OVP: Best Actress (2019)
The Nominees Were...
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Renee Zellweger, Judy
My Thoughts: We will finish off our 2019 acting races with a trip to Best Actress, generally one of my favorite categories at the Oscars. There has become something of a debate on social media about using the word "weak" to describe a field or year for acting, particularly actresses, and in some ways I get it. No year, if you aren't creative, should you struggle to find five decent performances (though I'll be real-2020 Supporting Actor I had to get creative), and it does feel pejorative to refer to a complete year as "weak." But if we're being honest, if there are going to be "strong" years for acting, you also need to have weak years, and in 2019, the lineup of performances that Oscar assembled was, well, weak.
You see that in the work of Renee Zellweger, mounting a comeback. Zellweger is capable of a good performance (all of these women are-these are not "weak" actresses by any stretch), but her work in Judy never rises above looking like the starlet. Zellweger uses her own voice (a risky move playing such an icon), and while I don't really care (mimicry is overrated in movies), she doesn't give us a proper sense of the starlet. There's nothing in Zellweger's work that gives you the impression that the woman she's playing was once one of the most famous women in the world-no sense of entitlement, no sense of stature...her Judy Garland feels like an empty vessel, and Judy Garland was hardly an empty vessel. The movie falters as a result.
Saoirse Ronan reunited here with her Lady Bird director Greta Gerwig, a smart choice since Ronan has never felt so at-home with material as she does with Lady Bird, but this is a deceptive bit of casting, and for my money, a mistake. Jo March is a feminist icon, and certainly the easiest of Alcott's sisters to modernize, but Ronan's performance gets stuck in that modernization, never properly grounding the part. This is in contrast to Florence Pugh, who gives so much depth to Amy that for the first time in anything I've ever seen from Ronan, I can honestly say she was upstaged, and found lacking. Ronan delivers her fiery speeches with flare, but for a character that everyone insists is special, Ronan doesn't make her so by giving us enough depth.
About the only character who could get away without depth is someone who has spent most of her life trying to hide it, which is why Charlize Theron fares better than Ronan or Zellweger in Bombshell. Playing Megyn Kelly, a character that most of the audience is going to dislike (for a variety of reasons) isn't easy...we want our characters to be like Jo March, not like Megyn Kelly, and the script (and Theron) play into that by making her difficult to root for. This is a neat trick, and while Theron's work isn't always as strong as her costar Robbie, it's a trick that's nearly as impressive as the makeup job that Theron has been bedecked in. Theron gives us an antihero worthy not of our praise, but at least of our consideration.
Scarlett Johansson gets an even harder task in Marriage Story. Here she's playing a character that must remain free of judgment, and someone we're meant to understand before we know if we should root for her or not. Johansson doesn't bring easy answers to Marriage Story-her Nicole is a woman who doesn't always know what she wants, but is aware of what she doesn't, and that's the key to her performance-Johansson isn't intimidated into making Nicole easy-to-define, and as a result we end up somewhat like Charlie-trying to pin down a woman who doesn't want to be pinned down. It takes a disciplined performer who knows their script inside-and-out to do that without it becoming frustrating, and Johansson, sixteen years after finding the heart of a similarly wandering woman in Lost in Translation, finally finds an equal to that movie.
Cynthia Erivo's entrance into cinema in Bad Times at the El Royale was so dynamic & distinctive that you'd be forgiven into thinking that Harriet was a deserved nomination...Erivo is going to deserve "Oscar nominee" pretty quickly in her career, why not get it over with? But her work here isn't outstanding. Saddled with a paint-by-numbers biopic where she's expected to do all of the heavy lifting, she doesn't give us enough insight into Tubman the woman before trying to instill in us Tubman the legend. It's not a bad performance by any means, and it's the one saving grace in a middling movie, but it's not what we normally associate with Oscar-worthy, and the Academy should've held out for something more challenging from the actress.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards. Best Actress in a Drama featured the entire Oscar lineup (as I've mentioned throughout the 2019 retrospective, not a creative year for AMPAS), with Zellweger winning, which means Musical/Comedy brought us five new names: Ana de Armas (Knives Out), Cate Blanchett (Where'd You Go Bernadette?), Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart), Emma Thompson (Late Night), and the victorious Awkafina (The Farewell). SAG gave their trophy to Zellweger, though they skipped Ronan in favor of Lupita Nyong'o (Us), while BAFTA bumped Erivo for Jessie Buckley (Wild Rose), again going with Zellweger. At the time it was Nyong'o who many (including me) thought might be the fifth place slot that eventually went to Theron, and I suspect she was in sixth place.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: I'd keep my winner & otherwise start from scratch. This would've been a different jolt of electricity if Oscar had nominated Nyong'o, who is working in a genre film but also has great vocal & body physicality that she brings to her work (which is usually Academy catnip). Mary Kay Place's specific cadences in Diane are just as worthy as any character actor standing out for Oscar in recent years (and would've been a brilliant inclusion), and Alfre Woodard proves she's one of the best actresses in Hollywood with her haunted, intrinsic work in Clemency as a woman at the crossroads both professionally & personally. Finally, as I mentioned in Supporting Actress, I considered Jennifer Lopez to be giving a lead performance in Hustlers, and I would've nominated her. A+ movie star turns like this are hard to do, rare, and the kind of thing you can only do once. It's a damn shame that Oscar didn't include her somewhere for what will probably be a career-best performance.
Oscar’s Choice: There's a case to be made for either Johansson or Erivo getting this trophy, but for some reason no one questioned the idea that Renee Zellweger had earned a second Oscar sixteen years after she won her first, despite making almost no movies between the two.
My Choice: Johansson, without question-the only performer trying for an all-timer list. I'd follow her with Theron, Ronan, Zellweger, & Erivo.
Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours! Are you siding with ScarJo over in my corner, or were you part of the collective thought process that honored Renee's Judy? Why was it that Theron was able to topple Lupita given both are reliant on physical transformation? And why do some character actors (like Jonathan Pryce) get their day-in-the-sun but others (like Mary Kay Place) are barely noticed? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Also in 2019: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2019
No comments:
Post a Comment