Amy Adams
Age: 39
Film: American Hustle
Role: Sydney Prosser, an American woman who has clawed her way up from an undesirable life using her wits and her sexuality (when necessary) for survival. After falling in love with two-bit con-artist (and married man) Irving Rosenfeld, Sydney helps him con the desperate by posing as Lady Edith Greensly, a wealthy, connected British socialite. When Irving and Syd become mildly successful, they attract the attention of the F.B.I. and soon find themselves coerced into participating in crimes so immense and terrifying that they scramble for a way to pull one last big con and come out of the mess alive.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Junebug (2005), Doubt (2008), The Fighter (2010), and The Master (2012).
Why She Should Win
Amy Adams and Christian Bale have the two least showy roles in American Hustle, and yet they are the ones who deliver the best performances. We believe in their characters, and this makes the entire film worthwhile. Frankly I’m stunned when I encounter people who don’t see this. As my grandma was fond of saying, “‘Everybody to his own taste,’ said the old woman as she kissed the cow.” We’re all entitled to our own opinions, and I’m not trying to belittle anyone else’s take on American Hustle.
But I have noticed that the people who do not acknowledge the importance and power of Adams and Bale’s lead performances are usually the same people who don’t really like the movie because they find it glitzy, superficial, and ultimately insubstantial.
To me it seems that if you fail to connect to Bale and Adams—if you don’t notice the subtle power of their performances or fail to find their work compelling—then you won’t really like the movie. And that makes sense.
I think the film works because Irving and Syd are such dedicated, able cons that they manage to convince us (and themselves) that they’re motivated by a mutual love that is both sincere and life altering. Those who don’t buy that (for whatever reason), will naturally see the movie as nothing more than the empty shenanigans of a bunch of two-bit hucksters with no moral center.
Now I can imagine that point of view, but I can’t really defend it because I don’t share it. American Hustle worked for me. Yes it’s noisy and frenetic and loud and cluttered and crazy and off-kilter and full of elaborate costumes and terrible wigs that definitely distract the eye. But for me, Hustle is first and foremost a love story.
In the first ten minutes of the film, Bale and Adams convinced me to care about their characters. I believed in the love of Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser, and I was able to root for them because regardless of their (many) moral failings, the quiet realism of this pair struck a chord with me. I mean, they aren’t anybody’s idealized version of lovers. They’re mildly despicable. They’re insignificant at best. But I found myself caring because I believed that what they showed us initially (though not always attractive and certainly not admirable) was real, real and sincere.
My favorite moment in the entire movie comes when Adams’s Sydney Prosser first learns the truth about how Rosenfeld really makes his money (because he tells her). The way she reacts struck me as so authentic as I watched. The moment resonated with me because I could relate to it. I understood why she left. I understood why she came back. And when she did come back, she showed such moxie that even if she was treading a doomed path, I was willing to follow her there simply because she made such a strong initial impression on me.
Now I mean, my husband’s not a dry cleaner/con-artist, and I’ve never faked an accent and assumed another identity to make a relationship work. But the exact particulars don’t matter. That kind of stuff is as superficial and distracting as the elaborate 1970s costumes. What matters is that sustaining a romantic relationship almost always requires some degree of (not easy) compromise. It could be something that’s just annoying. It could be something that’s absolutely odious. But the point is, if you love the person, the unpleasantness of the compromise will not matter. (Even the degree of unpleasantness won’t matter if you love the person enough.)
Now please don’t think I’m trying to justify doing horrible, self-destructive things in the name of true love. I’m simply saying that people often will do otherwise baffling things because they are driven by love and feel they must. That’s a very real part of human nature. And when you see something like that happening, you know you can believe it. Such irrational decisions come from a place of genuine emotion and (belief of) connection. You would never see a sociopath or a robot choose something that was not to his/her/its own advantage. The number one reason for putting oneself into a position of high risk/negligible reward is to preserve some treasured human relationship that has become the greatest reward of all.
In a movie about cons conning cons conning cons, you have to believe something, or you’ll quickly lose interest. Based on the performances of Bale and Adams in the early part of the film, I chose to believe in the love of Irving and Sydney (and was particularly convinced of her love for him). And believing this worked out very well for me. The film often kept me confused or off-balance, but it did not ultimately let me down.
