I love the supporting actor and actress awards. This is where the Academy likes to surprise us. In 1984, Haing Ngor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist working with American journalist Sydney Schanberg, in The Killing Fields. And oh yeah, Ngor himself experienced the same killing fields of the character he portrayed. He himself was a Cambodian refugee, and lost a wife and child to the Khmer Rouge. If all that weren’t enough, Ngor was trained as a physician, not a doctor, and The Killing Fields was his first role.
Though there may not be a story like Ngor’s in this year’s field, there is room for a big upset.
Jacki Weaver’s nomination for Animal Kingdom came out of left field, and I haven’t seen the movie. Weaver has a long career in Australian cinema dating back to Picnic at Hanging Rock. In Animal Kingdom, she plays Smurf, a kind of godmother of a crime family. The film has been in limited release, and a victory on Sunday would be a major upset.
Amy Adams takes a turn away from the sunny characters she’s best remembered for in movies like Junebug and Enchanted. In The Fighter, she plays Charlene, the working class girlfriend of boxer Micky Ward. Among the obstacles she has to overcome are Micky’s mom and sisters, who are straight out of hell. Look for her to get KO’d on Oscar night and walk away empty handed.
Helena Bonham Carter was born for costume dramas. From A Room With a View to The King’s Speech, she has appeared in so many historical dramas as to seem born in another time. In The King’s Speech, she plays Elizabeth, the Duchess of York. Her husband, the future King George VI, suffers from a severe stutter that hampers his ability to lead in a new age, where the radio has become as important as looking regal in uniform on horseback.
Though her husband has resigned himself to obscurity, Bonham Carter stays on the lookout for help until she finds Lionel Logue, a highly unorthodox speech therapist who comes highly recommended.
Thus begins her effort of orchestrating and cheerleading as her husband is subjected to an invasive course of therapy that not only breaks down his affliction but also the social structures that keep commoners like Logue at a great distance.
It’s a delightful performance, but not enough to take home the trophy.
Many kids have won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, like Tatum O’Neal (Paper Moon), Anna Paquin (The Piano), and Mary Badham (To Kill a Mockingbird), which has to make Hailee Steinfeld and her family feel like she has a pretty good shot for her performance in True Grit.
She more than holds her own onscreen with Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and a supporting cast that includes Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper. It’s an impressive debut because not only is she in just about every scene, she has to speak her dialogue in an archaic, 19th century dialect devoid of contractions and slang. Mattie is a precocious adolescent who worships her murdered father and applies her devotion to seeing his murderer (Brolin) hanged. Her sense of justice is forged from a Protestantism steeped in blood and sin and judgment. That said, she plays the role straight, allowing for an ironic humor to bleed into every scene. True Grit is a very funny movie.
I’ll be crossing my fingers, hoping for an upset, but I’m – or rather I am – afraid that the award is predestined to do home with another.
That other is Melissa Leo, who plays Alice, the matriarch of the Ward family in The Fighter. Alice Ward is a manipulative woman who will use anything at her disposal to impose her will. In addition to her boxing boys, she’s raised seven daughters who are like something from Shakespeare or Greek Drama.
This nomination is the second in three years for Leo, who was nominated for Best Actress in 2008 for her role as Ray in Frozen River. It’s a vindication of sorts for an actress who is undeniably talented, but also carries a difficult reputation.
Leo is a force of nature in The Fighter, and like Alice’s younger son Micky, she won’t be denied her title. Pencil her in as the Oscar winner.
Slucherville 