Christian Bale
Age: 40 on January 30, 2014
Film: American Hustle
Role: Irving Rosenfeld, a small time crook in the 1970s, forced to get in over his head when an FBI agent entraps him, arrests his girlfriend, and pressures them both to participate in an elaborate sting designed to incriminate a number of prominent criminals and politicians. Though he’s always been a con, Irving genuinely cares about his unstable wife and her young son, truly loves his mistress, and quickly develops a genuine regard for Carmine Polito, one of the men he is being coerced to entrap and betray.
Nomination History:
Won Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2011 for The Fighter (2010).
Why He Should Win
For the first time I can remember, I genuinely love every actor in this category, but of all of them, I’ve loved Christian Bale the longest. What a career he’s had! I’ve loved him since we were both children. Maybe it’s because he’s a great actor. Maybe it’s because I’m an Anglophile. Maybe it’s because I like the sound of the name Christian. I’ve just always liked him. And later on when I started hearing things about his violent, out-of-control temper, that somehow made me like him more. (I’m not advocating violent outbursts. I just think there’s something wonderfully, messily sincere about them.) Bale’s a dedicated (maybe even too dedicated), intense, marvelous actor (even if his growly Batman voice is so deliciously mockable).
I’m pleased (but shocked) that Bale pulled off this nomination. What irritates me is how many people seem to be jumping on the “he’s nominated for wearing a bad toupee, sporting some cringe-worthy paunch, and boisterously pretending to be a young Robert DeNiro” bandwagon.
Look, I don’t care if for his next project Bale decides to freeze all his limbs in carbonite, grow a Hitler mustache, stick a satellite dish on his head, and have himself wheeled around through the whole movie like Hannibal Lecter in restraints. (Knowing him, he’ll also lose 150 pounds for the role.)
Yes Christian Bale is dressed up in a very bizarre costume in this movie. And yes, he’s one of those actors who thinks nothing of undergoing drastic (and unhealthy) physical changes to commit to his roles.
But dressing up in a silly costume is not what makes Bale’s performance in this movie so great. Anyone so distracted by the big, loud, cheap, obvious theatrics affected by Bale’s character clearly missed the subtlety and power of the performance.
Jennifer Lawrence’s wacky, irresistible bouts of mayhem aside, American Hustle is a movie that works for one reason—we care about Irving Rosenfeld, and we believe in his love for Sydney Prosser, his concern for Rosalyn and Danny, his terror of Victor Tellegio.
Based on the nature of the character, that we would feel this way about him is not something to be taken for granted. I mean, it’s not like you’d glance at him and think, Why he has all of those perfect qualities everyone looks for in a hero! He has a bad hairpiece. He owns a dry cleaning business. He’s secretly a mildly successful, bottom feeding con artist. He’s overweight. He cheats on his wife. What’s not to love?
Bale makes us care about Rosenfeld. He brings to Irving an intensity, sincerity, and (most importantly) vulnerability that allows the audience to get invested in a guy who doesn’t look so great on paper—or in the mirror—or really in any objective way at all. (Amy Adams certainly does her part, too, and I’m thrilled to see her generous, focused performance rewarded with a nomination, too.)
I think part of the point of all those ridiculous trappings is that Irving Rosenfeld looks like a misguided, plucky little boy playing dress-up—and in a way that’s what he actually is. I mean, watch the film again and notice how Irving and Syd gleefully enjoy all of the clothing left behind at the dry cleaners. They create identities for themselves as protection, layer upon layer upon layer, persona upon persona upon persona.
What makes the movie work is that we don’t see Irving as he wants the public (his marks, his conspirators, law enforcement officials) to see him. The film introduces us to Irving as a person first. We get to discover him along with Sydney Prosser, someone who knows a disguise when she sees one and gets close enough to see far more of his true personality and vulnerabilities than other people do. Now as the film goes on and the plot becomes a bit trickier, we realize we may have been wrong about him initially. But we reserve judgment, and that really only happens because of strong lead performances by Christian Bale and Amy Adams.
