OVP: Best Actor (2013)
The Nominees Were...
Christian Bale, American Hustle
Bruce Dern, Nebraska
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave
Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
My Thoughts: Whew, we are going through these at a breakneck
speed this week, but we’re now heading into the lead actor races, and seeing
whether the five men in “an exceptionally strong year for Best Actor” (don’t
you roll your eyes every time that chestnut is strutted out, since it’s brought
out literally every year) actually
lived up to the title.
I want to start out with two men who stand out in the list above the most to me, the clear leader throughout the year and the guy who just
“showed up” randomly in the lineup.
The first is of course Matthew McConaughey, who won dozens of awards
throughout the season for his performance as Ron Woodruff. The McConaissance, as it has been
termed, has been growing for several years now, and I will easily admit that
he’s a much better actor than I think any of us who just thought he was hot in A Time to Kill or Contact (but man was he hot, so you can forgive). And yet, Ron Woodruff wasn’t the moment to honor him with a heaping dose of approval. His work here is okay.
He’s best in show, I’ll give him that (though that’s not saying much
considering the competition he’s up against), but I don’t find that he gives
the character enough layers and differentiation in his journey from a bigot to
an advocate. There’s too much
selfishness and not enough acknowledgement of that from the actor. Being sick doesn’t make you a good
person, but that’s what I get from his work. Also, and it has to be said when you’re competing for an
Oscar, but Matthew McConaughey is not good at crying on-cue. His crying in this film is awful. This movie in general is awful, and we have talked about it way too many times for my liking…and I
still have to discuss it one more time because it made the Best Picture race.
The other guy I want to discuss right away is Christian
Bale. Bale was the shocker on Oscar
morning. While everyone was
debating whether it would be Leo or Robert Redford that got cut from the
lineup, Leo made it and so did Christian Bale, causing the major upset exclusion of Tom
Hanks despite this being his big comeback year. Bale’s performance, sadly, is not
particularly strong and seems to be more about Megan Ellison’s very strong Oscar
game than an actual merited nomination.
Bale’s work is all bloated Brando impersonations and occasionally waking
up from the monotony of his work to say something funny or protest. His work doesn’t jive with the way the
character, so cunning and smart, is projecting, and we are left with a wasted slot
that could have gone to a number of better actors, not ones that are using
their character as a way to show you can be brilliant even when you’re terrible
(which he’s not a good enough actor to pull off-even Brando struggled in that
regard).
Leonardo DiCaprio was the other on-the-bubble nomination in
this crew, but thankfully with Leo we have a character that is genuinely
stretching him as an actor. For
too long (basically since Titanic) we
have seen the same Leo show up in all of his prestige films: haunted, quiet, a
man of few words and fewer laughs, and though Leo is really good at this part,
even for me this was starting to take its toll. This may be because of Inception
specifically and Gatsby only
exacerbated the problem, but from a Leo devotee, I needed a bit of a change and
Jordan Belfort was the perfect recipe.
Leo puts the charm he once showed in Jack Dawson into a morphed version
of Jordan Belfort. He manages to
make you detest him and secretly root for him, in a way Michael Douglas did decades
ago in Wall Street. This is an actor who is obviously very
posh and seductive in real-life (have you seen the women he dates?!?), and you
see that come alive in this role, where he occasionally embarrasses himself, is
vulnerable physically and not just emotionally, and you see someone who is just
past the golden boy stage of his career playing someone who is just past the
golden boy stage of his life.
A perfect combination, and a rare treat where Oscar notices a dramatic
actor doing great atypical comedic work.
We’ll move on to Bruce Dern next, as Leo, Bruce, and
Chiwetel have almost nothing in common and so there’s no clever way to segway
them. Dern’s work is not going to
be put through the ringer like I did with Squibb. It’s above the grade in that regard, though I still don’t
see why it was “special.” I loved
the way that he delays some of his reactions or keeps some of his answers to
questions (likely knowing that he doesn’t fully understand what’s being asked,
but being aware of the ritual of giving an answer). However, most of the film is just filled with blank stares,
and I don’t feel like Dern gives enough of his introverted self to establish
that the long stares and peers into the distance are anything more than him
just not emoting-in order to prove that an actor is actually giving the range
that a part gives it credit for, I need a bigger jump in the quality of the
acting. I don’t see that with
Dern, and so he only gets partial credit.
Chiwetel Ejiofor is our final nominee, and probably the one
who ended up in second place on Oscar night (though, honestly, McConaughey was
so far in front that I’d believe all but Bale was the second place
contender). Ejiofor’s got a killer
role, and there’s something desperate in his eyes as Solomon that instantly
connects with the audience. There
are moments in this film that are so deeply felt that you almost want to give
him the trophy straight away.
However, I do feel like Ejiofor is the weakest link of the main four
actors, and this is primarily because I feel like the character is
underwritten. I’m aware he’s a
real-life person, but in the way to make him near perfect, the writers stop him
from being particularly interesting-all of the other members of the quartet
(Paulson, Nyong’o, Fassbender), get layers-you can see the real-life attributes
of their flawed but human portrayals onscreen. Solomon is a saint, and perhaps he was in real-life, but realism doesn’t make great acting, even if physically the demands that Ejiofor is
going through are brutal and there is tremendous promise from an actor to watch.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes of course distinguish between Comedy/Musical and Drama (though they lie through their teeth in genre fraud on the former), and in odd twist (again, thanks to the genre fraud) we had nearly an even split between comedies and dramas. McConaughey won the Best Drama prize, beating Ejiofor as well as Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips), Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom), and Robert Redford (All is Lost). DiCaprio took the comedic prize over Bale and Dern, as well as Joaquin Phoenix (Her) and Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis). Proving at the very least that the year had a lot of names, the SAG lineup was similar to Oscars (same winner), but they chose Hanks and Forest Whitaker (Lee Daniels' The Butler) instead of Bale and DiCaprio. And since BAFTA had the good sense to skip Dallas Buyers Club, we saw Ejiofor take the trophy and Tom Hanks (surely sixth place) taking McConaughey's slot.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to admit it-while no year is a particularly bad year when you take the five best performances (if you hunt enough, you'll find five great pieces of acting), this isn't my favorite year for acting either with Oscar's lineup or (comparatively) with mine, but I still could have come up with a stronger lineup than Oscar. I'd definitely have included the soulful star-making of Michael B. Jordan in Fruitvale Station, the lovelorn loneliness of Joaquin Phoenix in Her, the frustrated soul of Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis and the horny frustration of Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight. Now THAT would have been a lineup worth spouting cliches over.
Oscar’s Choice: They cannot deny a movie star who makes good: McConaughey by a country mile (al'right, al'right, al'right?).
My Choice: The winner is going to be Leo, though to be fair he would have been fifth on my personal ballot (any of the men above I would have given the Oscar to most gladly, whereas Leo wins for a strong piece of work that I give the trophy to reluctantly, since I know he can do better-but that's the OVP; at the end of the day, it's simply about honoring the best nominee of the five). I'd follow Leo with Ejiofor, and then McConaughey, Dern, and way in the back, Bale.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Is anyone else bucking the McConaughey express (or wishing he had won for Magic Mike instead)? What is your favorite piece by Leo, and when (if ever) would you have given him the Oscar? Anyone want to vouch for Bale being the best of the bunch? And who was the best lead actor of 2013? Share in the comments!
Also in 2013: Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2013
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