Even though she’s playing (at least) two people, Sydney remains a strong, consistent, believable character, and (to her credit) Adams is very restrained and very generous and never tries to go for the big laugh or the scene-stealing dramatic gesture. She plays Sydney as a very real, complicated, unhappy, consistent human being. She doesn’t try to be exciting. She just plays the character authentically and manages not to upstage any of her co-stars, which is quite a feat in American Hustle where upstaging seems to be the name of the game.
I’m sorry that Emma Thompson didn’t get an Oscar nomination for her excellent work in Saving Mr. Banks, but that doesn’t make me any less glad that Adams did find herself among the nominees. Amy Adams has never won an Oscar, and she’s already been nominated five times. Maybe she will win this year. She deserves a win, and her performance in American Hustle is actually very good.
Why She Might Not Win
I tend to think voters will probably save Amy Adams’s first Oscar win for a showier role. Cate Blanchett has been scooping up all the Best Actress Awards so far. Adams did win the Globe, but that was for Best Actress in a Comedy (Blanchett won in Drama), and the Golden Globes are not the greatest predictor of Oscars anyway.
Until a couple of days ago, I didn’t think anything could put a halt to Blanchett’s winning streak. Then Dylan Farrow published that open letter in The New York Times.
I think it’s too early yet to know for sure how all of that will play out. Will these accusations against Woody Allen make Academy members less likely to vote for the star of his latest film? (Honestly, given that the accusation was made before, and the Academy has already been ignoring Mia Farrow and her children for thirty years, I tend to think that no, it won’t be a factor.)
But if something like this does cost Blanchett even a few votes, then a win for Amy Adams certainly wouldn’t be unthinkable.
Yes, she’s constantly upstaged and out-shown by her own co-star Jennifer Lawrence, but that doesn’t mean she’s not giving an Oscar caliber performance herself. Amy Adams consistently gives superior performances in a wide variety of films. She does deserve an Oscar. It’s not impossible that she might win one this year.
Cate Blanchett
Age: 44
Film: Blue Jasmine
Role: Jasmine, the ruined socialite who lost her money and position when her husband was convicted of white collar crimes. Vulnerable, needy (in fact, downright takey), Jasmine inspires pity in her kinder, humbler sister Ginger who gives her a place to live and tries to help her get back on her feet. Eventually, however, Ginger begins to see that Jasmine, an emotionally destroyed, often delusional, usually intoxicated narcissist is far beyond her help, perhaps beyond any help.
Nomination History:
Won Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2005 for The Aviator (2004).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Notes on a Scandal (2006) and I’m Not There (2007).
Why She Should Win
Cate Blanchett deserves to win Best Actress. She deserved to win in 1999 for Elizabeth.
To be clear, I mean no disrespect to Gwyneth Paltrow who did win that year for Shakespeare in Love. (She’s a good actress, too, and brought a youthful radiance to Viola.) But even though I found the film Elizabeth hard to take seriously (because Shekhar Kapur deliberately made it insanely historically inaccurate), Blanchett’s lead performance stunned me. It was so spot on, it sent shivers down my spine. In fact, Blanchett is so marvelous at playing Elizabeth that the Academy nominated her for Best Actress again in 2008 for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a film markedly less well received than its predecessor (though I liked it better.)
Given the level of excellence Blanchett brings to every performance, I find it hard to believe she hasn’t won a Best Actress Oscar before now. Granted, she won an Oscar for playing Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, but that was Best Supporting Actress. A performer of Blanchett’s caliber deserves to win Best Actress, particularly because her performance this year is so conspicuously deserving.
Jasmine is a conspicuously disturbed woman. She perhaps has narcissistic leanings and an unattractive drive for self-preservation at all costs. But she certainly isn’t faking her recent nervous breakdown. She’s terribly unstable, fixated on the past, occasionally so fixated that she becomes delusional and talks at people who are there as if they were the people who used to be. She bears a conspicuous similarity to Blanche DuBois in A Street Car Named Desire except she’s much, much crazier right from the start, and there’s really no redeeming lesson in her craziness for anyone, except one—stay away from Jasmine! She is totally nuts! You can’t pull her out of her vortex of insanity. She will only drag you down with her into the depths of insanity.
