My Thoughts: For the first time since 1934, all of the Best Actor nominees were first-time nominees. This is a huge deal because this is the category that enjoys repeating on itself, and usually requires a previous loss in order to take the win. This means that, while we’ll continue going forward as often as we can (several of these men could get nominated again), this is the only time we’re guaranteed to discuss these five actors in the Best Actor race.
We’ll therefore start with the eldest nominee (and the contender who had to wait the longest to get here), Bill Nighy. Nighy has been a fixture in British cinema for decades, and is most noted to American audiences for his work in Love, Actually and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. In Living, he is turning in the subtlest of these five performances. I loved the way that he has to create a man that is easy to forget, and establish quickly that he didn’t expect much from life…and when he faces death, he must quickly understand who he is while in the same breath figuring that out. It’s a good performance, one that he can’t be around for the payoff of, but still works well within the movie.
Austin Butler, in his first major film lead after TV and supporting film work for the past decade, is on the opposite end of his career. Butler’s role became tarnished in some ways by the ridiculous press tour he did around the awards, his inability to abandon his Elvis persona earning the kind of mockery where I wonder if it precluded him from winning an Oscar he might otherwise have taken. But under that pretension is a strong piece-of-work. It’s impossible to give us the magnetism of Presley (he was a once-in-a-lifetime situation), but Butler gives us a myth, not needing to ground him but instead keeping him elevated even as he moves harder & harder into the King’s tragedy. Whatever his off-screen antics, this is worth the praise it got.
Colin Farrell is the actor who I think should have been getting his second, third, or maybe even fourth nomination in 2022 (Oscar has always struggled to honor the pretty boys early in their career, so Austin make sure to cherish it). Farrell’s work here is breathtaking. He plays his Padraic as not simple, but someone who is happy. He is surrounded by people who want a better life, but he’s content with what he’s got. He has to portray him consistently through a series of connected emotions (sadness, anger, confusion, acceptance) when his world is torn asunder, and Farrell keeps them all at home in what Padraic is doing onscreen.
Paul Mescal’s promise as one of the best young actors of his generation meant Oscar attention was inevitable, but what a way to come onto the scene with a complicated look at a father’s relationship with his preteen daughter. Aftersun is not an easy film, and you have to almost see this film twice before you realize the work he’s doing here, the way he’s reflecting not just his own reality, but the reality of his daughter trying to understand what he became as he got older. As we learn through the movie, that knowledge won’t be clear unless you can read into Mescal’s work as a man given a child he loves, but perhaps too soon in his life for it not to come with some resentment. I love what he’s doing here, and think it makes the movie.
Which brings us to Brendan Fraser. Fraser seems like a lovely man, and he had a winning presence in the 1990’s in fluff like George of the Jungle and The Mummy before Hollywood threw him to the wolves. But in a year where it felt like all four acting winners were running a race for Homecoming Queen rather than quality acting (i.e. this was very much a “Twitter fandom” quartet), no one embodied the problems of that more than Fraser. Fraser is not a strong actor, and is wildly out-of-his-depth in Aronofsky’s The Whale. The movie is bad, and writes itself as a horror film even though it’s more tragedy unless you want to indulge the fatphobic cruelty inflicted on Fraser’s Charlie. But Fraser is adrift, playing his character as someone who existed only the second the film started, and doesn’t have any consistency from scene-to-scene. His monologues are badly delivered, his chemistry with his onscreen daughter played by Sadie Sink is nonexistent, & this is one of the worst performances to ever get an Oscar nomination, much less win one.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony. Drama gave their statue to Butler against Fraser, Nighy, Hugh Jackman (The Son), & Jeremy Pope (The Inspection), while Comedy/Musical went with Farrell atop Diego Calva (Babylon), Daniel Craig (Glass Onion), Adam Driver (White Noise), & Ralph Fiennes (The Menu). The SAG Awards went with a near copy of Oscar (including winner) except they skipped Mescal in favor of Adam Sandler (Hustle) while BAFTA gave their statue to Butler atop the AMPAS field + Daryl McCormack (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande...BAFTA goes six-wide these days). In terms of sixth place, I'm going to say it was...none of these? My guess is that the late-breaking support for Top Gun: Maverick and the "he saved movies" battle cry would've gotten Tom Cruise back into the acting Oscars for the first time in 24 years.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: Gabriel LaBelle is getting skipped because he's young and Oscar struggles what to do with young men in lead roles. But given he's critical to the success of The Fabelmans, and he's marvelous in the movie, I would've found a spot for him.
Oscar’s Choice: Fraser won over Butler, the SAG buzz being impossible to deny even if Butler had dominated the rest of the year. Neither win would've aged super well for the actors (I think Butler winning so young would've given him a touch of the Adrien Brody's), but a bad look for Oscar.
My Choice: I will be totally honest here-I struggle mightily between Farrell & Mescal, and did in my own personal awards (this is the category I wavered the most in at the time). In terms of who deserved the Oscar, it was Farrell, no question (he's far enough in his career it won't hurt him), but in terms of a merit alone...I still land with Farrell. Mescal's work is beautiful, but Farrell's adds a lot of dimension while also needing to be funny, and I think the difficulty in that breaks my tie. Both would've been inspired winners, though (and-spoiler alert-are my gold & silver medalists). Behind them are Butler, Nighy, & Fraser, in that order.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you want to stay on the side of Oscar & Brendan Fraser's comeback, or are you joining me in giving Colin Farrell his due? In a field of first-timers, who do you think adds a second nomination first to their collection? And does anyone want to fight me over it being Tom Cruise in sixth place? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
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