OVP: Best Actress (2009)
The Nominees Were...
Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia
My Thoughts: We
arrive at our final acting race, the one that the collective Oscar-loving
internet seems to most obsess over, Best Actress. Like much of 2009, we were left with a pretty uniform list
of women who were nominated throughout the cycle, and they were a pretty
hodgepodge collection similar to your average Best Actress field: two former
winners, two ingénues, and one woman who happened to be America’s Sweetheart
(and had never been nominated before).
We’ll start with her.
Sandra Bullock spent most of the 1990’s being the third leg
of a trio of women who happened to cumulatively be America’s Sweetheart. Julia Roberts was the one that managed
to make all of the money and score all of the awards love (she was a two-time
nominee before she picked up her ideally timed win for Erin Brockovich). Meg
Ryan starred in the movies everyone seemed to like. And then there was Sandy-the affable brunette that everyone
seemed to love, even if she never seemed to get the respect the other two did.
Until, of course, The
Blind Side. Part of what
helped Bullock to this first nomination was that The Blind Side (coupled with The
Proposal) was a major comeback
for her, and a financially ridiculous one. These two films made $600 million combined in the worldwide
box office that year, and Bullock became the first woman to headline a $200
million movie by herself. All of
this plus newfound love for her from the public made what was initially a
longshot bid for a nomination become a stampede.
The actual performance, though, isn’t as bad as you think it
is. Bullock’s got a truly human
side to her acting, and has incredible timing. This isn’t a comic performance, but it is a performance that
requires her to have a comic sensibility-she needs to be able to land insults, maintain
an energy, and make this woman both believable and not a caricature. I feel like she does that-people on the
coasts may not realize with this, but women like Leigh Anne Tuohy exist every
day in real life in Middle America.
The film itself glosses over some of the finer points (Quinton Aaron is
not a strong actor), and occasionally Bullock cannot sell the source material
(she’s given a lot of schmaltz to get through, and I think Meryl herself would
have struggled with the “he’s changing mine” speech), but this is actually
quite fine work. It’s just not
what Oscar usually decides to honor and the film is not good. That, I believe, is the source of most
of this bellyaching.
Few people complained, for example, that Meryl Streep is
also in a movie that is spotty at best when it comes to its plot and
acting. Meryl is divine as Julia
Child, getting not only the voice down (as is her raison d’etre), but also her
spirit. I loved the way that
Meryl’s Julia remains so remarkably consistent-there are moments where the character
succumbs to doubts (that rough scene where her sister is pregnant, and we find
that Julia clearly wanted a baby but for some reason has never been able to
have one), but as a whole she remains blissful and powerful. Meryl can get nominated for just about
everything, but I like that she can get a performance that is light and even
comedic into the conversation. She
manages to make Julia Child not only come alive, but also become a movie
character and not just a personification onscreen. The film itself holds her back occasionally (I would have liked
to have seen a little more growth in her relationship with Paul), but this is a
delicious light soufflé.
We move away from two of the biggest stars of the past
decade and on to a woman making her screen debut in 2009: Gabourey Sidibe. One of the funnier aspects of this race
was that SO many people seemed to think that first time actor Sidibe was simply
playing herself onscreen, that this wasn’t much of a stretch, when anyone who
follows Sidibe on Twitter or has seen her interviewed knows that she’s the
complete opposite of Precious.
Sidibe finds layers in her young woman that a more nuanced actor might
not have. I love the way that she
pushes the things that she really wants, and the way that she annunciates her
truest feelings, keeping the rest hidden.
Think of her breakdown when she realizes that she’ll never have a real
boyfriend and has been diagnosed with HIV. This is a haunting scene because we see Precious, so stoic
and unaffected, break down in a way that seems to come from within-this is a
girl that has had to bury any hopes and dreams under years of abuse, and only
believes deep within that she can still achieve them. The focus in this film has always been on Mo’Nique, but it
is really Sidibe who gives the film wings-she manages to be both a real human
being and blank enough for us to be able to see the many nameless Preciouses
that we encounter every day in her lifeless eyes.
