OVP: Best Actor (2000)
The Nominees Were...
Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls
Russell Crowe, Gladiator
Tom Hanks, Cast Away
Ed Harris, Pollock
Geoffrey Rush, Quills
My Thoughts: All right, let's move into the lead actors, and a reminder of how I miss the era of the 5-wide Best Picture nominees sometimes. In 2000, if you can believe it, only one of the Best Actor nominees (usually the category with the most correlation with Best Picture) was from one of the top films of the night. This isn't to say that there weren't films that would've made it in a ten-wide field. In a ten-wide field Cast Away for sure and maybe Quills is going to get into the top race, making this feel more generic than it seems, but in 2000 it was only one man, getting his second of three back-to-back nominations from the Academy (his only three nominations to date, bizarrely enough).
That man is Russell Crowe, who gets to be one of the final vessels for me to complain about Ridley Scott's Gladiator. It's not that Crowe is necessarily bad here. He gives, for my money, the best performance in Gladiator, and finds some humanity in a characterization that easily could've been a bland, Mel Gibson-style performance. There's just not enough of it. I needed more swagger...it might've helped if Crowe had had a little more chemistry with Nielsen (or hell, Phoenix), but for someone who was billed as a sex symbol at the time, the film is not interested in capitalizing on that. It's also just not written to be a great performance-Crowe would need more swagger as an actor to make this jump off-the-screen in a bigger way, and that's not how he's playing it.
Quills is a film that is very much written to be sexy, but it's not, and not because Rush is not generally considered a sex symbol in the way that Crowe is (though Rush does have more sexual chemistry with Joaquin Phoenix than Crowe does in his movie!). This is the least of Rush's Oscar-nominated work, and it's a performance that indulges many of his worst traits as an actor. Rush is not a subtle performer, and pretending he is always gets you into trouble (his best performance is in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, which uses that overacting to its advantage). That's a problem in the messy back-half of Quills, where he takes an already "too much" character and turns him up to eleven, which is a bad counter to some of the more grounded work Kate Winslet is doing here.
Ed Harris is also at-odds with his work in Pollock, though it's not always his fault as an actor. Harris (as director) is pulling double duty, and in the process he feels like he's pulling away from the character onscreen. Pollock writes Jackson as being full of misery, and only focuses on that misery. This makes the film feel like half a picture, and the characterization as half a performance-we're meant to understand that Jackson has at least some draw beyond just his art (that people are fascinated by him), but it doesn't come across in Harris's work (in many ways, this is how I felt about Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, another actor, like Harris, I generally enjoy but was in the minority on one of their most lauded performances).
Speaking of actors I run hot-and-cold on, let's get to Javier Bardem. I do not generally enjoy the films of Julian Schnabel, whose films feel like they're stuck in a kaleidoscope (and not in as pleasant of a way as that sounds, as generally that'd be my thing). Bardem's work here is surprisingly nuanced. Like Rush, he's someone that frequently overacts, but as a dying gay poet, a role filled with indulgences, he is far more naturalistic than you'd expect. I just wish the movie was able to anchor around that work a bit more, finding a way to steady itself so they felt more in sync.
Tom Hanks in 2000 was at the top of his game, and it would be so weird to think that he'd soon be entering his "Oscar wilderness phase." This is particularly true because Oscar would pick such a fine piece-of-work to go out on until he became Mr. Rogers. Cast Away has been parodied quite a bit in the years since Hanks made it a genuine blockbuster (the film is, after all, a movie about a man obsessed with a volleyball), but that doesn't take away from his achievement here. The work he does, oftentimes having to have chemistry with an inanimate object, and giving us a hopeful, human story is really splendid work. For an actor that I think is thought of more as a "movie star" than a thespian, there are scenes here that number amongst the best of his career (particularly the "Wilson goodbye").
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes break out their nominees between Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we have ten names from their ceremony. The Drama statue went to Hanks, atop Bardem, Crowe, Rush, & Michael Douglas (Wonder Boys) while Comedy/Musical went to George Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?), besting Jim Carrey (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), John Cusack (High Fidelity), Robert de Niro (Meet the Parents), & Mel Gibson (What Women Want)...side note, but don't you miss the era where they would only have proper comedies in this category & we'd get five names that weren't in contention at the Oscars? SAG gave their statue to Benicio del Toro for Traffic (I believe this was a mistake in filing for the wrong category that showed just how unstoppable del Toro was for Supporting Actor), against Crowe, Hanks, Rush, & Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot), while BAFTA favored Bell against Rush, Douglas, Crowe, & Hanks. At the time, most assumed Michael Douglas would get in for the spot that went to Harris, and that's probably the case even if Bell makes more sense based on how we think about the Oscars as a game of math today (an article for another day, but I do think that that over-prognostication of awards season may have inadvertently ruined awards season), given that the Academy has never been kind to nominating young male actors for lead acting roles.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: I don't generally nominate young actors either (I do think there's something to be said for them being a product of strong direction), but there's no way I'd miss Bell here, particularly knowing what a fine actor he'd grow up to be. His work in Billy Elliot is aces, and adds so much to a film that could've been an otherwise disposable coming-of-age picture.
Oscar’s Choice: Crowe's win at the time was something of a surprise (Hanks was expected to win his third statue even with Crowe's name in the game, and a lot of heat for Ed Harris), and would unknowingly make Denzel Washington's win the following year possible.
My Choice: It's easily Hanks, who is the only person in this lineup giving a truly Oscar-worthy performance. I debated between Bardem & Harris for second, and while I had Harris in that position when I started this article, I've talked myself into giving it to Bardem, whose work is subtler and better for his picture. Crowe is in fourth, and I'll leave Rush in last place.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you think Oscar got it right with the Gladiator, or will you be stuck at sea with Tom & I? What do you think Ed Harris's, a four-times nominated actor who likely will never win, best performance is? And was it Jamie Bell or Michael Douglas in sixth place? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
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