When we first meet Jasmine, we notice immediately that she’s broken. She’s babbling intently to some obviously disengaged stranger at the airport. It’s kind of funny, except it’s not. Jasmine is broken and cannot repair herself. Occasionally she seems to make progress, but it never lasts. She isn’t well, and her behavior doesn’t ever really change. Whether she’s sitting beside a stranger on an airplane, her nephews in a diner, or a stranger on a park bench, Jasmine doesn’t really vary her speech or behavior that much. She’s fixated on what has happened to her and views her misfortunes with particular vehemence and a pathological refusal to accept any share of the blame.
Playing somebody in this much psychiatric distress for an entire film is never easy, particularly not when she’s at the center of the story and the person usually on camera. Meryl Streep is doing something similar in August: Osage County—i.e., playing an unpleasant crazy woman who never finds healing—but Jasmine’s character is a bit different because while she’s nasty and narcissistic, she is also so vulnerable and so distressed that we often feel pity for her. (Streep’s character deserves pity, too, but in August: Osage County there are so many other characters so much more deserving of our pity and sympathy.) By the time we get to the end of Blue Jasmine, we can see that Jasmine is so broken she will never “recover” or “improve,” but that’s not immediately apparent at the beginning of the story on a first watching. We have this vague sense that things are not going to end well for Jasmine. She seems doomed. But it’s hard to know at the outset what form that doom will take. Her cringe-worthy behavior in the early scenes give us the definite impression that she will be “gobbled up” by the end, but we’re not sure right away that the gobbling will occur from the inside out.
Blue Jasmine is definitely having a conversation with A Streetcar Named Desire, and Blanchett recently played Blanche DuBois in an Australian stage production of Streetcar. She seems to bring a bit of Blanche DuBois with her as she gives life to Jasmine, which works out perfectly because the character clearly calls for that.
Blanchett dominates the entire film. Her performance is what makes Blue Jasmine exceptional. (I’m not knocking Woody Allen’s screenplay, or the supporting work of Sally Hawkins.) I’m just saying that when your central character is a broken, distressed narcissist who dominates eighty percent of the scenes, you had better cast the right person in the role. Can you imagine a movie about the sufferings of a narcissist starring a weak actress, or someone who just doesn’t fit the part? A film like that would be a complete disaster. Watching would be a torturous experience. No one could endure it. Well, maybe some people could. But it would be like a bad reality show instead of an Oscar-caliber film.
Blanchett plays every scene perfectly. An actress of immense talent who has found an ideal part to showcase that gift, she is fantastic in the role of Jasmine.
As my husband and I watched, our favorite scene was the (almost delightfully) awkward moment in the diner when Jasmine begins talking to her two young nephews. By the end of the conversation, they’re probably irrevocably traumatized. Meanwhile she seems to have completely forgotten that they’re there. She’s not really engaged in the present. She has one message to declare, and she says it to everybody. In my review of Blue Jasmine, I called this moment, “a masterpiece of self-absorbed misery” and “one of the most effective on-screen breakdowns I have ever seen.”
Blue Jasmine could more accurately be titled Cate Blanchett Wins Best Actress. Her riveting star turn definitely drives the entire film. She deserves the Oscar and most likely will get it.
Why She Might Not Win
Scandals and controversies always crop up during Oscar season, and now Blue Jasmine officially has a huge scandal of its own. It’s a big one, it’s legitimately scandalous, and it seriously could hurt Cate Blanchett’s Oscar chances (which is unfortunate for her since it has nothing to do with her performance).
On February 1, Dylan Farrow (the adoptive daughter of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen) wrote an open letter to the New York Times online accusing her father of sexually molesting her when she was seven years old.
I’m confused about why so many people on the internet are reacting to this as if it’s news or new information. The Farrows have been talking about this ceaselessly for at least ten years (probably longer, probably since it happened, but I’ve been following it pretty closely for about five years now).
(The reaction to the “bombshell” that Frank Sinatra “might” be Ronan’s father similarly baffled me. I mean, the first time I saw Ronan Farrow’s face—again, like two years ago, I thought, Wow that guy looks like Frank Sinatra. Hold on, that’s Mia Farrow’s son? Well that explains it. Obviously Frank Sinatra’s his biological father. Now is that true? I don’t know. I didn’t do a DNA test. But it certainly seems true. You don’t have to be a genius or a detective to come to that conclusion. All you need is a basic knowledge of Hollywood history and pop culture. When you see Ronan’s face and learn that Mia’s his mom, you just kind of know Frank Sinatra’s his dad. But just because you can put together all kinds of pop culture clues and assume something doesn’t mean that what you assume is true.)