By the time Victor Tellegio entered the film, there were only four characters who seemed worthy of my time—Irving, Sydney, Carmine, and Victor Tellegio. (Don’t get me wrong, I was terribly concerned about Rosalyn, and I enjoyed all of her scenes, but my sympathies lay with Irving and Syd.)
Bale and Adams won me over early on, selling their love story in the some of the first scenes of the movie. But, for me, the most memorable moment of American Hustle comes when Irving first meets Tellegio in the back room. Bale plays that perfectly. (It helps to have the right scene partner, of course.) His terror is somehow so endearing. He conned me right into caring about Irving Rosenfeld. His interactions with Jeremy Renner’s Carmine Polito are also palpably painful for him. I wouldn’t care how Rosenfeld felt about anything if Bale hadn’t made me care about the small time crook in the first place.
It’s one of the best performances I’ve ever seen Christian Bale give, and I’m delighted to see it recognized.
Why He Might Not Win
Bale won recently, and there’s stiff competition in this category. Though I personally think that this may be his strongest performance yet, the role isn’t exactly showy, and he’s constantly being upstaged by two of his flashier co-stars who are inexplicably behaving with the same manic energy that worked so well last year in Silver Linings Playbook.
If you’re a voter thinking, Hmm McConaughey’s winning everything, but I’d like to go a different way, and you for some reason aren’t into the emotionally resonant performances of veteran Bruce Dern and versatile Chiwetel Ejiofor, then you’re left with Bale and DiCaprio, both legitimate stars and box office threats of basically the same age, both known for their acting talent and total commitment to roles.
Faced with that choice, why would you give the Oscar to Bale (who’s won recently) instead of DiCaprio (who’s never won)?
Of course, maybe The Wolf of Wall Street made you want to vomit because it was as debased as Caligula without the soothing presence of Helen Mirren (who just makes everything more Oscar worthy). But if you’re into stuff that’s wholesome and heart-warming, why didn’t you vote for Bruce Dern? If you’re looking for something that’s moral, what’s wrong with Chiwetel Ejiofor’s soulful turn? And why aren’t you voting for Matthew McConaughey again? Do you even have a reason?
Even allowing for one or two odd balls who throw up their hands and say, “These Oscar-baity roles are all so melodramatic! Forget it! I’m voting for Batman,” I just don’t see the lion’s share of the votes being thrown Bale’s way.
Hustle is nominated in so many categories that voters can easily show their love for it elsewhere. I’d be really stunned if Christian Bale takes home the Best Actor Oscar this year. He’s good, but—he’s always good! In a field this crowded, I’m amazed that he even got nominated!
Bruce Dern
Age: 67
Film: Nebraska
Role: Woody Grant, a somewhat senile elderly alcoholic who believes a piece of junk mail saying he’s won a million dollars and decides to travel from Billings to Lincoln to pick up his prize in person. After Woody is caught wandering down the side of the road several times, his younger son David finally agrees to drive him to Lincoln to put an end to Woody’s escapes. David knows his father hasn’t won a million dollars but thinks the change of scenery might do him good and welcomes a chance to spend some time with his distant father. As the journey takes some unexpected turns, David gradually begins to understand and appreciate his father in a way he never has before.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Coming Home (1978).
Why He Should Win
Bruce Dern seems like the perfect winner to me. He’s a respected veteran, a gracious, well-spoken, seemingly wonderful, kind man, and in Nebraska he gives an amazing, beautiful, complex, touching performance that is completely worthy of the Oscar purely in its own right.
Dern is sixty-seven, and he’s never won an Oscar, though he’s been nominated. He’s a very good actor with a fantastic filmography under his belt. And in Nebraska, he’s giving what is arguably the best performance of his career up to this point.
Over the years, I’ve seen Dern in a wide variety of films. When I heard him speak in a Q&A session after an early screening of Nebraska, Dern pointed out that people often think of him when they need to cast a demented, sociopathic type. And I must admit, in most of his films I’ve seen, he plays either a murderer or some sketchy weirdo lurking in the periphery.
(A notable exception would be his incredibly sympathetic turn as George Lumley in Alfred Hitchcock’s final film Family Plot, a movie I watched all the time growing up because my mother and grandmother liked it so much. I’m sure there are other exceptions, but off the top of my head, I remember only his roles as sociopathic weirdoes.)
