OVP: Best Supporting Actor
The Nominees Were...
Kenneth Branagh, My Week with Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
My Thoughts: And now, it's time for the four categories people tend to most discuss the-those of the actors. There are always performances to be heralded in each of the four lineups (or at least, there were performances given throughout the year worth heralding in the lineups), but of the four categories, this is probably the one I most often disagree with Oscar on when it comes to their nominations. Because of the demographics of the Academy, while Supporting Actress oftentimes celebrates the ingenues struggling to make it big in the industry, this category is typically reserved for the veterans of the industry-the marquee stars of yesteryear who are now playing fathers and grandfathers, and no longer get the roles they once coveted. It will oftentimes ignore the character actors in the middle or beginnings of their careers, and more so than the other three categories, feels too often like an "Honorary Award." The lineup is typically not quite as lopsided as this one (Kenneth Branagh, at 51, is the second youngest of these nominees), but you see my point in most years of the Oscars. It's a true pity, because some of my favorite performances in a given year would qualify in this race, but Oscar rarely decides to go that direction.
Let's start out then, with the two eldest statesman of this lineup-Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow. Plummer has embraced almost every role Shakespeare ever wrote outside of Lady Macbeth, and has appeared in dozens upon dozens of films, but is most well-known to audiences as the man with the whistle, Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music (a film he famously detested). In 2009, he got a consolation prize of sorts when he was nominated for playing Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station, a huge relief for the Academy, who had long been harangued for not nominating this legendary actor (Donald Sutherland and Mia Farrow-there's always hope!). At the time, it didn't seem like he would be returning so quickly (or ever) to the Kodak Theatre, but he defied expectations with the independent dramedy Beginners.
Plummer's character is a long-closeted gay man who, after many decades of seemingly happy marriage to his wife, comes out to his son after his wife's death. The film follows Plummer's late-in-life declaration of his sexuality, as well as his son's (Ewan McGregor) coping with his father's new path and decaying health. Plummer brings a real sense of happiness to his role, something not always easy to do onscreen. Dying is easy, comedy is hard has long been a saying, but it may just as well be depressed is easy, keeping happy interesting is impossible. Plummer's decaying health gives him a few great speech moments, but it's the happiness that is probably the hardest thing he's doing onscreen, as we get to celebrate the joy of being who you are, even if we find our youth-oriented brains wondering "why now?" I was not of the group who thought this was a cosmic, brilliant sort of turn (it's well-acted, to be sure, but I don't quite push the button toward Oscar-worthy), but it's nice to see an actor of Plummer's talents still being challenged onscreen in his 80's.
Max von Sydow is also being challenged in his 80's in Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Von Sydow is most well-known to audiences today as one of Ingmar Bergman's muses and the father in Pelle the Conqueror (his only other Oscar nomination), but he's continued working steadily during a time-of-life that most people are golfing in Palm Springs (most recently, he wowed as the father in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). This film was deservedly much-maligned, and while I won't get into that too much now (I'll reserve judgment when we discuss its bizarre Best Picture nomination), von Sydow is not the issue. I spent so much of this film hoping that Thomas Horn and his nails-on-the-chalkboard performance would lead us to any of the other actors onscreen, and though I didn't get this reward (he stayed the entire film), he at least brought excellent performers out, particularly in the form of von Sydow. His mute old man with a mysterious past is a rich, complicated performance that has no business in a film this one-dimensional and treacly. While von Sydow is limited in how much of an impact he can make with Horn's loud performance taking up much of the onscreen air, his weathered glances and searches for approval and internal conflict over human connection are far-and-away the best part of this terrible movie.
Another senior citizen of the screen, gaining his third nomination for Warrior, is Nick Nolte. Not many actors have gone through more transformations than Nolte, a one-time screen star and "Sexiest Man Alive" who became a tabloid joke after his drunk driving arrest in 2002. Few people expected him to attempt a comeback, but he did just that as the drunk, abusive father in this sports film. Nolte gives the long, tedious film a shot in the arm, but is ultimately far too one-dimensional for me to take serious as a legitimate contender for the "best" of the year. Nolte has given some incredible performances before, particularly in Affliction, but this is a case where the role was nominated rather than the shaky, sometimes workable performance. And also, for the record, just because someone mumbles their way through a movie it doesn't mean that they're doing Brando-level work.