I actually have a pretty strong opinion about the whole Dylan Farrow/Woody Allen molestation story, and I think it’s a thoughtful, nuanced interpretation of a thorny, complicated issue. But I’m not stupid enough to say what I think on the internet. For one thing, who cares what I think? Why is that relevant? I don’t know these people. Secondly, I could always (easily) be wrong. I think it’s generally a bad idea to libel people, and my take on the whole mess is basically defamatory to everyone involved (except Dylan).
I will say this. While it’s tempting (and extremely entertaining) to look at a writer’s work and try to draw conclusions about how it relates to his real life, that’s almost always a completely unsound approach to reading a text. (I mean, who doesn’t want to say, “In Manhattan, the guy is dating a teenager,” or, “In Match Point, the guy commits murder and gets away with it!!!!!”? As someone who loves to read into things, all of that is highly appealing to me, but as a novelist myself, I know very well that fiction is just that. I can never seem to convince my mother, of course, who always thinks that any strange mother who turns up in my writing is a scathing indictment of my relationship with her. But honestly, you cannot make huge inferences about the personal life of any writer merely based on the fiction that person has written. Do that, and I promise you, you will get nothing but disappointing grades in your English literature classes.
That said, I will add that if I were Mia Farrow, and I saw the movie Blue Jasmine, I would totally assume that the movie was about me. In fact, I wouldn’t even assume it. If I really was Mia Farrow, I would watch Cate Blanchett raving up on that screen, and I would just know, and I would be so, so mad. So regardless of the truth about the molestation allegations, people who are asking why Dylan is coming forward now at this seemingly random time need to watch Woody Allen’s latest movie. It’s true that Allen never responds to Mia’s attempts to bait him over social media or in the press, but I wouldn’t say that he doesn’t engage at all. I mean, you could tell me that I was being paranoid and Jasmine as a character has nothing to do with me all day long, but if I were Mia Farrow, I solemnly promise that I would never believe you. And I would be so, so angry.
What does any of this have to do with Cate Blanchett? Well, it has nothing to do with her performance, but it really might hurt her chances.
Near the end of her open letter, Dylan Farrow writes, “What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?”
Cate Blanchett is no more to blame than any of the other (ninety-billion) stars who have worked with Allen since 1993. When asked, Blanchett commented, “It’s obviously been a long and painful situation for the family, and I hope they find some sort of resolution and peace.”
That’s a gracious statement from Blanchett, who basically is no closer to this situation than any of us reading about it at home. Blanchett wasn’t even famous in 1992-93 (at least not in the United States).
If appearing in a Woody Allen movie after 1992 is a factor that should deny someone an Oscar, then is the Academy going to take back the Oscars of Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway), Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite), and Penelope Cruz (Vicky Christina Barcelona)? (Some people do (very vocally) think taking back Sorvino’s Oscar would be a good idea (based on her performance), which I think is so mean. Didn’t they see the way her father wept for joy when her name was called? People are such jerks.)
The fact is, we (the public) are never going to know for sure what happened between Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen unless Allen confesses that he did molest Dylan. (I’m not saying that he did. I’m saying that as long as he denies it, uncertainty will remain.)
The immediate, over-the-top internet response to Dylan Farrow’s letter honestly disturbs me and leaves me with the feeling that I could accuse anyone of anything in a major publication and expect the full support of a loyal lynch mob within the hour. Of course, it is horrible to treat the victim of pedophilia like a liar who has done something wrong. It is also horrible to accuse someone of something as insidious as child rape falsely. I would be stunned if Dylan Farrow is lying, but that does not automatically make what she is saying completely true. On the other hand, isn’t that the same line of reasoning a child predator would use to conceal his crimes?
What makes the whole thing so tricky is that the very factors that make a person unreliable and hard to trust also make that person particularly vulnerable to predators. (The movie Gothika has many flaws, but brilliantly illustrates the point that once you’re known to be “crazy,” nobody believes you anymore. And predators are typically quick to take advantage of that.)
I personally wish people would stop jumping to conclusions and acting like the whole thing is simple—because if you take the trouble to learn more about it, the Farrow/Allen conflict is not simple at all. Having a knee-jerk reaction to a small bit of information may feel very satisfying, but would you personally prefer to be tried by the court of public opinion or by a court of law? We the public really know nothing about this. We only know what we are told by various media outlets.
