Here’s the first installment in my pick-the-Oscar-winners challenge. Sister, I await your reply.
Our nominees are: Richard Jenkins, The Visitor; Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon; Sean Penn, Milk; Brad Pitt, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler.
I’d never heard of either Jenkins or The Visitor until the nominations came out two days ago. I don’t think that either has the heat to pull off the type of upset required here. Frank Langella is a sort of textbook “that guy,” plus name recognition, although of the sort where while you’re positive you know who he is, you can’t name a single thing he’s been in off the top of your head. Both men have been working almost non-stop for a good 30 years or so. As I mentioned the last time I did Oscar-analysis, part of me almost automatically wants late-blooming actors to win. But this isn’t the year for it.
I also suspect that this is not a year where the Academy will go political. The left won at the polls in 2008, and I doubt they’ll win at the awards. Which bodes poorly for both Frank Langella and Sean Penn, despite Jezebel’s November demand that they should “Just FedEx The Oscar To Sean Penn’s House Right Now.” However, it is possible that contrition for California’s passage of Prop 8 could propel Penn to victory, since Heath Ledger has Supporting Actor tied up and because Milk is a long shot for Best Picture, and more likely to pick up either writing or directing trophies (surely Gus Van Sant is long overdue, particularly given his penchant for making objectively brilliant but sort of obnoxiously un-awardable films). I know for a fact I’d have more passion about this role had I watched the movie—which I really tried to do! Plus, I think that the Academy almost certainly doesn’t want to inflict the Sean Penn acceptance speech on us, or on themselves.
Brad Pitt is just out of his league here. With the exception of the sublime Taraji P. Henson and possibly Jared Harris’ Captain Mike, all of the acting in Benjamin Button was entirely mediocre.
That brings us to what I consider one of the very best movies I’ve seen all year: The Wrestler, and the renaissance of Mickey Rourke. I love Darren Aronofsky. In the Pi—Requiem for a Dream—The Fountain progression, he moved from crisp, spare, yet ground-breaking cinematography and storytelling to some of the lushest and most convoluted imagery and narrative on film. With this movie, he stepped back and said No. It’s lowbrow marketed as highbrow (a barbed-wire and broken glass match is worth the price of admission), and the film is gripping. And it’s down to small heartbreaking details that Rourke gets right as “Randy the Ram”: interacting with his colorist at a frilly salon, the desk-girl manning the booths that maintain his fake perma-tan, and the adoring kids who grew up on his bouts now on their way up in the wrestling world while he’s twenty years past his prime. The Wrestler is almost incidentally the least judgmental class study I’ve seen, and it’s one of the very few movies I’ve encountered (and I’m a serious movie-watcher!) that is 100% driven by the acting. Much of Randy’s screentime is solitary, and it’s hard to shine in those moments, but he does. It’s a two-man race between Penn and Rourke, and I’m calling it for Mickey Rourke, who turned in a spectacular performance dominating in a role that I find it hard to believe any other actor could have handled with such naïve grace and raw-nerved power.
No Comments