OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2009)
The Nominees Were...
Matt Damon, Invictus
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
My Thoughts: We’re
going to head straight into the Top 6 here, rather than dilly dally (plus,
there’s nothing big politically happening except Hillary’s book and I haven’t
received an advanced copy for some reason). With Supporting Actor, we’re entering the categories that
I’m guessing you’ve probably seen all of the nominees AND have opinions on, so
I shall naively hope for comments below.
I should start out and say that Stanley Tucci deserved this
Oscar. After all, that might get
someone to post, but alas, I cannot put out such lies into the universe. Stanley Tucci is one of the worst
performances in recent years to have been nominated for an Oscar. I get where they were coming from here. He’s a very likeable
star (someone whom you suspect is genuinely popular off-screen) and has that
sort of character actor glamour of someone who is too good of an actor to not
at least nab one Oscar nomination in his career (see also David Strathairn,
Richard Jenkins, Gary Oldman, etc).
But this was the wrong way to go-his work as George Harvey is all
overactive tics and bad line readings.
Everything is heavy-handed and without a trace of subtlety. Who honestly wouldn’t assume this guy
was a serial killer? Where is the
least bit of restraint in his performance? You can go over-the-top in a character if you want (Bette
Davis did it marvelously as Baby Jane Hudson), but you cannot if you’re going
to sacrifice reality. Tucci does
this (it doesn’t help that the film is awful), and gets one of the worst
nominations I’ve seen in my Oscar-watching career.
The one thing going for Tucci is that this was a WILDLY
uninspired list of actors.
Supporting Actor hasn’t really been a great slate in a few years, and
2009 was a piss-poor year for this category even if you include all nominees,
but that doesn’t mean they had to get so lazy. Another clear example of this is Matt Damon in Invictus. Honestly-what was the Academy thinking here? Damon is a strong actor, and deserved
to get a second nomination after Good
Will Hunting at some point, but what about The Talented Mr. Ripley?
Syriana (don’t hate-he’s
better than Clooney in it)?
Instead they go with his always reflecting soccer player. Damon’s character never becomes
interesting, never becomes more than just stoic athletic cliché. Perhaps the Academy got distracted by
the ridiculous things Damon’s physique was doing in this movie (damn girl!), as
that’s the only explanation for why they would give him a citation for such a
mundane role.
We’ll finish off the trio of banal with Christopher Plummer
in The Last Station. Here I at least understand where the
Academy was coming from-Christopher Plummer is Stanley Tucci if Tucci never got
an Oscar nomination. He deserved
to be called Oscar-nominated. It’s
a darn pity that AMPAS didn’t know that Beginners
would be coming two years later and that they’d have a perfect way to
acknowledge him because his work as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station is okay (at my most generous). Plummer laughs and knows how to sell
his chemistry with Mirren (then again, who doesn’t have chemistry with Helen
Mirren?), but his character is all surface-level. We never get inside of this man, and coming from an actor as
accomplished as Plummer (one of the great stage actors), that’s a
disappointment.
Moving on to actors who probably DID deserve their
nomination (or at least can credibly carry one) we have Woody Harrelson in The Messenger. Harrelson has been so good so often these days you’d be
forgiven for almost overlooking this work (side note: I particularly remember
that the Oscar ceremony was hitting a low point that year when Alec Baldwin
made a dated Harrelson/pot jokes). He’s
not quite as strong as you’d assume here-he doesn’t always find a human switch
in this character, and occasionally is too robotic to be believable, but his
scenes, particularly with the “NOK” are devastating and you see the empty spirit
of this man. Harrelson gets the
crutch of a showy role, but he knows how to use it to be most effective.
Finally we have the scene-stealing savior of this
category. Sometimes I feel that
you can excuse an entire field if they got the winner right, and there’s no
denying that hilariously evil Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa (it always says
something when you remember a character’s name and don’t just refer to them by the actor's moniker) is the best-in-show here.
I love the way that he’s also a true supporting player (not like the Django situation) and that he draws
himself into each scene he’s in, having that great puncturing diction that
knows he’s in control. It’s a work
of comic genius, and unlike Tucci, he knows to ground his scenery-chewing into
a reality (he can do whatever he wants, include be a mad men-he’s still in control). Waltz may never do anything as
memorable or as entertaining, but that doesn’t stop the fact that this was the
third in a series of three incredibly satisfying villains to win the Supporting
Actor Oscar.
Other Precursor
Contenders: We always end with the BAFTA’s, so let’s start there this time. The field was somewhat different
(though with Waltz still winning).
Alfred Molina in An Education
(a surprise) and Christian McKay in Me
and Orson Welles (less of a surprise) got in while Damon and Plummer
missed. Proving how boring this
category was, the Globes and the SAG Awards copied AMPAS (I know they came
first, but clearly they were just catering) both with nominees and the victor. As far as sixth place, McKay makes the
most sense (Ann Dowd should worry about how little of a career he had after
missing here), though I would also entertain the notion that Anthony Mackie was
in sixth place.
Actors I Would Have
Nominated: Like I said, it wasn’t a great year for the category. Still, I would have certainly put in Michael
Fassbender for his wonderful scene-stealing in Inglourious, and probably would have found some room for Heath
Ledger in Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus as
well as Burghart Klausner for The White
Ribbon. And though it would
never have happened in a million years, Jim Broadbent in Harry Potter as Professor Slughorn (I loved the fish scene so
much!) would have rounded out the nominees.
Oscar’s Choice: Oscar
couldn’t deny Waltz (no one really could), though I wonder who was in second
place. My heart says Harrelson,
though I shudder that it might have been Tucci.
My Choice: Oh
Waltz, obviously (he would have won for me over all actors that year in this
category). Harrelson is a clear
second, with Plummer, Damon, and Tucci finishing things off.
Those are my thoughts-how about yours? Does anyone vote against Christoph
Waltz over one of these contenders?
Can anyone defend Stanley Tucci’s inclusion? And which actor had the best supporting actor performance of
2009? Share in the comments below!
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