In retrospect, this seems strangely naïve on my part, but I honestly had never realized that Dern might want something other than these shady, kooky, miscreant roles. I thought he just enjoyed playing roles like that. (And he’s been typecast in them so often that every time he shows up as some lurking weirdo, my mother and I shout, “Bruce Dern! Of course! He’s perfect for this!”)
I hope in the future, Dern gets more parts like Woody. (I don’t mean that the character needs to be similar to Woody, just similarly complex.)
Nebraska is such a beautiful, moving film. It’s a story about real people doing ordinary things, and it makes a pretty powerful, compelling case for being a real person and doing ordinary things. That’s what life is all about. It is our basic humanity, our ability to recognize and acknowledge the humanity of others, that in the end makes human beings so extraordinary.
Woody is a deceptively complex character. On first glance, he’s just a slightly senile old man. But—like every human being we bother to look at more closely—there’s so much more to Woody than what’s on the surface.
June Squibb probably gets the best lines in the movie, but Bruce Dern certainly makes the most of his silences. At certain key moments, he may not be saying anything significant out loud, but his face is speaking volumes.
In Nebraska, Dern, Squibb, and Will Forte make a captivating team. Together, the family visits places overflowing with ghosts of the past. While they’re there, Kate makes glib, grating comments that hint at a backstory. Meanwhile, Woody’s expressive face tells a very different version of the same events. Then David reacts to his parents’ (seeming lack of) interaction, telegraphing to the audience what he discovers about the truth by exploring the disconnect between his two parents. The longer this kind of dynamic goes on, the more we realize that Kate’s and Woody’s versions of reality aren’t in conflict. In fact, they’re complements. Kate’s brash, insulting manner perhaps doesn’t do Woody justice, but it does (in part) protect him. He’s a very vulnerable man, a kind man, a man who believes in the goodness of others whether or not he finds it.
When the family visits Woody’s childhood home, Dern gets one of his most powerful moments in the film. He barely says anything. He doesn’t have to speak. It is very difficult to move the audience to such a degree entirely non-verbally, especially without resorting to gimmicky, theatrical poses. (I mean, through entirely non-verbal means, I could probably convince an audience that I was going into labor, being mauled by a bear, or having an epileptic seizure. But if what you’re trying to show them is something more subtle, internal, ordinary and yet profound, you need more advanced craft and far greater talent.)
Probably my favorite moment in the whole movie comes later when Woody reclaims his letter in the bar. The moment is showier for Will Forte and Stacy Keach, but Dern plays it perfectly.
Watch the film Nebraska and tell me Dern doesn’t deserve to win Best Actor. (Don’t be too sad if you do tell me that, and I refuse to believe you.)
Why He Might Not Win
Matthew McConaughey has been winning up a storm so far. I think his wins are deserved, and a lot of people seem to agree with me (based on his impressive winning streak). McConaughey aside, Ejiofor does work that’s difficult to ignore in 12 Years a Slave. And then there’s Leonardo DiCaprio giving what many are calling the performance of his career. (I disagree there, but I wouldn’t mind seeing him win an Oscar. Despite his relative youth, he truly does feel overdue, especially since he’s missed even nominations for some of his greatest roles.)
I never thought I’d be living in a world where Bruce Dern, Christian Bale, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Chiwetel Ejiofor were about to lose a Best Actor Oscar to Matthew McConaughey (giving a genuinely deserving performance).
Actually, though, I still think there’s quite a bit of hope for Dern. His veteran status does help. It also helps his chances that Woody is well outside his usual box, a box with boundaries that reflect not the limits of the actor but the limited types of roles he has been offered in the past.
Dern could pull off a victory yet. He deserves to win. Like Matthew McConaughey, he’s changing some people’s perceptions of his limitations as an actor. Like McConaughey, he’s been typecast for too long—for far longer than McConaughey, in fact.
I hope he does win, and I think it’s too early yet to say for certain how the race will play out in the end. As things stand now, Matthew McConaughey, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leonardo DiCaprio all seem like more obvious choices. It’s a long time until the Oscars, though.
