Clemency (2019)

Film: Clemency (2019)
Stars: Alfre Woodard, Wendell Pierce, Aldis Hodge, Richard Schiff, Danielle Brooks
Director: Chinonye Chukwu
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Every year, it happens.  There's almost always a totally worthy performance that the Oscars and precursors completely ignore, and everyone in "Film Twitter" gets into an uproar, and I have to sit on my hands not because I didn't like the performance, but because I haven't seen it.  The reality is that while most people who write about the Oscar race live in Los Angeles and New York City (as do most of the taste-makers), buzz can still come from Middle America, and the reality is that a movie that waits is playing a risky game.  This is certainly the case for Clemency, a drama starring Alfre Woodard, that totally should have netted her an Oscar nomination, but the studio buried it, and it's hard for me to find sympathy for those pushing her when it's clear it was the studio's fault for not releasing such an acting master class in October rather than January, depriving Woodard of "career best" buzz that might have gotten her a nomination, or perhaps even a trophy.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Bernadine Williams (Woodard), a death row warden who is having something of a midlife crisis, or at least a crisis-of-faith.  Her marriage is dissolving, with her husband Jonathan (Pierce) unable to connect with her sexually, and wanting her to leave her job & start the next chapter of their marriage in retirement.  She is heavily drinking, sometimes dangerously so (there's a scene where she's clearly about to get into a car while intoxicated until a coworker stops her), and the weight of a recent botched execution is on her.  A man in her jail, Anthony Woods (Hodge), has lost all of his appeals, and she's not convinced that he is actually guilty.  The film unfolds with her going through the steps of Woods' execution (final meals, last rites, bereaved families), while all the time trying to gain an understanding of what she's doing with her life, and what taking the lives of these men under her care is doing to her soul.

The film is a fascinating, introverted look at the death penalty, still legal in 29 states but a political hot button that rarely comes into modern-day election discourse.  It comes down firmly against, though it never says that out loud, with enough doubt surrounding Anthony's guilt to mean that you wouldn't, as the audience, sentence him to such a fate.  The movie has a less intrinsic conversation about race, but it's there too-we don't see white men on death row-both of the men that are sentenced are men-of-color (black men disproportionate to the general populace, occupy death row in in the United States), and the only white character of any prominence in the film is Richard Schiff's anti-death penalty advocate who is serving as Anthony's attorney, but makes a point of saying that he'll soon be leaving this life, something never afforded men like Anthony, who does indeed die in the movie after it feels firmly established that he is innocent, or at least has a mountain of reasonable doubt.

The film's best asset is Woodard.  Alfre Woodard is in my Top 10 favorite working character actors, but she rarely gets afforded a leading role of this caliber, often being put in "elevate the movie" style roles in middling films and TV movies.  Here, she gets a well-crafted character and she nails it.  Bernadine isn't easy to solve-that's why she's so good at her job.  But it also leaves her too complicated to unpack when she needs to be vulnerable with her husband or with herself.  Every nuance, every body movement feels calculated and yet instinctual, as if crafted by a woman who has had to work her way up in a "man's world" to this position of power, always reserved, always professional, always without complication for fear it would be seen as a deterrent.  As she unwinds, you see the pain she feels from uncertainty, of not knowing what the future will bring when she doesn't have to be in control, when she won't be in control.  It's a career-best piece of work from an actress who has spent her career being, well, the best.  That she wasn't nominated for an Oscar is a crime, but it's Neon's crime-Woodard does everything she needs to do to put her in such company.