OVP: Best Actress (2004)
The Nominees Were...
Annette Bening, Being Julia
Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maria Full of Grace
Imelda Staunton, Vera Drake
Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby
Kate Winslet, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
My Thoughts: When I write these articles, most often I'm writing them with an idea of how I'm going to rank the nominees, and usually I stick to that. While I don't always know what I'm going to say about the contenders, I have an idea of roughly the order that they might turn up, and it's rare that I change my mind talking about them out loud. The 2004 Best Actress contenders, though, are a race where I genuinely change my mind all the time. The race features three actresses giving some of the best work of their careers, three terrific performances that I struggle to be able to discuss without tripping over myself, and honestly leave flummoxed as to who is the "best" of the bunch. So...this one's going to be a mystery for both of us.
Before we get to those performances, though, let's discuss the also-rans (since the eventual winner is genuinely a mystery to me, I'm going to lay down the cards pretty quickly on the remaining nominees). Catalina Sandino Moreno managed to land a nomination for Maria Full of Grace in spite of that film being disqualified for Foreign Language Film for being "insufficiently Colombian" (early on it was the frontrunner for that category). Sandino Moreno gives a heavy-handed performance as Maria, playing her inwardly, oftentimes far-too-much, as the movie goes on. It's a tough role, and one that's in a very serious movie, but Sandino Moreno does most of her acting through her eyes, which can work...it's just not enough to save a movie that relies more on subject matter to carry its story than its actual characters. Still, I'm not going to knock this too hard just because it was such a hard-fought nomination (the only Colombia film in history to be nominated for an acting prize)...it's just kind of a middling performance.
The same is true for Hilary Swank. Swank is not bad in Million Dollar Baby, but that this performance dominated the whole season is a real question in terms of Oscar's taste. Swank spends much of the film letting a lack of expression be her domineering trait, allowing the audience do most of the heavy-lifting in our interpretations of her Maggie. It's a blasé piece of work, five years after her first win (in a weird way Swank is quite similar to Luise Rainer in that she won two Oscars with virtually nothing else-to date-of note in films, though unlike Rainer Swank has kept working in the pursuing decades). Eastwood & Freeman are much better in the movie, giving at least a story behind their performance, but Swank's work is mostly reliant upon physicality and reacting...we don't know who this woman is, and she's at her best when she's being interpreted by the other actors in the film. That's maybe a decent directorial trick to have an actor pull off, but it's not a great performance.
Swank in 1999 beat Annette Bening for her trophy, and she famously did the same in 2004, taking the trophy from Bening for Being Julia. Being Julia is the least-remembered of the three "big" performances in this category, and it is (while still a great movie), the least of the three actual films on its own merits. But Bening owns the screen here, and makes Julia Lambert a totally unique creation. Borrowing from the best divas, she plays Julia as a shrewd, brilliant, but impetuous figure, putting the cruelty of a world-leaving-her-behind (even though she's far from ready to give up the limelight, and as she shows through the film, the limelight should be staying on her) in every moment of the movie. Her triumphant final act, when she "ad libs," totally owning those who thought they'd gotten one-over on her is magic, and Being Julia becomes the kind of movie that is truly elevated by one outstanding central piece-of-work. This might be my favorite performance from Annette Bening, which is saying something.
It's also saying something, though, that Kate Winslet's Clementine Kruczynski is perhaps her greatest piece-of-work (I told you this would be hard). Winslet plays Clementine as a free-spirit "manic pixie dream girl" who is truly complicated (or "fucked up," as she'd put it in the film). It's a hard role to land-she has to make Clementine not likable in the way we traditionally associate with romantic comedies, but she's also the kind of character that will make you fall in love with her. That's not easy, and what is at the crux of Eternal Sunshine being a genuinely beautiful movie: these people love each other in spite of themselves, and whether or not they can make it work, that love (tough, raw, sometimes ugly) is tangible throughout Winslet's work. It's bravura stuff.
Staunton gets the most traditionally dramatic part, but also the least showy of the three women. Staunton's Vera Drake, an ordinary housewife who helps young women in difficult situations by performing abortions on them, is a triumph of understated acting. Staunton makes Vera not only be ordinary, but feel ordinary-the way she goes about her day, she is someone who you pass by on the street, and she's okay with that. This makes her atypical behavior as a woman who performs abortions so extraordinary-this secret life isn't something she considers unusual or outside-her-realm, but instead something that you do in the same way you buy bread or help a neighbor who has tripped on the sidewalk. Abortion is the sort of gut check issue where people come in with callous, almost malignant attitudes about the other side of the debate, but Staunton's Vera Drake is so brimming with soul that you almost feel like she could bridge the gap. An astonishing piece-of-work.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards. Swank won for Best Drama, over Staunton as well as Scarlett Johansson (A Love Song for Bobby Long...which I've never seen & feel a little bad about-anyone else see this movie or have any memory of it?), Nicole Kidman (Birth), and Uma Thurman (Kill Bill Volume 2), while Bening bested Winslet, Ashley Judd (De-Lovely), Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason), & Emmy Rossum (The Phantom of the Opera). SAG went with the same lineup & winner as Oscar, while BAFTA totally swung for the fences, giving their trophy to Staunton while nominating Winslet for both Eternal Sunshine and Finding Neverland, and also nominating Zhang Ziyi (House of Flying Daggers) and Charlize Theron a year late for Monster. In terms of sixth place, I honestly think that Oscar didn't really have a lot of competition other than these five, but at the time I recall the closest contender was Thurman, with Rossum a distant seventh, so that's probably what it was.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: Obviously three of these contenders would make my personal Top 5, and so close to the end (we'll do "My Ballots" next week) I don't want to play my cards too much here since you already know 60% of my nominees. That being said, I do wonder what would have happened if Uma Thurman had somehow been able to compete for the full Kill Bill franchise in one year...the second half isn't as good as the first, but combined this is also the role of her lifetime, and it's a pity that she didn't score a nod either in 2003 or 2004 for her work in this series.
Oscar’s Choice: Oscar, despite not yet having given a trophy to either Bening or Winslet yet in 2004 (half of that they've since corrected) chose to give the award to Swank, likely by a bigger margin than her more celebrated first win.
My Choice: We'll go backwards here. Swank is last, since she does the least with her performance of the bunch, and I think she gets a better film to work within than Sandino Moreno (so not getting more out of that script is a larger crime). In bronze, I'm going with Staunton. If she as in 2003 or 2005, she'd win, so this is a performance that deserves credit. For the win, I'm going to go with...Winslet? I think so. It's a harder role to nail, and though Bening gets the best scene in the movie, Winslet's performance is just a bit more well-rounded. Literally, though-in all of the years of the Oscars if I was only afforded one Best Actress tie this is probably where I'd use it-it's that close...picking one over the other feels a crime with work this strong. I will continue to go back-and-forth in my head on this, but in terms of the official OVP, Kate Winslet gets this trophy.
Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours! Are you with me (cautiously) in Team Kate or do you prefer the runaway winner of Swank? How exactly is it that Swank beat three performances that are all clearly better than hers (was it a genuine vote split)? And where does Uma Thurman stand in your personal 2003 & 2004 ballots? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Also in 2004: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2004
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