Leonardo DiCaprio
Age: 39
Film: The Wolf of Wall Street
Role: Jordan Belfort, a stock broker who figures out how to make a fortune selling penny stocks to trusting millionaires in the 1990s. Belfort starts his own firm, Stratton Oakmont, makes an obscene fortune fast (and somewhat illegally), and proceeds to live a life of such bizarre excess that the film is exhausting just to watch.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actor Oscar for The Aviator (2004) and Blood Diamond (2006).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993).
Why He Should Win
If Hollywood owes the talented and gracious Bruce Dern a chance to play sympathetic protagonists for a change, then DiCaprio owes it to himself to spend about ten years playing nothing but raving psychopaths.
In my review of The Wolf of Wall Street, I suggested that DiCaprio should play Hitler, and I stand by that. Watch Jordan Belfort give those rousing, impassioned speeches to his adoring minions at Stratton Oakmont, and tell me DiCaprio wouldn’t make a fabulous, scarily convincing Hitler.
I’ve been a huge fan for a long time, and (for me at least) DiCaprio’s appeal does not lie in his cherubic looks. He’s a capable professional who can play a variety of roles, but what makes him exceptional is his extraordinary ability to emote. He not only communicates intensity better than most, but he also seems to have more intensity to communicate. He’s at his best when he’s permitted to show us his raw, unfiltered, passionate intensity.
DiCaprio is always a good actor, but to unleash his true greatness, you have to use him the right way. Martin Scorsese clearly knows how to do that. Their (now numerous) collaborations are always compelling, and the best of them—when DiCaprio played Billy Costigan in The Departed—should have yielded a Best Actor Oscar.
Reteamed with Scorsese and again in a role that allows him to unleash his insane intensity, DiCaprio has a chance to pick up a win and (from a certain point of view) redress a wrong. Some people may think, Yeah, he probably should have won for The Departed, but he didn’t, and this is close enough.
He’s very good in The Wolf of Wall Street, playing a character who is not just “bad” but astonishingly, gleefully, giddily reprehensible. Everyone has vices. Anyone can make bad choices. But few people idolize their vices and make bad choices deliberately. Belfort self-consciously worships vice and choses evil as his greatest good. He’s like Satan with severe ADD, a Hedonist who can’t wait until tomorrow to die. He embraces chaotic evil for its own sake, and makes materialism his mantra. What he wants is not to be average. And—given that right off the bat, he reveals to us with gleeful nonchalance that snorting heroin out of a hooker’s anus is common as a morning cup of coffee to him—I’d say, mission accomplished, Jordan Belfort. You are not average. You win.
Now what’s likely is that Belfort is one of those self-aggrandizing sociopaths who achieves astonishing greatness—in his own mind. Other people think he’s unbelievable, all right, but most of them probably mean that as an insult.
What makes The Wolf of Wall Street so compelling is that we get to see this (at least borderline) sociopath as he sees himself. We’re told the story from Belfort’s own point of view. At worst, this is terribly interesting and fairly novel (especially for a big Hollywood release)
I find it astonishing—and a bit disturbing—that some people believe that this movie glorifies Jordan’s behavior. What’s really fascinating, though, is that quite a few of those people think the movie is awesome for glorifying Jordan’s behavior. Exposing that reaction alone is reason enough for Scorsese and DiCaprio to have made this film.
DiCaprio’s impassioned speeches are amazing, and the physically demanding scene where he’s trying to get down the stairs and into his car is not something movies give us very often. What I’ll never forget is Belfort’s last big encounter with his wife. His behavior there is far more reprehensible (though mundane) than anything he’s done so far in the entire movie. And yet while watching this scene, I found Belfort bizarrely sympathetic (or pitiable, at least). Isn’t that odd? What he does there is horrid and far more despicable than anything else he’s shown us. I find that fascinating.
I can’t imagine an actor other than DiCaprio playing this role, particularly not in the way that he plays it. He probably does deserve an Oscar.