The whole matter is complicated even further by the fact that if Dylan Farrow is discredited or not taken seriously, then survivors of abuse everywhere suffer. If Dylan Farrow is not taken seriously, then other survivors of abuse may be too terrified to speak out and get help. But raping your seven-year-old daughter is a monstrous act. What if Woody Allen didn’t do that? Should we just assume that he did because it’s convenient? What if he actually is innocent and Dylan (while speaking truthfully) is not accurately remembering traumatic events?
I can’t believe some people think this is simple.
At any rate, I share Blanchett’s sentiments. I hope the family finds “resolution and peace.” I hope Dylan finds justice and healing. I hope Allen finds justice, too (whether that means vindication or prison for him).
I also hope this mess doesn’t hurt Cate Blanchett’s Oscar chances because it’s something completely beyond her control that has absolutely nothing to do with her performance. And given how supportive Hollywood has always been of Woody Allen, I doubt that this scandal will prevent Blanchett from winning Best Actress this year.
But it could.
Sandra Bullock
Age: 49
Film: Gravity
Role: Ryan Stone, the medical engineer on her first trip into space to repair the Hubble telescope. When debris from a Russian missile strike on a satellite strikes the Hubble and detaches Stone, she initially panics but is rescued by veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski. Getting home is another story, however. After further complications, Stone realizes that she must make the journey home alone and at great peril. But does she really want to live? She’s deeply grieving and hasn’t felt connected to other people for some time. She’s been drifting untethered, alone for far longer than she’s been in space.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar for The Blind Side (2009).
Why She Should Win
One woman floats untethered in space. Alone. The End.
What a great movie! Right? I mean, doesn’t that sound exciting?
Sandra Bullock has her work cut out for her in Gravity, and she rises to the challenge admirably, giving a great performance that I think is the best of her career.
The thing is, if you’re going to have one character floating around alone basically talking to herself for ninety minutes, then you’d better cast someone the audience is willing (and eager) to watch.
I mean, let’s be honest. Most people would not watch a real astronaut floating untethered in space for ninety minutes. We would be interested in the ultimate fate of that astronaut, and we’d be sure to catch the really riveting parts of the ordeal. We’d tune in for the end to discover whether she burns up on re-entry. But I honestly don’t think today’s audiences have the attention span to watch some random person floating around in space alone, talking to herself.
Space is amazing. But to keep the audience glued to the screen, you need some (human) star power.
Even though Gravity relies heavily on special effects and takes place in space, it actually has more in common with a minimalist stage play than with something like Transformers or even the Alien franchise.
I think Alfonso Cuarón is a brilliant director. He makes space compelling, beautiful, dangerous, vast, like a big starry metaphor for life. But you have to put somebody in that otherwise empty space. And what’s brilliant about Gravity is that it could be a stage play. Cuarón could tell the same (emotional) story if he gave us Bullock dressed in black, sitting alone on an otherwise empty stage, talking through her pain at the death of her daughter and wondering whether she wants to go on with life.
You hear people say all the time that Star Wars is a Western set in space. Gravity is like psychotherapy set in space. It’s the grieving process dramatized. It’s almost like a grieving mother’s conversation with God, sort of like the book of Job. The woman asks, “Why? Why? Why?” and the answer is, “Do you understand the vastness of space? Who are you to ask why?”
The whole film is beautifully simple yet pleasantly profound. Will Ryan Stone survive? That’s out of her hands. The question she must first answer is does she want to survive. What is it that makes life worth living? What is it that gives meaning to the cosmos?
The film addresses huge (yet basic) questions like these and manages to entertain us while it explores the answers.
Sometimes I get the feeling that Sandra Bullock won the Oscar for The Blind Side because people really like her and didn’t think she could give a stronger dramatic performance.
But if that’s what they thought, they were wrong. Since winning her Oscar, Bullock has gone on to give two performances that are much stronger than her work in The Blind Side. She’s absolutely brilliant in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (though the film itself is a bit of a mess). And she’s fantastic this year as Ryan Stone in Gravity.
I think it’s the best performance of her career. (Or at least, it’s the most Oscar-worthy. It’s like the Pretty Woman/Julia Roberts thing I mentioned in my Best Supporting Actress write-up. Bullock is so charming as Lucy in While You Were Sleeping. It’s an iconic performance, just not the type of thing the Academy usually honors.)
