OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2013)
The Nominees Were...
Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
My Thoughts: And finally, we move into the actors of the
2013 Oscars, the twenty men and women who actually get face-time during the
ceremony and the audience pays attention to their speeches rather than taking
it as a moment to play Candy Crush.
As a result, I hope you have some opinions that you share in the
comments. Either way, though, it’s
time to start perusing the stars.
I’m going to start out with the man who actually won the
trophy, Jared Leto. Leto is one of
those actors who sort of felt like he’s underperformed in his career. His weird obsession with both his
second career as a musician and his bizarre issues with losing and gaining
weight for every role he does (seriously-can’t we just hand that back to the
makeup department?!?) has made us sort of forget that he was once a very
promising actor, and this year was sort of a way to give an honor to what could
have been a much stronger career (think of what would happen if Edward Norton
made good once again…oh wait, that’s likely happening this year with Birdman).
Leto’s performance, though, left me completely cold. I think that more than any of the four
winning performances this one felt the most over-praised. I think there was an admiration for the
weight loss and his willingness to step into a character so unlike him, but
Rayon is not a particularly compelling character. The entire performance felt two-dimensional: we see him
strut around and inject himself with drugs that are going to kill him, but we
get little indication of what sort of person he used to be. We have to fill-in-the-blanks, which is
fine for a normal movie (you can’t rely on every supporting part to have a back
story), but when you’re handing out an Oscar for it, there shouldn’t be room
for errors. Even the big reveal
scene, where he dresses like a man and is clearly deeply uncomfortable doesn’t
resonate because instead of using the scene to learn a bit more about Rayon,
it’s just a giant middle finger to his father-nothing more than
audience-pandering, rather than character-building. This felt cheap, and this performance felt gimmicky, and I
wasn’t into it at all.
I felt the same way about Barkhad Abdi in Captain Phillips. This is a performance that gets more
points from people, in my opinion, because of the story behind the actor than the actual work. We see that it’s his film debut, that
he was a cab driver in the Twin Cities, and then he made it all the way to the
Oscars. Every year there’s someone
who manages to sell this plot to the media, and it’s a pretty exciting one (who
wouldn’t want to think that a year from now you too could be at the
Oscars?!?). And yet, I just wasn’t
feeling this performance at all-you could see too much of the “acting,” the
quick switches in his emotions. It
doesn’t help that he’s competing against Tom Hanks, who hasn’t been this rich
onscreen in years and is giving us deep, harsh, and complex emotions to observe
in the film’s second act, but in comparison Abdi is just serviceable, and his
character’s weirdly alternating motives took me out of his part entirely.
Michael Fassbender was the other actor who had a shot at
“the win” (though really, Leto had that thing locked up the moment he took the
stage at the Globes), and here is a man who genuinely understood his violent
and evil character. You see in
Master Epps a bizarre mix of emotions, always bubbling to the surface. He’s driven by hatred and lust,
frequently dismissing anyone else but himself as a human being, as he has been
given little by the outside world in terms of stature, so he must rely on his
cruelty to Patsey and Solomon (and to some extent, his wife) to assert his
dominance. Fassbender gets the
showiest role of the three (actually, scratch that-Leto does), but he also
finds shades in his character, making him just human enough to be frightening
(you can tell that he cannot explain his fascination and desire for Patsey, and
this lack of knowledge consumes his rage toward her), but still never relenting in the horror
that he brings to everyone onscreen.
It’s a brilliant piece of acting from perhaps the finest actor of his
generation, and it’s about time that Oscar took notice.
Coming in after these three are two actors that I never
would have pegged as future Oscar nominees, much less two-time Oscar
nominees: Bradley Cooper and Jonah Hill.
Both men have had the good sense to balance their continued franchises
and fame with smaller parts in prestigious films. It helps that there’s clearly a desire by both men to be
taken seriously as actors. This
helps since both are more than willing to take supporting parts in films, even
though they are at the stature where they could demand to always be in the
lead. Of the two, Cooper is
probably slightly better. I loved
the direction that he took his idiotic Richie, never letting up on the big fish
in the little pond act. It’s still
Bradley Cooper, and so you find (like the scene with him in the bathroom of the
nightclub) that there’s a desire there that you would want to succumb to, but
Cooper is smart enough to balance his good looks (not dampening them through
heavy makeup) with making his character abrasive, so it’s still believable that
Amy Adams will eventually betray him.
I loved the way that he also changes his personality when he thinks he
can impress or be in charge-that’s devotion to the bit, and yet another sign
that Cooper is one to watch in the years to come.
While I was pretty much onboard with Bradley Cooper’s first
Oscar nomination, I was less enthralled with Hill’s work in Moneyball, which I thought was pretty
much a “ooh, he’s a big star going dramatic!” citation, rather than a
nomination that was merited. That
being said, this is considerably better, as Hill proves once and for all that
he has chops. I love
the way that his character in some ways mirrors Fassy’s Master Epps-they’re
both men that are pretty rotten to the core, and not someone to emulate at all,
but they both have shades of humanity.
With Hill, he needs to establish that his character isn’t just a vapid,
soulless corporate lackey, which he does not through kindness, but instead
through fear and trust in the only person he sees as more than a vessel to
corrupt. This isn’t a particularly
easy part to play without totally blowing into a lack of realism, and Hill
manages to play that well through most of the movie.
Other Precursor
Contenders: The Globes were largely similar to the Oscars, snubbing Hill
for Daniel Bruhl in Rush (clearly the
sixth place), and also starting the gravy train for Jared Leto to pick up every
award under the sun. The SAG
Awards also honored Leto, but made room for Bruhl and James Gandolfini in Enough Said by skipping Hill and
Cooper. Finally, the BAFTA Awards
kind of went their own way with the year, bizarrely missing Leto and Hill (Abdi
ended up winning), with Matt Damon in Behind
the Candelabra and once again Bruhl scoring nominations. All-in-all, I kind of get why Bruhl was
snubbed (the smaller film, not pushing as hard for it as Hill), but this is one
of those extremely rare circumstances where you score every precursor and still
cannot make the cut (I’ve never seen Rush-should
I?)
Performances I Would
Have Nominated: I get why certain performances didn’t get cited (I’m
looking at you John Gallagher, Jr.), but seriously-what was the Academy’s
problem with the supporting men of Saving
Mr. Banks? Best Actress seemed
like a category where there were six contenders and you just had to cut one,
but Tom Hanks is an Academy favorite, playing a recognizable real-life person,
and is terrific in it-where’s the citation for that? Ditto Colin Farrell, who continues to get better and better,
playing a man who is watching his daughter’s opinion of him crumbling amidst
his alcohol and decay. These are
great pieces of acting, and both should have been cited. The fact that neither did is, well,
criminal.
Oscar’s Choice: They
cannot avoid a gimmick or a co-lead, and Jared Leto had both, so he takes the
trophy.
My Choice: Definitely
Fassbender-he’s kind of in a class by himself here. Cooper, Hill, Leto, and finally Abdi follow behind.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you agree with the Academy in
celebrating Leto’s finally delivering on his promise, or are you more in the
Fassy camp with me? Who gets to
a third nod first-Cooper or Hill? What
does Barkhad Abdi’s career hold in store?
And who was the best supporting actor on 2013? Share in the comments!
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