THE OSCAR RACE: Best Actress, Part Duex

My analysis of the Best Actress Oscar Race, part duex.

My previous entry was a general analysis of the race when it came to Best Actress.  For this entry, let’s go directly to my list:

Jennifer Lawrence for Silver Linings Playbook right now has the lead to win even though the movie hasn’t opened yet.  At the same time, I hesitate to be definite here since the movie is still an unknown quantity.  But her nomination seems assured.  Probably what helps is that she has proven herself as an actress by getting a nomination for a small, independent film (Winter’s Bone), but also an actress that can make a ton of money (The Hunger Games), a double whammy.

Quvenzhane Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild.  This has been settled law for some time.  Not only did this eight year old munchkin give a marvelous performance, the movie is likely to get a Best Picture nom, a possible Best Director, a possible Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay nom.  And it’s still in the theaters.  I also can’t imagine any voter, no matter how Scrooge McDuck they are, who would want to give this fairy tale an unhappy ending.

Emmanuelle Riva for Amour.  This is also supposed to be almost a sure thing.  Though the Academy is more loathe to give career awards and noms to women than to men, Riva has been around since another amour film, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), one of the great films of all time.   Amour was also suppose to get a nomination for co-lead Jean-Louis Trintignant, but as the movies with strong male leads started pouring in, that was that.  Amour is suppose to be Michael Haneke’s most accessible film and is in the lead to win in the best Foreign Language category and may even get a Best Picture, Director and Screenplay nom.

Marion Cotillard for Rust and Bone.  A Hollywood favorite since winning the Oscar for La Vie en Rose, she is supposed to give a knock out performance.   The filmmaker Jacques Audiard is also responsible for such films as A Prophet and The Beat that My Heart Skipped and is fast becoming one of France’s leading directors.   However, this is still an unknown quantity.

Helen Mirren for Hitchcock.  It doesn’t really matter where she decides to run, this is the category that will most likely get her.  A superb performance helped by a strong possibility that her co-lead, Anthony Hopkins will also receive one.

Other possibilities:  Naomi Watts for The Impossible is getting some buzz, but it may be too little too late.  Keira Knightley in Anna Karanina just opened, but it didn’t get very good reviews and is not exciting anyone.  And Helen Hunt in The Sessions will probably get a supporting actress nom.

Which means, sorry Jessica Chastain.  You should probably start pushing for that supporting acting nom instead.

BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a story told through the eyes of a child, with all the awe and wonder of such a subjective viewpoint.  It has the same fairy tale quality of such movies as The Night of the Shooting Stars and The Night of the Hunter as well as more realistic films as To Kill a Mockingbird and Shane.  It is a wonderful film, perhaps the best of the year so far.   The narrator and our guide to this other world is Hushpuppy, a pint size little girl who lives with her alcoholic and ailing father in a place call the Bathtub, an outlying area on the other side of a levee that protects the larger, nearby city.  The residents of the Bathtub are free spirit types who want little to nothing to do with civilization.  At first one empathizes with this fierce independence; there is something grand and moving about it.  On the downside, though, the result is often alcoholism and cruelty, as well as an inability to protect themselves when disaster strikes.  And strike it does.  First Hushpuppy’s father has a heart attack.  And then the rain comes.  And while the city is protected by the levee, the Bathtub is flooded by salt water that eventually destroys all plant and fish life.  All the while Hushpuppy voices her childlike view of what is going on in voice over narrative while imagining the approach of wild beasts that have been released by the polar ice cap melting.  What happens next is the conflict between civilization and people who just want to be left alone.  I can’t quite agree with the ultimate conclusion here, that the people are somehow better off by returning to the Bathtub; I certainly would never want to live there.  But I found the unfolding of Hushpuppy’s story fascinating as the plot takes her all over the place, from a Fourth of July type celebration complete with tons of seafood and fireworks, to a shelter for people fleeing the floods, to perhaps the oddest place of all, a floating whorehouse.   Benh Zeitlin directed the film and wrote it along with Lucy Alibar, a first film for each of them, using non-professionals.  But Zeitlin makes excellent use of their amateurishness.  He gets a deft and fascinating performance out of Quvenzhane Wallis as Hushpuppy.  But perhaps the strongest performance is by Dwight Henry as her father Wink, a character both kind and cruel who rages and rages against the dying of the light.  He’s one of those awful people you never would want to meet in real life but are fascinating within the safe distance of a movie screen.   But in the end, perhaps the greatest kudos should go to Dan Romer who, with Zeitlin, wrote the sole stirring anthem that punctuates Hushpuppy’s story.  At the end, Hushpuppy tells us that she and all of the people in the Bathtub are all part of the universe, and that no matter what happens, they’ll keep going, as they march back home accompanied by that transcendental music.   It’s a deeply emotional ending to a very unusual and captivating film.