Her Oscar clip should definitely be one of the monologues she delivers once she’s sitting down and despairing that rescue will ever come. The howling scene is memorable, and the confession surrounded by floating tears is both moving and beautiful.
If the Woody Allen scandal does end up hurting Cate Blanchett, then I think Bullock is the actress most likely to benefit. Gravity could win Best Picture, and Bullock is a legitimate threat for Best Actress, too.
Why She Might Not Win
Bullock deserves to win, but so do the other four actresses nominated. Cate Blanchett has been winning up a storm for months. She’ll probably take the Oscar, and she’ll deserve it. In the event that she does not, however, I do think Bullock may be the next in line.
It’s really tough, though. Bullock dominates her movie, but that’s because for most of its runtime, she is literally the only person there. Pulling that off takes tremendous charisma and tons of hard work. But it also puts certain limitations on the role. Dr. Stone doesn’t have much opportunity to interact with others. As a result, we get to see the other nominees do things Stone never has the opportunity to try.
Amy Adams seems like a true contender for the Oscar, too, at this point, especially because she’s never won.
If Blanchett doesn’t win, the safest bet is Sandra Bullock, but Adams is not far behind. Plus Judi Dench is doing some of her finest work, and if we’re talking Oscars, we should never count out Meryl Streep.
If Bullock does win, I’ll be happy for her.
Judi Dench
Age: 79
Film: Philomena
Role: Philomena Lee, an elderly Irish woman searching for the child who was taken from her when she was just a girl. After a brief encounter left her pregnant out of wedlock, the teenaged Philomena was kicked out of her home and sought refuge in a Magdalene laundry. The nuns let her visit her child occasionally, but when he was a toddler, she could not prevent his adoption by Americans. The nuns refused to give her any information about the adoption. She never saw her son again. Now after many years, she finally tells the truth to her daughter who puts her in touch with journalist Martin Sixsmith, a man who may be able to help her reconnect with her son. This is a true story.
Nomination History:
Won Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1999 for Shakespeare in Love (1998).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for Mrs. Brown (1997), Iris (2001), Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), Notes on a Scandal (2006).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Chocolat (2000).
Why She Should Win
I’ve never seen Mrs. Brown. I haven’t been avoiding it on purpose. I’d just never heard of it until Judi Dench’s Oscar nomination in the spring of 1998, a time when my own life was a mash-up of Black Swan and Silver Linings Playbook. As Good As It Gets really struck a chord with me, and, of course, I watched the Academy Awards ceremony, but I missed several key nominees, Mrs. Brown among them. For whatever reason, I’ve never caught up.
I mention this because I remember how highly that year’s Best Actress winner Helen Hunt praised the performance of her fellow nominee Judi Dench in her acceptance speech. For all I know, playing Queen Victoria could be the high point of Dench’s career. I can’t say for sure. I haven’t seen Mrs. Brown. But I can say that Philomena contains the best performance by Dench that I have ever seen. I think she’s marvelous, playing a character somewhat different from her usual screen persona, and I’m so thrilled that she’s nominated.
It’s not that Philomena Lee is such a difficult character to play. (I mean, she is from Ireland, which would pose a problem for me, but most seasoned British actors seem incredibly comfortable with accents, particularly accents from the U.K. and Ireland.) The thing is, Dench makes Philomena so charming, so authentically charming. She reminded me of my own grandmother and—to a lesser degree—of everybody’s grandmother. Dench’s Philomena is so charmingly parental and so endearingly Irish that the performance almost reminds me of Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way (for which, incidentally, Fitzgerald won an Oscar).
A part like this could turn disastrous if played by the wrong person. Someone less capable than Dench could have turned Philomena Lee into a silly caricature, a clichéd, stereotypical little old Irish woman, almost a cartoon. What makes the story so powerful is our ability to empathize with Lee. From the initial point of view of journalist Martin Sixsmith, Philomena isn’t anybody important. She’s just another person, the subject of a boring, run-of-the-mill human interest story. But as Martin gets to know Philomena better, he realizes that, in fact, she is important. And she’s important precisely because she’s just another person. All people are important. There is value in a human life. “Human interest” doesn’t have to be code for “beneath my time.” When you take the time to attempt to get to know another person, you may very well make genuine (and life-enriching) discoveries.
