I continue to be in awe of Marion Cotillard's sublime turn in La Vie en Rose (to give an idea of the extent to which she disappears into this role, the picture on the right shows the actress [top] plus stills from the film of her Edith Piaf as a young girl and older woman). I have little doubt that Cotillard will end up the winner of my coveted "Best Performance of the Year (Male or Female, Lead or Supporting)" award.When you think about it, the idea of separating acting awards by gender is horribly sexist. Can you imagine the medical industry giving out a 'Best Female Neurosurgeon' award? And why do they always save the "best" for last by giving out Best Actor after Best Actress, just as they always give out Best Drama after Best Comedy at the Golden Globes? I'm all for honoring as many performers as possible, but why use gender as the divider?
So in that spirit, I started singling out one actor each year in 1999. Here are my choices since then, chronologically.
1999: Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry)
Swank's gut-wrenching performance as Brandon Teena was so good it prompted me to create this award. She believably pulled off the woman-posing-as-a-man thing, but the real power came in the combination of thrilling freedom and overwhelming helplessness she conveyed. Incidentally, five of the eight performances I'm listing here were nominated for Oscars — this is the only one that won.
2000: Mark Ruffalo (You Can Count On Me)
One of those performances that rarely gets recognized amid actors playing the famous or the infirm (or both, as in the case of Jamie Foxx in Ray). Ruffalo played a guy... just a guy. A guy with problems who means well but can't quite bring himself to do the right thing. There isn't a moment in this film where I didn't completely believe Ruffalo was Terry Prescott, and I didn't want to stop watching him.
2001: Naomi Watts (Mulholland Dr.)
I can't say enough about how good Naomi Watts is in this David Lynch mind-bender. She starts out in the Nancy Drew mold, a bright-eyed ingenue trying to make her mark in Hollywood who gets embroiled in a mystery. By the end of the film, she is playing something else altogether (I'm being vague to avoid spoilers). Often actors are praised for being unrecognizable from one film to another — here, Watts pulls that off from one scene to another. Extra credit for pulling off one of the most passionate love scenes I've ever seen. And double extra credit for that scene being with another woman.
2002: Daniel Day Lewis (Gangs of New York)
This is a rare case where a performance is so good it actually makes the movie itself worse. To clarify: Daniel Day Lewis' Bill Cutting is so chillingly larger than life that Leonardo DiCaprio's softie is never close to his match. We're building up to a showdown between a lion and a mouse. But that's no knock on Day Lewis, who emerges from the woodwork every few years to deliver one of these unforgettable chameleonic performances. Word is he's done it again in There Will Be Blood.
2003: Johnny Depp (Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl)
The only performance on this list that is now immortalized in a theme park ride. Four years and a billion dollars later, the story has become show biz legend — Depp shows up with his idea to play Captain Jack Sparrow as a fey take on Keith Richards and the Disney brass reluctantly give him the OK. Smart move. Sparrow is one of the few characters in recent years who will go down as a cinematic icon.
2004: Gael Garcia Bernal (Bad Education)
Bernal must have a great agent — he picks one winner after another. Of the six films I've seen him in since 2000, four have made my top ten lists (three in the top five). His performance in Bad Education is his best yet. He plays a young man trying to con his way into a movie, and also a haunted transvestite in scenes from that movie. As the homme fatale in this gay noir, he's a wonderful mix of charm and danger.
2005: Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow)
In a year that gave us Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote, Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash, it's pretty amazing that my award wound up going to a Memphis pimp. I knew from the opening scene that Terrence Howard had knocked this one out of the park. He nailed the speech patterns and mannerisms of this wannabe rap star, but the true magic of his performance is how he sells the theme of redemption — especially in a powerful moment where tears stream down Djay's face as he listens to a gospel choir.
2006: Penelope Cruz (Volver)
Here's the second Almodovar movie on this list — a testament to the peerless auteur's magical touch with actors. I have never been a big fan of Cruz's, probably because I had only seen her English-language films. Small parts in two other Almodovar films caught my attention, but nothing prepared me for her work in Volver. This is a performance worthy of Hollywood's golden era. Her huge, expressive eyes (not to mention her huge, expressive chest) sell every tragicomic moment in this very funny, very sad film.