Carey Mulligan joined Sidibe as the other major newcomer of 2009’s field. Though she had been in other films prior to An Education, her work here feels like
we’ve never seen her before, and Jenny needs that sort of freshness. Mulligan infuses her with a lifeblood
that courses through the earlier scenes as she finds the jolt of being impetuous
so intoxicating. Jenny and
Precious could not be more polar opposites (wouldn’t you love to see an
alternate universe where the actresses would switch roles?-I honestly think
both would knock the other’s just as far out of the park), and Mulligan also
nails her performance, here giving it the added lack of knowledge. Other actresses may have emphasized the
way that she is experiencing new things, that this experience is informing her
future actions. With Mulligan, we
get the sense that Jenny doesn’t know what her education is providing to her,
just that it’s a worthwhile piece of time. By the end of this movie, she’s given us a confident
portrayal of a person-perhaps wiser, perhaps now an adult, but definitely
someone deeply real.
I haven’t forgotten about Helen Mirren, but her nomination
does feel like an afterthought, doesn’t it? As Sofya, Mirren does what she does best onscreen, giving
chemistry to other actors, utilizing that sharp British timing to yell at the
servants and basically everyone around her. Mirren is an oddly similar actor to Bullock in her latter
career-so much of her comic work is precise because of her timing, and there’s
no denying that she gets the job done.
But this isn’t really a great performance, and she tows the line into
simply playing herself even when the part doesn’t demand it. And let’s be honest-like several other
actors nominated in 2009, she’s hampered by a banal, boring film. The
Last Station is dreadfully slow and unnecessary, and not even the joy of
seeing Helen Mirren is going to change that fact. She improves the performance, but there’s nothing special
here, and you’d be forgiven for only remember the other four nominated women.
Other Precursor
Contenders: All five women competed for Best Actress with HFPA (with
Bullock winning in Drama and Streep winning in Comedy). That left only one additional
nomination for Drama, which would go to Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria.
The other comedic contenders included Marion Cotillard in Nine (category fraud?), Sandra Bullock
in The Proposal, Julia Roberts in Duplicity (does anyone remember this
movie?), and Streep once again for It’s
Complicated (as Colin Farrell pointed out, very greedy). The exceedingly boring SAG Awards
(Melanie Laurent is the only original idea you could come up with?!?) went with
the same winner and nominees as Oscar, but BAFTA had some original ideas,
cutting Bullock and Mirren and putting in Saoirse Ronan for The Lovely Bones and Audrey Tatou for Coco Before Chanel (for some reason they
skipped Blunt, who was probably in a distant sixth place with AMPAS).
Actors I Would Have
Nominated: I would have kept three of Oscar’s choices, but made room for
Tilda Swinton, so alive and crazily lived-in in Julia and Penelope Cruz in Broken
Embraces. I know that some
have accused this of being minor Pedro, but that didn’t stop her glamorous obsessed-about
woman from being another cosmic turn in her impressive 2006-09 period.
Oscar’s Choice: Holding
off on Meryl’s third Oscar for two years, they instead decided Sandy Bullock
needed to be called Oscar Winner, much to the chagrin of the collective
internet.
My Choice: I’ll
go backward as I have wrestled with this decision for years. I’m going with Mirren in fifth
place-she’s too forgettable to get past the more memorable Bullock, who is just
above her. In third would be Streep,
giving her Meryl best but with a performance that never hits great like the
remaining two. Part of me wants to
go with Mulligan, who gets the less showy part and does marvels with it (she’s
a totally underrated actor), but Gabby’s amazing debut is just too
overwhelming. She gets my gold,
with Mulligan just behind.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Did you fall for Sandra like AMPAS, or
were you wrestling between Gabby/Carey like me? Was anyone a Helen Mirren cheerleader? How did Emily Blunt not steal her
traction for a more popular Academy film?
And what woman gave the best performance by an actress in a leading role
in 2009? Share in the comments!
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