OVP: Best Actor (2023)
The Nominees Were...
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
My Thoughts: We are now moving into the Best Actor race, and similar to Best Supporting Actress, I'll own right now that this is not a field I was super impressed by. The actual actors in this field are kind of exciting. We have three first-time nominees, all longtime character actors who were finally getting their due...that's always worth celebrating. But the performances themselves (save one) are none of these actors' best. This is what happens when you rely too heavily on biopics (three of the five), where impressions of the actors are so an ingrained part of how we judge these actors that they get surrounded by movies that can't support their work.
This is the case with Colman Domingo, who was cited for playing civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Netflix has sort of become the place to churn out paint-by-number biopics that get you a nomination just for wearing the right makeup & being in the right spot in your career to get the Academy's attention. But the movies they churn out are bad, and this is not a good film. That's not how you should judge a performance, of course, but any touches that Domingo is adding here (and I'll be real-I'm a fan, but there's very little happening here that feels beyond two-dimensional, both in the film and the performance) are drowned out by how hopelessly generic the approach is. It's all bon mots and monologues, and not in a good way.
The same can be said for Bradley Cooper in Maestro. It's clear (in another Netflix biopic, I might add) that this is the vehicle Cooper thought would land him an Academy Award, and he does all of the aging, mincing, & unnecessary backstory (that "years of composing lessons" story really did not help your case here, Bradley) that you'd expect from a Best Actor win for playing a gay man. But it's all mimicry and no understanding. We spend so much of this film focusing on his relationship with his wife, we don't really understand anything about Bernstein himself, which is crucial for the "any questions" glibness of the ending. Cooper, like Domingo, is a good actor, but this is the first time the Oscars nominated him for a bad performance. Honestly, given he's capable of more, I'm glad he didn't win here.
Instead it was in the third biopic where we found our winner. Cillian Murphy is the best of the three biopic performances, as he gives more of Oppenheimer than the Netflix dramas ever could (because there's more style to his film). I love the internalized conversation he seems to always be having on his face, the way that he won't share his thoughts with the world, but he is clearly giving them to himself over-and-over again. I don't care about the film's politics when it comes to judging his acting, and I do think the movie does a good job of projecting a perspective on Oppenheimer even if it's not the real-life version of him. I do wish I knew more about his romantic relationships by the end of this given that it's so crucial to the story (whom did he really love?), but Murphy nails Oppenheimer's relationship to his own creation.
Paul Giamatti's gotten a lot of flack on this blog through the years (I think of him generally as an over-actor, and he's not my cup of tea). So color me delighted that this is the first time I've really enjoyed him onscreen since Sideways. The script cheats him out of a great moment at the end where his character really connects with the film's arc (mostly because Payne's script doesn't really give him a full arc), but that's a small complaint when we get a lot of rich detailing prior to it. We understand why he has devoted his life to teaching, how he has spent so much of his existence walled into his own ideas, afraid of experiencing a world that might contradict them (or, worse yet, make them murky). This is good stuff-I want more material like this for him in the future.
Our final nomination is for Jeffrey Wright, no longer a go-to-answer for "greatest working actor without an Oscar nomination" (that would be...Carrie Coon now, maybe Sarah Paulson?). Like Giamatti, he's playing a fictional character, and that helps because we get a lot of layers to his Monk Ellison. I think the film overall struggles with some balance issues (the literary satire is so good that the counterweight of the family drama takes a backseat), but you don't get that in Wright's work. He plays Monk as a very imperfect flesh-and-blood man, one who has never quite fit in (both in his life, and in his family). He doesn't have what it takes to sell every aspect of the over-complicated ending, but that's a small quibble (and really more a task for the writers).
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes split between Comedy/Musical and Drama for their nominations, so we had 12 names in total from the...anyone know what they call this voting body now that it's no longer the HFPA? Drama went to Murphy over Cooper, Domingo, Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon), Barry Keoghan (Saltburn), & Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers), while Giamatti won Comedy/Musical against Wright, Nicolas Cage (Dream Scenario), Timothee Chalamet (Wonka), Matt Damon (Air), & Joaquin Phoenix (Beau is Afraid). The SAG Awards were a verbatim copy of Oscar (winner & nominees), while BAFTA went with Murphy atop Cooper, Domingo, Giamatti, Keoghan, & Teo Yoo (Past Lives). In sixth place, the smart money would be on Leo (he was the only one of the three campaigned actors in his film to miss in a big Best Picture), but I do think Andrew Scott was closer than him. Leo's been in this situation a few times now (J. Edgar, Don't Look Now) where he does well all season but Oscar isn't interested, and Scott had a lot of passion at the close. I think he was next up.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: Andrew Scott gave the best performance onscreen I've seen in at least five years. That he was clearly so close to an Oscar nomination and the Academy chose not to honor him...shame, shame, shame.
Oscar’s Choice: The season started out with it being a horserace between Murphy & Giamatti, but once Murphy took the SAG Award, all intrigue was gone, and Oscar completed the Oppenheimer sweep.
My Choice: I'm going to be contrarian here and pick Wright (I have yet to see someone echo this sentiment in my Twitter followers). I think he adds the more perspective to his film than his chief competition, and also has the trickiest part to balance. Behind him (in order) is Giamatti, Murphy, Cooper, and then Domingo.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Are you all-in for the billion-dollar success of Cillian Murphy, or would you like to dare-to-be-different by sticking with Jeffrey Wright & I? Is everyone else as sick-to-death of these hopelessly disposable Netflix biopics as I am? And how badly is that Andrew Scott miss going to age in the coming years? Share your thoughts below in the comments!
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