Why He Might Not Win
So Leo gives an amazing performance, huh? So it’s his best performance of a string of amazing Oscar-worthy performances? So he also gave a stunning star turn in The Great Gatsby earlier in the year? So he threw himself into the role with no vanity, no modesty, and no reservations? So he deserves to win an Oscar?
So what?
Leonardo DiCaprio has never won an Oscar so far, and he’s been churning out amazing performances since What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
He really should have an Oscar by now, yes, but he doesn’t. Half the time, they don’t even nominate him (whether he comes in sixth a lot or by virtue of some Illuminati conspiracy, we may never know for sure). He wasn’t even nominated for his work in The Departed, and though I understand why not, it’s bound to baffle future generations who watch the film without reading up on the Oscar race that year.
Is DiCaprio a great actor? Oh yes. He is a great actor. (He has his detractors, sure, but they’re wrong. He’s immensely talented.) So it follows that he should win an Oscar, right? I mean, it’s never happened before in Oscar history that a huge star with massive talent and an illustrious career never won an Academy Award, right?
Oh wait. That’s not right? It’s actually happened to a shocking number of highly talented, unique, deserving stars, directors, writers, and other filmmakers? Well, rats.
DiCaprio may never win that Oscar. (Do you think he ever imagined that he might get his first Oscar after Matthew McConaughey after losing to Matthew McConaughey?) At least this year he’s nominated and has a shot. But the competition is immense. Any one of these five guys could walk away with the statuette, and if I were Leo DiCaprio, the frustration and depression would already be starting to kick in. To try to cope with my rising feelings of dread through catharsis, I’d be skyping with Kate Winslet while we watch the end of Titanic together and cry.
All that said, he’s a serious threat to McConaughey and honestly could win. He did win the Golden Globe, and he does deserve to be called Oscar Winner Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s deserved that for some time now. So we’ll see.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Age: 36
Film: 12 Years a Slave
Role: Solomon Northup, a freeborn African American violinist from New York lured to Washington D.C. under false pretenses, drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery. Eventually Solomon ends up a slave on the cotton plantation of Edwin Epps, a tormented, cruel man who has an obsessive fixation with a much-abused female slave named Patsey. Epps and his sadistic, jealous wife make life on the plantation miserable for everyone. Solomon longs to escape but lacks opportunity. He remains a slave for twelve years. This is a true story that took place in the 1840s-50s.
Nomination History:
This is Ejiofor’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
What makes 12 Years a Slave stand out from other well made films about slavery is the pervasive, epiphany-inducing, terrifying idea that it so successfully plants in our heads as we watch.
This could happen to anyone.
In that respect, the film is practically a horror movie. Over the course of the season, I’ve heard it likened to torture porn several times, but honestly I think psychological terror is nearer the mark. Everything about life on Edwin Epps’s cotton plantation is so creepily eerie, so unnervingly spooky. And the longer you’re there, the more the pervasive evil of the atmosphere entraps you. You begin to forget what it’s like in other places. You become a prisoner of this twisted, evil place, a place made all the more terrible by its deceptive, discordant, psychologically jarring beauty. (The lack of a cinematography nomination for 12 Years a Slave is this year’s most baffling Oscar snub.)
The only character immune to this atmospheric disturbance is the forward-thinking, plain-spoken Canadian played by Brad Pitt. Instead of getting sucked into the terror, he looks around in surprise, with a shake of his head that seems to signify, “Wow, y’all are all crazy down here.” But he hasn’t been in town that long, you know.
Ejiofor has a difficult role. He’s our way into this story, and at the film’s beginning, educated Northerner Solomon Northup has no more connection to slaves on a Southern cotton plantation than any of us watching now. Solomon is African American, but he’s the descendent of a freed slave and has no reason to expect that his descendants will ever become slaves. He’s not only as free as anyone else in New York, he’s also a respectable, upstanding citizen with fine manners, a lovely family, and a good rapport with the people in his community (regardless of their race). He’s educated and cultured. He’s a professional violinist.
