OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2001)
The Nominees Were...
Jim Broadbent, Iris
Ethan Hawke, Training Day
Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast
Ian McKellen, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Jon Voight, Ali
My Thoughts: We are headed into the acting categories, and will be finishing all four of these acting races within the week. After a couple of months (though, again, one of our faster ballots) of me saying this-it bears repeating heading into the acting categories that generally, 2001 had pretty good lineups. Every category has at least 1-2 exceptional performances, and in some cases, an all-timer. But of the four, I'll own that Supporting Actor is the least, and this isn't because there's not a lot of options. We will get to it later with the My Ballot (next week) that concludes this season (where I pick the nominees in all categories), but Supporting Actor in genre films was popping. With Oscar, though, only a couple of these make the grade.
A good example of Oscar going a little milquetoast is Jim Broadbent. The longtime character actor scored his first (and to date, only) Oscar nomination in 2001 for Iris. This performance is solid-he has strong chemistry with Judi Dench, and plays his John Bayley well. Unlike Dench, who is suffering from dementia & therefore has more excuses to not match Kate Winslet's performance (though she does), Broadbent has to live within the world of Hugh Bonneville's portrayal of him as a young man. Broadbent got his nomination, though, in part because of his other films in 2001-he played Renee Zellweger's dad in Bridget Jones's Diary and gave a career-best turn as Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge!. The rules of the OVP clearly state, though, that I can only judge what's in front of me, not Broadbent's larger body of work in 2001, and with that, it's good...it's just not as good as it could've been had they gone with Moulin Rouge!.
Ethan Hawke runs into another rule we have for the OVP: category fraud. I make a principle of docking a point for clear cases of supporting performances going lead, and this is maybe the most egregious example of that I've ever seen-Hawke is clearly the protagonist here, and saying otherwise is just telling on yourself. Part of the reason that Hawke likely went supporting is because Washington is so much better than him. While Denzel is giving a top tier piece of work, Hawke is just okay. His LAPD cop isn't really believable-he feels like someone that they plucked out of a library and said "your lifelong dream is to be a police officer" he's so naive. It makes the ending less compelling when it's clear that Washington's officer (whatever the script says) should be able to eat Hawke for breakfast.
We're going to, as we encounter the 1995-2001 era, run into several actors whose offscreen lives are pretty colorful to the point where they are a type of internet pariah, and the first of them is Jon Voight. I want to point out, for the record, that I'm only judging actors based on their performances in front of them, and not, say, their maddening political beliefs. That said, Voight is not very good in Ali. His Howard Cosell is more stand out because A) Cosell was a colorful, distinctive figure in the world of sports (I'm gay, and even I can do a Howard Cosell impersonation) and B) the makeup team is doing some serious heavy-lifting. This isn't really strong work (which, for the record, Voight is capable of), as much as it's a collective run of "wait...is that Jon Voight?" every time he's onscreen.
Like Voight, Ben Kingsley can also get into areas where it's a question mark why he's so acclaimed. Lots of Kingsley's work is swinging for the rafters, over-the-top stuff. But when he's good, you understand why he has the Oscar count he does. That's the case with Sexy Beast. This is the least of Jonathan Glazer's films to date (I'm usually enamored), but Kingsley is remarkable. His high-energy acting matches the tone of the film, and he steals pretty every scene he's in. One could argue if he's bordering on a lead performance here, but I think it's just because the energy is sucked out of the film whenever he's offscreen, not because he's actually in charge. Really well done, and the best Kingsley's been this century.
We'll finish with Ian McKellen. Similar to Alec Guinness in Star Wars, he served as a classic genre film's sole acting surrogate, and like Guinness he lost what many fans (in retrospect) feel was a slam dunk situation for him to win (unlike Guinness, McKellen seems to be fine with this being the role that will be on his tombstone despite both having long thespian histories). Every corner of McKellen's performance is a vision. He creates a Gandalf so complete from the opening scenes, you can never picture anyone else in the role. I loved the command he gives, enigma in terms of his personal life (which is centuries old) and the way that he understands the gravity of this task before anyone else. He plays the role straight, never winking, which makes it a far richer piece-of-work.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes surprisingly went with Jim Broadbent's turn in Iris, despite him not being a star, with him beating Kingsley, Voight, Steve Buscemi (Ghost World), Hayden Christensen (Life as a House), & Jude Law (AI: Artificial Intelligence). SAG went with Ian McKellen, besting Broadbent, Christensen, Hawke, & Kinsley, while BAFTA preferred Broadbent (here, though, for Moulin Rouge!) against a completely different lineup of Colin Firth (Bridget Jones's Diary), Eddie Murphy (Shrek), Hugh Bonneville (Iris), & Robbie Coltrane (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). In sixth place, I kind of think it was Christensen. At the time, he was being billed as the "next big thing" before the Star Wars films proved that he wasn't as versatile of an actor as many assumed he'd be given the hype, and there was pressure to "welcome him to the club" before he'd really proven himself. If not Christensen, Buscemi is also a good guess, but as someone who lived through this-I think it was Christensen.
Performances I Would Have Nominated: Just a few years after breaking into mainstream film with Talented Mr. Ripley, Jude Law gives an equally strong piece-of-work as a literal boy toy in AI, and should've been included in a year that desperately needed a jolt of youth.
Oscar’s Choice: In a battle between Broadbent & McKellen, Oscar was a bit stodgy and couldn't bring itself to give a statue to McKellen, despite the latter giving the performance of a lifetime.
My Choice: McKellen. I would've felt worse about it if Broadbent was up for Harold Zidler (that's what he'll get in for with My Ballot), but atop Iris...it ain't close. Behind him will be Ben Kingsley, giving one of his best performances, and then (in order) Broadbent, Hawke, & Voight.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you want to stay in the Shire with Gandalf & I, or are you going to defend Oscar's choice of the literary Broadbent? Is Ethan Hawke's performance maybe the worst example this century of category fraud (give or take Rooney Mara in Carol)? And was it Christensen or Buscemi in sixth place? Share in the comments!
2 comments:
Of the nominees, Kingsley, by far. What a performance!
Kinglsey is exceptional in Sexy Beast...but I just can't shake McKellen. It's a performance for the ages.
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