Philomena has elements of such profound tragedy, and yet as we watch, we feel strangely uplifted. The events of the story (which are remarkable and more remarkable because they’re broadly true) are enough to make us weep, even make us sick or enraged. The story has plenty of drama. But it is the central character of Philomena who makes our viewing experience so pleasant in spite of all of these injustices, plot twists, and horrors. Life is never fair. Life is often cruel. But that does not mean that we should give up, give in to bitterness and take no pleasure in our experiences of the world or our relationships with other people.
I don’t know the real Philomena Lee. (I saw her at the Golden Globes, but that’s the limit of my experiences with her.) But the fictive Philomena, the Philomena of the movie is such a strong, charming, sympathetic character that she makes us care about her struggle and enjoy watching her story even if it is sad and frustrating.
I fell in love with Dench’s Philomena when she began explaining the plot of her romance novel to Martin as they road through the airport together. She’s wonderful in the role and makes Philomena’s endearing charm seem so effortless to portray.
Several intensely dramatic moments stand out, as well. That moment at the end of breakfast when Philomena understands before Martin has a chance to explain sent a shiver down my spine. Tears started welling up in my eyes well before the two of them embraced. By the end of the scene, I was an emotional mess. Anyone who makes the audience cry real tears and feel such genuine attachment to a character fully deserves to be a serious contender for the Oscar.
Part of me is really rooting for Judi Dench to win Best Actress this year. Like Cate Blanchett, she has won Best Supporting Actress but never Best Actress. For an exceptional actress and a legitimate star who so often plays the lead, this state of affairs really should not be allowed to continue indefinitely. Dench definitely deserves a Best Actress Oscar.
Why She Might Not Win
If the newly swirling cloud of scandal surrounding Woody Allen manages to stain Blue Jasmine for voters, then we might possibly see an upset in Best Actress. As far as I can tell, such a thing would benefit all four remaining nominees. This early, it’s almost impossible to see which of them might actually pull off an upset.
If forced to bet my own money, I’d pick Sandra Bullock, simply because Gravity is one of the five hundred legitimate contenders for Best Picture this year, and she is practically the whole movie. (Okay, maybe I exaggerated that number a little. But American Hustle won the SAG, Gravity won the DGA, Gravity and Twelve Years a Slave tied at the PGA, and the WGA just rewarded Her and Captain Phillips. So is there a clear front runner for Best Picture at this point? None that I can see.) Nevertheless, I think Bullock has a really solid shot at winning the Oscar (if the Woody Allen scandal somehow spins drastically out of control and wrenches the statuette from Cate Blanchett’s deserving hands).
That puts Dench into third place at best. She is doing her career best work, but, really, so is Bullock. It’s also worth mentioning that Amy Adams has never won an Oscar (and definitely deserves one) and Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep.
I find no flaw at all in Dench’s performance, and (in an event pretty rare for me), I love the movie itself as much. But at best she’s third in line to win the Oscar, and even that’s only if you totally blow off Adams and Streep which Oscar voters most assuredly won’t.
Dench is wonderful as Philomena, but 2013 is just an incredibly competitive year. (If I were a working actress who wanted to continue working, I’d personally rejoice at such a strong field.) I will be so happy if she wins, but to be brutally honest, I will be happy to see any of these deserving women rewarded.
Meryl Streep
Age: 64
Film: August: Osage County
Role: Violet Weston, the sadistic, wounded drug-addict matriarch of a profoundly disturbed family. When her alcoholic husband disappears, the family flocks around Violet to give her emotional support, but she doesn’t give them much incentive to think kindly of her. Wily, manipulative, and gleefully cruel, Violet can’t seem to resist “truth telling,” i.e., systematically belittling and humiliating her family members.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 1983 for Sophie’s Choice (1982) and 2012 for The Iron Lady (2011).
Won Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Previously nominated for Best Actress for The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), Silkwood (1983),Out of Africa (1985), Ironweed (1987), A Cry in the Dark (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), One True Thing (1998), Music of the Heart (1999), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt (2008), and Julie and Julia (2009).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Deer Hunter (1978) and Adaptation (2002).
Why She Should Win
She’s Meryl Streep, right? She always deserves to win.
That’s a joke (except not really).
If anybody else played this part, they would either A) get an even greater amount of Oscar attention than Streep is or B) draw scathing reviews and end up winning at the Razzies.
If the Oscars were like certain Olympic events and performances were judged not only on degree of success but also on degree of difficulty, Meryl Streep in this role would have a starting score of 57 (and yes, that’s out of ten).
