OVP: Best Actress (2020)
The Nominees Were...
Viola Davis, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holliday
Vanessa Kirby, Pieces of a Woman
Frances McDormand, Nomadland
Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
My Thoughts: We are finishing off our acting races with the Best Actress contest. 2020 will remain, forever, a weird anomaly of a year for the Oscars, and one that changed the movie industry permanently(?). While some of these films were advertised in theaters (I distinctly remember watching the Promising Young Woman trailer in a theater), none of them had much of a screen presence (the only one I remember seeing on a marquee was Nomadland and even that was after it'd won the Oscar). I saw all five of these in my house, all while I was stuck inside largely quarantined off from virtually all of my friends. I still wonder if some of these movies would've played differently had I been able to see them my preferred method of in a movie theater.
Promising Young Woman certainly would've gained from an audience. Watching this ticking clock comedy-thriller come to its inevitable conclusion would've been a jaw-dropper in a crowded theater. People overuse the phrase "her best work" to describe an actress's most recent excellent work so I won't say that this is the best thing I've seen Carey Mulligan do...but it's close. While she sometimes struggles to ground Cassie (the script doesn't let us into her & an actor can only do so much), that doesn't mean that she can't find ways to hint at who Cassie used to be, particularly with the great chemistry she has with Bo Burnham. Mulligan finds a way to make her Cassie both moral and frightening...she finds a way to make us examine our own culpability in a culture that values statis more than changing for the better (even if that's uncomfortable).
Nomadland is the other movie that I wished I'd seen on the big screen in particular (like I said, I would've preferred seeing all of these on a big-screen in a perfect world). The expanses of America's heartlands would've looked magical shining on a silver screen. Frances McDormand doesn't upstage these gorgeous views, but instead complements them. McDormand has built her career playing brassy, scene-stealing characters, but none of that pretense is in her Fern. Mildred Hayes & Marge Gunderson (her other two Oscar-winning roles) are totally alien to this part-we get a woman who has found a peace in the world that she can't explain, and perhaps doesn't want to, particularly to herself. She sees herself as a winner even if the world can't comprehend that, and there's something magnificent in the way she centers Fern amongst the wide parking lots & green forests of this film.
Vanessa Kirby was so good on The Crown I was glad she could get a nomination at the Oscars right out the gate, hoping that could catapult her into a different echelon of opportunity as an actress. But Pieces of a Woman is not a complete performance. Once you get past the brutal opening scene (with no cutaways, it feels like you're watching a horror movie), there's nothing more added to Kirby's Martha. We never understand what she wants in her career, what she wanted in motherhood, what she wants in her relationship with her construction worker husband (is the sex just that good, because it's literally the only thing they seem to have in common?). Kirby needs to give us more to make some of the bigger climax scenes in the movie work out, and they don't.
The same can be said for Viola Davis. I'm not going to side with the "category fraud" people on this one-she's the title character, she's in a significant chunk of the movie...she's a lead. The reason she might not feel like a lead is that Chadwick Boseman is significantly better than her onscreen. While Davis initially plays Ma as an enigma, something that might work if the script were different, as it becomes more crucial to understand Ma, we don't get enough from Davis to really feel like we're in her shoes. The biggest issue I have here is that Davis doesn't sing the part-there's something lacking in her (obvious) lip-syncing, and we don't get a complete performance. There's still moments of wonder (it's Viola Davis) but when it comes to Oscar, particularly from a woman of her talent, I expect more.
Andra Day is singing in Billie Holliday, but her problem isn't that she doesn't sound great (she does), but that's not the issue with this performance. Saddled with a really bad film (something Davis doesn't have to deal with), Day can't find a way to rise above the muck. Lee Daniels' film is an absolute mess of jumbled ideas & half-baked narrative hooks, and while I try to distinguish individual elements as much as possible with these OVP writeups, I can only do so much. Day's work is intertwined in Daniels' messy narrative, and you can still see the "tick, tick, tick" of her trying to combine the Billie she's crafting with the one on the page that's lacking. A more experienced actress might have found a way to just push past the mess & give us her own interpretation of the work, but Day is still a new onscreen performer and doesn't seem to have that skill yet, so anything worthwhile here gets lost in the crowd.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards. For Drama it was a carbon copy of the eventual Oscar lineup, except Andra Day won while Best Comedy/Musical went to Rosamund Pike (I Care a Lot) in a huge surprise against Anya Taylor-Joy (Emma), Kate Hudson (Music), Maria Bakalova (Borat 2), & Michelle Pfeiffer (French Exit). SAG gave their statue to Davis, and kept the Oscar lineup save for Andra Day, instead choosing Amy Adams (Hillbilly Elegy). BAFTA went with McDormand as their winner, here up against Kirby, Alfre Woodard (Clemency-she was eligible the previous year at the Oscars), Bukky Bakray (Rocks), Radha Blank (The Forty-Year-Old Version), & Wunmi Mosaku (His House). At the time I guessed that Sophia Loren (The Life Ahead) was next up, and I think in a normal year where we would've seen Loren on every red carpet the star power would've been too much for Oscar to ignore (or had the legend gone supporting, which she could've gotten away with), but in 2020 where there were few in-person events her publicists couldn't play that card and so it was likely Amy Adams nearly getting her seventh nomination for Hillbilly Elegy.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: If they were going to cite it for International Feature Film, there's no reason that Oscar should've denied Jasna Duricic's riveting work in Quo Vadis, Aida, which towers over most of these nominees.
Oscar’s Choice: In what was a total coin toss (save for Kirby, every one of these women had momentum going into Oscar night), AMPAS decided to give a third statue to Frances McDormand, who clearly would've preferred anyone else getting the victory.
My Choice: I'm also going with McDormand. Similar to Anthony Hopkins, this is a performance in a special category, and while (like Hopkins) it's hard to say "best of their career" given the career she's had, it probably earns that title. Mulligan, Davis, Kirby, & Day follow her.
Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours! With the dust settled, does everyone kind of agree that McDormand deserved this, or do other performances still have their champions? I think we all kind of assume Davis will become the first Black woman to win two acting Oscars-when do you think she pulls it off? And Adams, Loren, or someone else-who is your sixth place guess? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Also in 2020: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2020
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