lines.
So if Julia Roberts does win Best Supporting Actress for playing the film’s protagonist, don’t cry for these other four nominated ladies. They all had more than enough screen time and character development to win us over, too.
June Squibb
Age: 84
Film: Nebraska
Role: Kate, the no-nonsense, outspoken wife of Woody Grant, a man whose dementia and alcoholism initially mask his gentle spirit and kind heart. Kate genuinely loves Woody. She also frequently harangues him (and everyone else who crosses her (even the dead)) with great panache and impeccable comic timing that simultaneously enables the greater dramatic impact of any given scene.
Nomination History:
This is Squibb’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win
Nebraska may be my favorite Best Picture nominee this year. (It’s right up there with Philomena and Dallas Buyers Club. Don’t take that as an insult to the other nominated films, though. This year—as so rarely happens—every single one of the nine nominees deserves to win Best Picture. That is definitely not true every year. Usually Best Picture nominees vary wildly in quality, and typically there’s at least one that blatantly does not deserve even to be nominated. And that’s coming from me, and I’m very generous. Not this year. In 2014, they’re all winners, as far as I’m concerned.)
I loved Nebraska. I loved every key performance in Nebraska. And I would have been so sad if June Squibb hadn’t been nominated. I didn’t even realize how much I wanted her to get in until they announced Sally Hawkins first, and I realized Squibb might be the one left out. (Both Oprah Winfrey and Octavia Spencer deserved nominations, and I knew Jennifer Lawrence and Lupita Nyong’o would be in.) Squibb is not a huge star, and Nebraska is not a huge blockbuster. But the movie is so beautiful and sweet, and so is her performance. She makes Kate Grant both a huge scene stealer and a heart breakingly real woman.
Kate is a great character because our understanding of her nature keeps evolving. In terms of scene stealing, she’s at her best during the visit to the family graves. Her behavior in the cemetery is hilarious and horrifying. But anyone who has a close relationship with elderly relatives knows it’s never unrealistic. Popular movies aimed at younger audiences often give us stock characters or stereotypes when showing supporting characters (women particularly) of advanced age. But Kate is just a young woman who grew older. She has kind of a kooky side, but it comes from a very real place. She’s multidimensional.
Squibb’s performance in the cemetery scene is not only funny and wince-inducing, but it also enables Bruce Dern as Woody to have an even more powerful moment. While we’re listening to Kate, we’re watching Woody. Dern plays off Squibb in this scene, even though he’s not engaging with her, and as their son David, Will Forte telegraphs a great deal to the audience as he observes and reacts to the behavior of both his parents. Kate seems a bit like a heckling shrew here, and that makes Woody look the most sympathetic he has so far.
Later on, Dern gets an even more powerful moment in Woody’s old family farmhouse. Squibb is the one talking in this scene, as well, and as we react to what’s unfolding, the audience begins to realize that Woody’s silences and Kate’s noise have something in common.
In a still later scene, when Kate steps up to defend Woody from vicious relatives, our understanding of their relationship changes as our view becomes increasingly complete. This old married couple are less in conflict than they are complements, two vital and very different halves to a working relationship (not a perfect relationship, by any means, and the conflict is real), but we see that neither is a shallow stereotype. They are both well rounded, flawed, multidimensional people who have grown (in good ways and bad) through their relationship with each other. Is Kate a perfect wife? No. Does she truly appreciate Woody? Maybe not. Does she love him and understand him well enough to try to protect him from himself and others? Yes. And that’s not a kind of contribution easily dismissed.
Squibb is in almost all of the film’s best scenes, and she’s a huge part of what makes the scenes work so well. She makes Kate almost too funny and kooky to be real, too mean to be sympathetic, but then (in the mark of a brilliant performance and a great script), without losing any of these grating characteristics, she ultimately shows that Kate is both real, grounded, and (in her own strange way) loving and kind.
Why She Might Not Win
I have to say that the enduring popularity of Lawrence, the gracious self-presentation of Nyong’o, and the career-best performance of Julia Roberts make this category hard to predict absolutely.
Judging by performance quality only, any of the five women nominated would be deserving of the Oscar. All of them do fine work in very different roles. You can’t really imagine any one of them playing the part of another (with the exception of Jennifer Lawrence whose emotional intensity makes her easy to visualize in any part, though obviously she’s not an old woman yet, and it would be horribly, disgustingly racist to cast her as an African American slave in the antebellum South. Based on what I’ve seen of her so far, I think Lawrence would actually have the hardest time pulling of Hawkins’s role because she’s not great at not upstaging yet.)
There’s no reason June Squibb doesn’t deserve to win. There’s nothing wrong with her performance. And the fact that she’s eighty-four and might not get another opportunity probably does help her chances (marginally).
I’d rank the five nominees in the following order of likelihood: 1) Lupita Nyong’o 2) Jennifer Lawrence 3) Julia Roberts 4) (a very distant fourth) June Squibb 5) Sally Hawkins.
The thing is, it’s still so early. Right now Nyong’o seems like the obvious pick, but Lawrence still seems so possible. In another week or two, it might be obvious that Julia Roberts has pulled ahead, but then there might be yet another reversal and last minute surge.
Who knows what will happen at this point. All five nominees are deserving! No matter which of these women wins the Oscar, I will be clapping for her with genuine enthusiasm.