OVP: Best Actor (2021)
The Nominees Were...
Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield, tick, tick...BOOM!
Will Smith, King Richard
Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth
My Thoughts: We have not yet gotten to an Oscars year where I didn't watch the actual ceremony live with the Oscar Viewing Project. By the end of the year, that will not be the case; I started watching the Oscars in 1994/1995, and I've already finished watching a full OVP year from before then that we'll write about later this year, hopefully this summer at my current pace. But as a result, it's sometimes impossible to separate the category from what I felt at the time, and when it's a category as infamous as this one, it's worth reminding people: we base who wins here solely on the performance at hand, not whether or not someone may have, say, ruined one of the most successful movie star careers of the past three decades with one simple slap.
We'll get Will Smith out of the way, and to this day I'm still not entirely sure what he was thinking. But I do get what the Academy was thinking. Smith is one of the last big movie stars of the 1990's (possibly the last) to not have a competitive Oscar who ended up getting one, and he's good here. Richard Williams isn't a role that he'd be naturally the right choice for, but he does a strong job of combining the cool, assured persona that has made him a household name with against-type frustration on Williams' part as he tries to break down the barriers of the very segregated world of professional tennis. Like his costar Aunjanue Ellis whom we talked about yesterday (links to all past contests at the bottom of the page), he is hurt by the screenwriters unwillingness to write Williams as a complicated, three-dimensional man rather than an always-right hero, and so it never feels like a complete performance, but he does well with what he has.
One could hardly say that Denzel Washington was handed a bad script, given that Joel Coen's adaptation of Macbeth is almost verbatim the original text from Shakespeare. But he is aided in this version of the classic play by the cool, eerie ambience of this performance. Even better for Washington are his scene partners (specifically Kathryn Hunter) who complement Washington's take on Macbeth quite well. Washington plays the ill-guided king as a fool, but one who clearly has a confidence that is stripped by madness as the film goes. It's a smart look at (honestly) the third most interesting character in a play despite him being the title character, and as a result, he outshines Frances McDormand, who has the better role.
Benedict Cumberbatch is a weird conundrum for me in that, before Power of the Dog, I'd never gravitated toward him. I didn't like his oftentimes modernist takes on classic characters, and his screen persona was always a bit smarmy or (in his other Oscar-nominated film) scenery-chewing. But this...this is fantastic. His affected accent (not really western, clearly struggling behind his natural posh London accent) works really well for a character who is so much pretense, and he plays Phil as a dangerous character you can't help but stare at, and not just because Cumberbatch has never been so sexy onscreen. There's a raw magnetism there, one that you can't deny as you're watching, and one that you're worried Smit-McPhee will fall into because, quite honestly, Cumberbatch is so good the audience is definitely headed that direction.
Andrew Garfield has been sexy (quite frequently) onscreen, but is looking more along the lines of "affably dorky" in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tick Tick Boom. Garfield's got a better script than his competitor Smith, in part because the script isn't shy about Jonathan Larson's faults as a self-involved genius, one incapable of the romance he wants to bring to his plays. Garfield isn't a natural singer, but he holds his own, and puts so much assured personality into his vocals that what read as out-of-the-box casting before the film feels like inevitability when you're watching it onscreen.
Our final nominee is Javier Bardem, and for me, it's the one dud in an otherwise good lineup. Bardem was also out-of-the-box casting in a film brimming with it, and he's the one actor that doesn't work. His Desi Arnez isn't charming enough, doesn't have enough chemistry with Kidman's Lucille Ball, and his character spouting the type of hyper-expositional dialogue that Sorkin is drowning his actors in here is the one least-equipped to make it believable given Arnez is meant to be more opaque about his feelings. Sometimes casting a star for a role they aren't a good fit for works (Cumberbatch, Garfield, & Smith all did it), but Bardem is proof not every casting director is infallible.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony. Drama went with Smith as the winner atop Bardem, Cumberbatch, Washington, & Mahershala Ali (Swan Song) while Musical/Comedy went to Garfield against Leonardo DiCaprio (Don't Look Up), Peter Dinklage (Cyrano), Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza), & Anthony Ramos (In the Heights). SAG went verbatim with Oscar's lineup (winner included), and BAFTA also picked Smith, though they went for a totally different Best Actor roster, with Cumberbatch, DiCaprio, Ali, Stephen Graham (Breaking Point), and Adeel Akhtar (Ali & Ava) the other nominees. For sixth place, at the time I predicted Nicolas Cage for Pig (which, honestly, still feels plausible...precursors ain't everything), though if you wanted to think DiCaprio was in sixth you'd likely have more company than me on the Cage ledge.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: Overall, Oscar did well here and there's a lot of overlap with my personal list which we'll get to in the next few days. But for sure I'd want at least one of these guys out, and the easy answer of who to throw in would be Dev Patel, who is (for me) finally fulfilling the promise of a swaggering, handsome movie star with his electric performance in The Green Knight.
Oscar’s Choice: Had they voted during the ceremony, I think Garfield or Washington might've gotten the statue, but with all ballots delivered pre-slap, this was Smith in a walk.
My Choice: Cumberbatch, by a healthy margin...in my opinion the least of these actors given the rest of their collective body of work, this is proof that you have to just give it by the performances at hand, as he's marvelous here. Garfield, Washington, Smith, & Bardem follow (in that order).
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Are you going to go with the default coronation of Smith or do you want to join me in crowning the unlikely Cumberbatch? Do we think that anyone will win an Oscar for Shakespeare again? And am I crazy for still thinking it was Cage who was in sixth (rather than the more traditional DiCaprio)? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
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