When he’s kidnapped and sold into slavery, his immediate, knee-jerk reaction is disbelief, then frustration. How could such a thing happen? How could such a thing happen to him? He’s not a slave at all. He’s a perfectly respectable, upstanding citizen of New York. There has been some terrible mix up. These things should not be happening to him. He should not be treated in this manner. He’s not a slave. He’s a free man. He’s a human being.
The deeper Solomon gets into this life-altering catastrophe, the more apparent it becomes that something more is wrong here than his own personal crisis. The fact is, these things should not be happening to anybody. No one should be treated in this manner. Everyone is a human being. Slavery is not something that happens to you because you deserve it.
Watching Solomon quietly work through these huge, dramatic, life-altering realizations is so compelling. For me, the most powerful, resonant moment in the movie comes when Solomon joins in singing the spiritual at the funeral. It’s like he finally lets go of the idea that he is something different, other, better, someone destined to be saved from these horrors by virtue of his own merit. He doesn’t belong in this Hell, doesn’t deserve to endure the tortures of life on Epps’s plantation. But gradually he realizes and rather suddenly admits to himself that none of the others deserves it either. He is not apart from them. He is a part of them. He is one of them. They are all suffering, and none of them deserves it. They all long to be saved. Perhaps one day he will find salvation on Earth, but many of his companions have only the hope of heaven.
The moment when he joins in the song is so powerful because Ejiofor perfectly communicates Solomon’s complex emotions at this juncture. To a degree, he’s giving up hope of miraculous rescue and finally acknowledging the true horror of his situation. But he’s also admitting that he needs the comfort of solidarity with his fellow slaves. By joining in the song, he’s both admitting despair and seeking a new kind of hope.
As Solomon’s captivity drags on, he’s forced to internalize his once fiery passions. This is fascinating to watch because while he learns to vocalize less and less, he has to deal with more and more. The intensity of his distress increases exponentially as the frequency of his “unruly” outbursts declines.
It’s a difficult and complex role, and Ejiofor gives a fantastic performance that should be remembered for a long time.
Why He Might Not Win
The only problem with Ejiofor’s actual performance is that he’s overshadowed by both Michael Fassbender (as the tormented, grandiose, diabolical Epps) and likely winner Lupita Nyong’o (as the much abused, pitiable Patsey). Compared to Epps and Patsey, Solomon Northup is an unassuming guy with tons of self-restraint. (Of course, compared to Epps, a rabid dog has tons of self-restraint.)
Matthew McConaughey is on a winning streak, so unless it abruptly ends, Ejiofor is out of luck. Now, of course, McConaughey can’t win the BAFTA (because he’s not nominated and neither is Leto), but I don’t see why that matters. Right now Matthew McConaughey is the biggest roadblock to an Ejiofor Oscar.
If McConaughey doesn’t win the Oscar, though, Ejiofor seems the most likely candidate to pick it up instead. (Personally, I’d like to see Bruce Dern rewarded, but I’m not an Academy member, so it really doesn’t matter what I think.) Of course, Leonardo DiCaprio should not be counted out. He’s been acting his guts out trying to win an Oscar for the better part of his life, and this time, it’s tantalizingly within grasp.
Ejiofor has an advantage that Dern and DiCaprio do not, though. For the first time in quite a while, it’s not completely clear which film will win Best Picture. It could be 12 Years a Slave, which gives Ejiofor (and his great performance) a solid shot at a Best Actor win.
Of course, as I already mentioned in my Best Supporting Actress write-up, 12 Years a Slave is more vulnerable than some films to being undermined by a surprise controversy. There’s no controversy-free way to make a film about a sensitive subject like slavery. Early on 12 Years got ample praise for showing the full brutality of slave life, but this same trait could also work to its disadvantage. Is that brutality being glamorized? Is it necessary to show it? Is the film more about honoring slaves or exploring the torments of their masters? Is this all somehow an exercise in assuaging white guilt? (Once people start asking questions like these, they can snowball out of control very quickly.) So Ejiofor, and the entire cast of 12 Years a Slave, is highly vulnerable to some out-of-control last minute controversy about the film.
