OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2018)
The Nominees Were...
Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Adam Driver, BlacKklansman
Sam Elliott, A Star is Born
Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Sam Rockwell, Vice
My Thoughts: 2018 is a weird year for Best Supporting Actor, and reflexive of something that I've come up with more & more in the past couple of years (2020 being another, 2021 (so far) being a third) where Oscar didn't come up with a necessarily bad list of nominees, but he came up with an uninspired list. The problem for me is, even though I could've done better, like in 2020 I don't know that there were a lot of truly great performances lounging about in this category that got snubbed. For whatever reason, most of the great male performances in the past few years have been from lead actors. Even in 2019, when the Oscar lineup was quite good for this category, virtually all of those nominees are performances that bordered on category fraud (save for Joe Pesci), and so in terms of true supporting performances I'm at a bit of a loss in 2018 to come up with a significantly improved list.
That said, I could've had a better list simply by removing Sam Rockwell from contention. Rockwell has never been an actor I've loved (his performances always feel too indulgent & over-the-top for my taste). He comes into Vice as George W. Bush, playing the former president as a cartoon, not someone who is aware of the evil in the titular character at all & mostly just moseying through life without a care. It's pretty lazy character work from a script that doesn't demand a lot of introspection. It's also an unusually small performance, which I have to applaud in some ways because it's nice not to have to use the words "category fraud" in every paragraph of this article, but it's also such an insignificant part of the plot that I worry this made it in solely as an afterglow nomination for the well-liked Rockwell.
Sam Elliott is a good example of someone who had a small role and did make an impression in his picture, but not the one that you'd hope for. In the smallest role of this bunch, he lands a lot of intriguing character work in his scenes with Bradley Cooper, playing his older brother both as a man who has put up with Cooper's Jackson for decades, and studying the complicated relationship between an older sibling and a more successful younger one, who clearly got some of their success operating in the shadow of (and mimicking) their older sibling. The problem is that there's not enough there to make Elliott's later scenes with Lady Gaga work-it comes across as phoned in, the movie needed 1-2 more scenes rather than just coasting off of Elliott's easy delivery & movie star presence.
Richard E. Grant knows what he has in Can You Ever Forgive Me? and runs hog-wild with the performance. What could've been a dismissible or cliched foil to McCarthy instead becomes something all-together more intriguing. Grant's Jack is not a saint, in fact he might be just as opportunistic as McCarthy's Lee Israel when a golden goose comes across. But he's also been beaten up more by the world & taken it more personally. Unlike Lee, he's open to the possibility of love & happiness but the world won't let him have it in his current form. Grant gives us vulnerability without letting it make his character too sympathetic, and I loved it (plus, he's endlessly quotable).
Adam Driver is one of our finest working actors, and so his first Oscar nomination (of already two, and surely more to come), feels somehow welcome & overdue all at once even if he hasn't waited remotely as long as Grant or Elliott have. His Flip Zimmerman is a man who has tried his best to avoid prejudice his whole life (despite being Jewish in the South), and we get some subtle moments of clarity that he can do this while his partner cannot without having to indulge a tonal shift in the character that feels out-of-place. He makes Flip look like an easy creation when other actors would've needed to be more bombastic to really iron home that their character was changing.
The final nomination is Mahershala Ali. Two years after getting in for a small part in Moonlight, he goes fully lead with Green Book, and gets an Oscar I suspect he didn't really want. It isn't Ali's fault that his Don Shirley comes across as a stereotype (it's the script's fault more than anything), but Ali didn't have to say yes to this, and fails in finding ways to make Don feel beyond what the script is demanding of him. Particularly the horrifically bad "screaming in the rain sequence" and the problematic way they try to sneak Don's sexuality in as a reveal (that they quickly need to punish)...it's bad. Ali would've been better-served just sticking to one well-deserved Oscar.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with virtually the same lineup as Oscar, only substituting out Elliott in favor of Timothee Chalamet (Beautiful Boy), with Ali winning. SAG also gave the trophy to Ali, but here it was Rockwell who had to be skipped so that Chalamet could get his afterglow citation. BAFTA made it a clean sweep for Ali, and once again it was Elliott getting skipped for Chalamet...making the sixth place finish just as predictable and tired as the actual lineup.
Performances I Would Have Nominated: In an era where Joaquin Phoenix & Maria Bakalova can get in for truly atypical films, it would've been fun to see Oscar stretch his wings a bit with Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther), who brought the best Marvel villain we've seen so far & was in a Best Picture race...particularly considering Jordan has somehow never gotten an Oscar nomination despite deserving three at this point.
Oscar’s Choice: It would've been easier to stomach Ali's win if he hadn't just won. As it is, this was such sheer sloth from Oscar, particularly since this could've been a great moment to honor someone like Grant or Elliott, consummate longtime character actors who rarely get a chance to shine. This is not only a bad win, but it's also baffling-second Oscars should have a steeper bar when you've got people who haven't won yet in the lineup, and Ali doesn't clear that.
My Choice: I'm going with Grant, in a slide nod over Driver. Elliott is third, Ali fourth, & Rockwell fifth, but I stand behind that-I wouldn't have said a darn word against Elliott if he'd won here after such an impressive career, but a second trophy for Ali is silly.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Are you with the collective lovefest around Ali, or are you willing to join me on Team Grant? Which of the Sam's was more vulnerable to Timmy this year? And why did Ali stampede for a lackluster performance when there were some clearly better narratives awards voters could've latched onto? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019
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