5 comments:
Really, Clay? Really? Gee--and you wonder why you have a reputation for favoring the foreign and obscure over mainstream. Ruffalo over Hanks in Castaway? Really? acting alone for 3 hours on an island with a volleyball as your companion not an Oscar worthy performance to ya? And really? Watts over Crowe in Beautiful Mind or Halle Barry in Monster's Ball? I mean, I'm sure the sexy Watts was "titilating" and all that, but really? And how in the world could the Academy have passed over Bernal (no need to use full name here since everyone will know exactly who I am talking about...(Cruise, Hanks, Streep, DeNiro, Bernal), only to nominate the lame-o performances of Foxx in Ray, DeCaprio in Aviator or Swank in Million Dollar Baby! Clearly, the Academy is not only ethnocentric, but deaf, dumb and blind! Really! And Terrence Howard was so darn exciting in Hustle and Flow, I was sound asleep by the 20 minute mark. Really! While I somehow managed to stay awake for those cheesy performances by hacks like Phoenix and Witherspoon in Walk the Line or Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote. Really! And yes, the Academy has a preference for imperonations--but Hoffman was outstanding, as was Helen Mirren, which is why she deserved the Award over the lovely Cruz. Cruz was good in a very good film, mostly reminding us that she really CAN act when she is acting in her native tongue. But, really, Mirren became the friggin Queen--she was all at once royal and vulnerable, strong-willed and sympathetic. But, alas, she made the mistake of playing a real person and not being in a foreign language film directed by Almodovar so, really, Clay could not give her the nod. Really
I realize (or at least hope) your comments are largely tongue in cheek, but I'll take the bait.
You mention Foxx, DiCaprio, Crowe and Swank... all excellent performances, yes, but again driving home the bias of the Academy — three impersonations, plus a blind guy, an obsessive compulsive, a schizophrenic and a quadriplegic. How original! I am always drawn to a "regular" performance over a showy one. Don't we frequently mention that Tom Cruise really gave the better performance in Rain Man, despite Hoffman winning all the awards?
I love all the performances you mention, but I love the ones I singled out even more.
Just to be clear... I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with showy performances (in fact, a few on this list can be categorized as such). But I would rather see Tom Hanks awarded for his performance in Punch Line (showy in one way) than Forrest Gump (showy in quite another).
For those not watching SNL--the tone of the post was based upon the SNL Skit "Really? Really!" Anyway...I undertstand the allure of the "regular" performance, but only about 1/2 of your selections fit that bill, while Cotillard, Swank in Boys, Watts, Depp and Howard don't. On the other hand, all of your selections have in common that they are relatively obscure B list actors (or at least they were before the movie that may have given them some notoriety) and/or they were in foreign language or independent films. I get your Hanks reference for the films you cited, but Cast Away was not Gump-like showiness. And as for the Rainman actors, Cruise absolutely deserved nomination, but part of the reason Hoffman could be chided was that it was by and large a one trick performance. Such was not the case, I would argue, with other "showy" performances, including notably Foxx as Ray, Mirren as Queen, DiCaprio as Hughes, Crowe as Nash. To suggest that Ray Charles can be reduced to the "blind guy" or that Foxx's performance was good only because he depicted a blind guy is an insult to both men. Same could be said for Dicaprio playing Hughes since Hughes was so much more than merely a guy with OCD and DiCaprio played him with all those dimensions fully realized. Ditto Crowe playing Nash--who probably can be analogized to Cotillard in that he played a real person who we really didn't know at all so he may as well have been fictionalized. But again, Beautiful Mind didn't have subtitles nor was it directed by a foreign or artsy director, instead being directed by the "what have you done for me lately?" Ron Howard. Anyway, while the Academy does have its biases, you do as well, and your list of favorite performances contains much of the same bias for the foreign and the independent film over the commercial American fare as does your overall movie list.
I did recognize the SNL reference, one we have taken to using around our house as well.
I don't really agree that my list contains a bunch of no-names. Hillary Swank is a two-time Oscar winner; Daniel Day Lewis has won one and been nominated a few times; Cruz, Howard and Depp were all nominated for the performances I chose; Watts wasn't (crime of the friggin' century — she won ten awards leading up to the Oscars that year) but she has been nominated since. Only Bernal and Ruffalo are Oscar outsiders, and I am hardly alone in thinking they are exceptional actors. Marion Cotillard (this year's likely winner) is the odds on favorite to win the Oscar as well.
As for the independent argument, what do you think Monster's Ball, Capote and The Queen are?
By the way, how can you characterize Watts' and Cotillard's performances as not "regular" when you haven't seen either of them?
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