Kenneth Branagh has one of the strangest histories ever with Oscar-he is the first person to ever be nominated in five separate categories, and he did it in five nominations-Best Actor and Director (Henry V), Live Action Short Film (Swan Song), Adapted Screenplay (Hamlet), and in this category for My Week with Marilyn. For an actor who has spent much of his career being favorably compared to the greatest of all modern Shakespearean actors, Laurence Olivier, it seems either genius or stunt casting to put him in that role in this film about the making of The Prince and the Showgirl. Either way, the casting is serviceable, though it limits the hammy Branagh a bit. I have to admit that I was so spellbound by Williams in this film (not necessarily due to her performance, since she's always good and typically better, but because she does a marvelous Marilyn transformation) that Branagh sort of falls by the wayside, and nothing about his performance calls out to me. He gets meaty, over-the-top readings throughout the film, but it doesn't translate to great acting. About the only scene where he works is his "little girl lost" soliloquy, but one strong speech from one of the world's finest Shakespearean actors is not enough to warrant inclusion in this category.
As you may have guessed, even by the standards of this not being my favorite Oscar acting category, this is not a lineup I'm at all happy with, and that unfortunately doesn't stop when AMPAS includes a token "guy under 40" to fill out the category, Jonah Hill in Moneyball. I have to hand it to Hill, who managed to be one of the first guys of my generation to score an Oscar nomination, and he was not one of the ones I was ever expecting to make it (and neither were you, let's be honest) and is not an actor I greatly anticipate making it here again (note that he's the only one of the five actors I'm not ready to give his own tag). He manages to luck into the second biggest role in Bennett Miller's Moneyball, and has a wonderful screen partner in Pitt, who is doing his cocky excellence thing in this movie. Hill's character has little depth, and aside from strong one-liners and a true chemistry with Pitt, there's nothing exceptional about this role or performance. It was a nice way to round out a weak lineup with an actor who seems like a nice guy, but it, and I sound like a broken record at this point, is not Oscar-worthy.
Other Precursor Contenders: Like writing, acting has a treasure trove of contenders to deal with, so we'll just stick to the Globes, the BAFTA's, and the SAG Awards. The Globes, always a bit more star heavy, skipped von Sydow and Nolte, instead going for Viggo Mortenson's calculating Dr. Freud in A Dangerous Method and Albert Brooks cold-hearted villain in Drive. BAFTA also kicked out Nolte and von Sydow, though they favored Philip Seymour Hoffman's exhausted campaign official in The Ides of March and hometown favorite Jim Broadbent playing Denis Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Finally, the SAG Awards kept all but von Sydow in their lineup, instead favoring the closeted lover that Armie Hammer portrays in J. Edgar.
Performances I Would Have Nominated: Here's where my anger at this category really lights up, because there were excellent performances in supporting roles last year worth honoring. Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken are a heartbreaking father-and-son in The Tree of Life. Pitt, in particular, is giving the best performance of his career as a domineering, unsuccessful husband-and-father. There's also John Hawkes creepy and intoxicating cult leader in Martha Marcy Mae Marlene that would have been a fine choice after his worthy inclusion for Winter's Bone.
Oscar's Choice: Oscar loves a comeback and honoring a celebrated and elderly thespian, and the precursor onslaught showered upon Christopher Plummer made this an easy landslide decision for the Academy.
My Choice: As I've mentioned, I probably wouldn't have included any of these five men in my personal lineup, and Pitt or Hawkes would have been such an easy decision. However, I have to work within the confines of the game, which means that von Sydow beats out Plummer for the trophy. Von Sydow's work is a bit more effective and he has a much more difficult film to be able to excel in than Plummer. Third place goes to Branagh, and I'll give Hill the slot just above Nolte.
And now, what about you-which of these five gentlemen deserved to win Best Supporting Actor? Who was wrongfully snubbed in the category? And of all of the performances of the year, who most deserved Best Supporting Actor of 2011?
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