This is a hard part because what makes Violet Weston such a wonderful, desirable plum role is the same exact thing that makes it hard to pull off. Violet is not exactly your average woman on the street. If you land the part and screw up, you will look like an over-acting buffoon. On the other hand, if you land the part and nail it, to some people you will still look like an over-acting buffoon. Great roles in stage plays (particularly roles for women) often have this kind of larger-than-life, an-inferior-performance-makes-it-melodrama quality.
If you’re playing somebody like—I don’t know, Medea, Cassandra, Blanche Dubois, anyone written by Eugene O’Neil—then you had better do it well because you sure can’t do it inconspicuously.
That said, I am one-hundred percent sure that other actresses could not do what Meryl Streep does with this role. Now I’m not saying there’s no one out there in the entirety of the world who could play Violet just as well. In fact, it’s highly probable that somebody out there in the theater community could play Violet even better. But I don’t think anybody could play Violet in the same way that Streep is playing her and give a better performance. Streep (like most actors of quality) always puts a particular signature spin on her characters. If your vision of Violet is the same as Streep’s, and you try to play the role yourself, you’re going to fall short of Streep’s benchmark. She just does a marvelous job. I really don’t think she could be any better, and certainly nobody imitating her could surpass her. The work she does is really marvelous and really difficult.
Still, not everybody is satisfied with this performance.
One thing that Streep does pretty consistently (practically always and certainly deliberately) is take a character not obviously sympathetic (even obviously odious) and bring out surprisingly sympathetic qualities in the person, at least for a certain period of time. She’s fond of showing a (surprise!) compelling side of a thorny person or making someone known to be strong and obdurate (surprise!) secretly vulnerable.
I have never read the stage play or seen it performed, so I’ve never seen another interpretation of the scene when Violet tells her daughters the anecdote about the boots. But this is definitely not only a soaringly strong moment, but also a definitively Streepy moment in the film. Violet is way more screwed up than average and habitually so sadistic and cruel that it’s impossible to find her sympathetic for any long stretch of time. But in this one scene, as she retells a painful childhood memory of her own, she gets far closer to winning our sympathies than we ever imagined she could.
This is probably her best moment in the movie. (Of course, for those who don’t care for her take on the character, it may well be the most unbearable moment of the movie.) I think she’s fantastic here and also (of course) in the “truth-telling” scene around the table. And then there’s that wonderful full on, all out, knock-down brawl with Julia Roberts. (That scene alone is worth the price of admission to August: Osage County.)
Streep is strong throughout the whole movie playing an incredibly difficult character that most movie actresses would be too scared to attempt.
She does deserve another Oscar, but is there really going to be a day when Meryl Streep suddenly begins phoning in terrible performances? I personally don’t see that happening. She’s probably going to make at least one film every year for the next ten years at minimum. She’ll be nominated for an Oscar at least fifteen more times before her illustrious career draws to a close. And she’s always going to deserve the Oscar. Always.
Why She Might Not Win
Meryl Streep can’t always win. In fact, she usually doesn’t win. For twenty-nine years between Sophie’s Choice and The Iron Lady, Meryl Streep did not win a single Oscar. Nobody ever seems to remember that. (Well, I’ll bet Meryl Streep does.)
If Meryl does win another Best Actress Oscar, she’ll be that much closer to Katharine Hepburn’s rather daunting record of four. But she won so recently that I’d be stunned to see her win again. This performance reminds me so much of Hepburn’s own brilliant work in A Long Day’s Journey into Night, definitely one of her best and most difficult performances. Hepburn was nominated for an Oscar for playing Mary Tyrone, but despite the difficulty and brilliance of the performance, she didn’t win that year. I don’t think Meryl Streep is going to win this year, either. The film got kind of mixed reviews, some people think Streep is overdoing it a little, and Julia Roberts is more impressive than Streep overall.
(I’m not saying that Roberts is better than Streep. I’m saying Roberts is giving arguably the best performance of her career, while Streep is simply turning in one more mind-blowing Streep performance. You leave the theater aware that Meryl Streep is always great, but stunned to discover just what a fine actress Julia Roberts truly is.)
If Streep wins, I’ll be happy for her. No one could call a Best Actress win by Meryl Streep undeserved. But I honestly don’t see her pulling it off this year.
Despite the Woody Allen scandal, I still expect Cate Blanchett to win Best Actress for Blue Jasmine.