Matthew McConaughey
Age: 44
Film: Dallas Buyers Club
Role: Ron Woodroof, a blue-collar, hard-partying, homophobic Dallas man who learns in 1985 that he has contracted AIDS and has only one month to live. Desperate to extend his life, Ron finally discovers a clinic in Mexico where a doctor gives him pills that not only prolong his life but also improve his quality of life. In order to bring others the same treatment (and to make a living), Ron begins smuggling these medicines into the United States and sets up a Dallas Buyers Club. He doesn’t sell drugs; he sells memberships. But he finds clients had to come by until a transgender woman named Rayon opens doors for Ron into the gay community, and, eventually, opens Ron’s heart, as well.
Nomination History:
This is McConaughey’s first nomination.
Why He Should Win
Matthew McConaughey gave the best lead performance this year and by merit alone deserves to win the Best Actor Oscar.
There I said it.
That seems so crazy to say out loud, but nevertheless, it’s true.
I haven’t seen anybody give us a moment that compares to Tom Hanks’s final scene in Captain Phillips, but in Dallas Buyers Club McConaughey gives us an intensity that approaches the greatness of that scene, and he gives it to us throughout the entire movie.
That’s what really makes McConaughey a cut above the others. The “good part” of his performance is the whole thing.
He really got my attention in this film in his early scene with Jennifer Garner. Woodroof sits across the desk from the polite, professional young doctor and blazes with the intensity of a dying star (of the cosmic variety) about to Supernova.
Matthew McConaughey began his campaign of impressing the pants off me last year when he suddenly started choosing more compelling parts in better scripts. But honestly, at first I just thought he had become rededicated to his work and started selecting better material. This said more about his maturity and his intelligence than his abilities as an actor. Then I saw Magic Mike and thought, Actually, his acting itself really has improved, too.
But when I saw him in Dallas Buyers Club, I was completely blown away. I suddenly understood, Matthew McConaughey isn’t just picking great parts. He is a great actor.
He’s also been giving better-than-average speeches at the awards shows. (I think it’s because at the Globes and the SAGs, they like to get the actors drunk, and some actors have more experience at being eloquent while intoxicated than others.)
I’m stunned that McConaughey has been winning so much so far, but I hope he continues the trend and actually takes home the Oscar because he legitimately deserves it for the performance.
Why He Might Not Win
When I first saw Nebraska, you have no idea how intensely I wanted Bruce Dern to win Best Actor. Even after I saw Dallas Buyers Club and was blown away by McConaughey’s performance, I still wanted Bruce Dern to win.
For one thing, I thought Dern could win. You see, it never even occurred to me that McConaughey had a chance of actually winning. In a year with so many amazing performances, I just didn’t want the Oscar to go to someone who did not give an absolutely brilliant performance. I wanted the winner to deserve the award—to deserve it for the quality of the performance, the caliber of the acting.
That seems obvious, maybe. And maybe it would be obvious if we were talking about any other kind of award. But here’s the thing about the Oscars. Sometimes people win in the twilight of their careers, and while the performance is good enough, the award is really for either body of work or respect in the industry.
Until McConaughey won the Golden Globe, it honestly never occurred to me that people who give out awards might actually vote for him. I mean, it’s one thing to get nominated simply because your performance is deserving. It’s quite another to win for that reason.
But now I’m getting nervous for McConaughey again because he’s been winning too much. And suddenly people are popping up all over the place saying that Ron Woodroof isn’t accurately depicted in the film. The real Woodroof, they say, wasn’t a homophobic straight man at all, but instead an open bisexual. Since one writer of the film (Craig Borten) actually met with Woodroof, though, I don’t see how that criticism can really be used to hurt the movie. I mean, it’s entirely possible that everyone involved is telling the truth (as far as they know it), and Woodroof was both homophobic and bisexual, presenting different sides of himself to different people.
As far as I’m concerned, Woodroof’s sexual orientation shouldn’t matter given that a central message of the movie is that people deserve proper medical treatment regardless of their sexual orientation. Dallas Buyers Club beautifully illustrates that AIDS is a non-discriminatory disease that can kill anyone who contracts it. Ron Woodroof wanted to live. Who doesn’t? Sexual orientation shouldn’t deprive anyone of proper medical care.