OVP: Best Actor (2004)
The Nominees Were...
Don Cheadle, Hotel Rwanda
Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Aviator
Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby
Jamie Foxx, Ray
My Thoughts: All right, we are in the final four now as we hit the closing stretch of our 2004 write-ups. This week, we'll be tackling both lead categories with the Oscars, and we'll be starting with the gents. The 2004 Oscars featured a record number of black actors nominated (at the time), including two in this field. We also had the return of Leonardo DiCaprio, back a decade after his last nomination and commencing what would be a march to inevitability with an Oscar win. We'll start there, because Leo's end result (winning an Oscar for one of his least performances in The Revenant) actually began in a much stronger position, and one wonders what might have happened had he just won during his pretty boy phase.
DiCaprio's second outing with Martin Scorsese is perhaps his best (though they've made magic a few times, so I put an asterisk next to this statement). DiCaprio has such a buoyancy in his acting style (he's so much better at lighter comedy or romance than heavy drama) that lends itself well to Howard Hughes as a young man, when his intense promise & massive privilege afforded him the luxury of pursuing his adolescent fantasies (planes, movies, & beautiful women). DiCaprio uses that memory of a young Howard as the film progresses, making him fall apart and lose his sense of balance in the film's final third. This is not the best part of the movie, and it's where most actors would've leant in the hardest (and DiCaprio does, occasionally showing some strain), but he's laid such groundwork in the previous chapters that it has a different aura than an actor who would've solely approached Hughes through his own disabilities.
Jamie Foxx is also playing an iconic 20th Century figure in his film, but he does so with less internal dialogue. Foxx's work is all about mimicry, playing Ray Charles with the same sort of body language & intonation as the legendary singer. This is skillful, and it's a talent that Foxx has shown off in countless talk show appearances (he's a very good impressionist), but it's not really acting in the sense of what DiCaprio is doing. Foxx doesn't give us enough of the character Ray Charles, and of course he's not doing his own singing in the movie, so much of the majesty in some of the film's musical numbers aren't something that you can attribute to him. This isn't a complete whiff (after all, film history is littered with people lip-syncing & giving us great work), but without some sort of depth in the actual performance he's giving offscreen, there's not much there in his work-this is showy surface-level stuff, not anything of note, and the kind of performance that feels like the makeup team deserved the Oscar more than the actor.
Johnny Depp is playing a famous person as well, but unlike DiCaprio & Foxx, he doesn't need to really look or sound like him-JM Barrie is not well-known to the mass audience for anything other than creating Peter Pan. Despite some of my misgivings about the film as a whole, Depp is good in this movie. He plays Barrie as a man lost, someone who cannot quite understand where the magic of his life has gone, and finds the ability to recapture it. However, this isn't Oscar-worthy work, and feels like the kind of afterglow nomination that happens when the Academy finally sits up and notices your talent. While Jack Sparrow is so good you'd be forgiven for thinking that it deserves two Oscar nominations, that isn't really how the OVP works and so I'd say this is middling in terms of conversations about Depp's career (we'll get to his splendid work in Pirates eventually, possibly as soon as this fall).
Don Cheadle has shown a knack in recent years for comedy & genre work, which is not where his career initially began. Hotel Rwanda is his only nomination (to date), but it's also one of my least favorite of his performances. Cheadle excels at his best when he's given something naturalistic to play onscreen, bringing an ease to his characters. That's not the case of Hotel Rwanda, where he's asked to essentially just experience tragedy-after-tragedy, but gives us little insight into the man he's playing. This isn't really his fault. Unlike Foxx or Depp, the script doesn't give him a lot to do other than be miserable for two hours & heroic in the face of increasingly long odds, but it's also not a particularly strong performance that elevates its unimpressive source material.
The final nominee is Clint Eastwood, playing the only fictional character in this entire bunch in Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood's politics and recent spell of movies (which have had increasingly poor results), sometimes negate the fact that he can act, and is actually quite a good actor with the right role. That's what happens in Million Dollar Baby, where he gives (by my estimate) the best performance in the picture, imbuing his boxing coach with a sense of not only lost opportunity (getting the relationship with Hilary Swank's Maggie that he could never have with his own daughter), but also a sense of the passage of time. Life is not fair, and Eastwood's Frankie Dunn knows this. Eastwood isn't stretching his acting muscles too hard here (this is right in his wheelhouse), but a good director & movie star knows to pick scripts that play to their talents, and Eastwood certainly does that here.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes of course break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony. Drama went to DiCaprio, over Cheadle, Deep, Liam Neeson (Kinsey), & Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside), while Comedy/Musical gave their trophy to Foxx over Jim Carrey (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Kevin Spacey (Beyond the Sea), Kevin Kline (De-Lovely), and Paul Giamatti (Sideways). The SAG Awards gave their trophy to Foxx as well, with the entire Oscar lineup (save Eastwood) showing up, along with Paul Giamatti. BAFTA also gave the trophy to Foxx, here skipping both Eastwood & Cheadle in favor of Carrey and Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries). In terms of sixth place, I have to assume it's Paul Giamatti, though the case could be made that Neeson or Bardem was in the hunt as well (though their films weren't nearly as successful with Oscar as Sideways was)-Eastwood's nomination was an indication that Million Dollar Baby was about to win a lot of Oscars.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: When people talk about how Jim Carrey deserves an Oscar nomination, this is surely where he deserved it the most. His work in Eternal Sunshine is the rare case of a comedian playing a straight role but losing none of his natural charisma-truly bravura work. I also would have included Bruno Ganz for Downfall-if they're going to cite it for Foreign Language Film, there's no reason we aren't also getting his seismic work a trophy for this performance.
Oscar’s Choice: Revisionist history might make you think DiCaprio was close, but he wasn't. Jamie Foxx was a landslide all season long.
My Choice: I'd give it to Leo-his work is the most complete, and uses his natural gifts the best. Following him (in order) would be Eastwood, Depp, Cheadle, & Foxx.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Is everyone still on Team Jamie or are some of you willing to join me over on the Leo side of things? Do we think Clint Eastwood will ever win an acting prize for the Academy or will he join the likes of Orson Welles & Woody Allen with only behind-the-scenes trophies? And how exactly did Sideways score so big but not get an acting nomination for Paul Giamatti? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
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