Encore Awards: Supporting Actors

The first acting category...last year this category was overflowing with brilliance, and truth be told my five nominees from last year would probably knock every single nominee of this year out, Schneider's work in Bright Star is sooooooo good (not better than Whishaw, of course, but still great). Still, the supporting men were good this year and I like each of these performances. They didn't all get that Oscar love I wish they could have, but that doesn't negate the goodness of their work.

(click on the pictures for reviews)

THE NOMINEES

Christian Bale in The Fighter (as Dickie)

Bale avoids the most obvious of pitfalls and avoids turning Dickie into one of those usual walking powder-keg drug addicts. Sure, he gets the physicality of a user down excellently – with every bodily twitch, but the performance has much more to offer. As riveting as he is in those moments, it’s the emotional bits where he shines. As good as he is with Mark his best moments are opposite Melissa Leo (a dynamic I’d have loved to see more of) and despite his overt lack of restraint his devotion to his family rings throughout the drama. (Highlight: “I Started A Joke”)

Andrew Garfield in The Social Network (as Eduardo Saverin)

I hate that his obvious “actor” scenes are the ones that people keep remembering because the reasons I like this performance so much comes to the smaller bits. He knows Mark is an asshole, but he also knows they’re both similar in that desire for kinship (even though Mark is adamantly against social contact). He responds to every action from Mark, but he doesn’t really respond to Mark – and I’m not sure if its Fincher’s direction or his sensibilities but with every wince (blink and you’ll miss them) or slight intake of breath he’s making Eduardo more than the just token wronged friend and into a real person, which sounds sort of clichéd but is true nonetheless. (Highlight: The Chicken incident, at the deposition and at Harvard)

Mark Ruffalo in The Kids Are All Right (as Paul)

I think I tweeted sometime towards the end of last year that Paul is probably the most sympathetic character in the narrative. They’re all moving in their way, but this bathetic man child becomes the most stirring because Ruffalo is doing so much with it. It’s not that he gives my favourite performance of the film (he doesn’t) but it’s a classic example of script and actor finding a perfect match. He doesn’t even seem aware of Paul’s insecurities because Paul isn’t even aware of his insecurities, and those lingering glances and bits of stilted conversation only underscore the sort of wandering soul he is. And he does it all without EVER going over-the-top with it. (Highlight: First Meeting with Moms)

Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech (as Lionel Logue)

Rush avoids his usual theatricality (which I’m actually fond of) for a surprisingly tender portrayal of Logue here. Even though a significant portion of the narrative examines his relationship with the King, Seidler doesn’t explain his arc fully which leaves Logue as something of an enigma at times and Rush has no problem doing that. Sometimes it seems as if he’s usual tricks but that soft empathy with which he approaches Bertie is significant allowing him to dig deeper. One of the lasting things about the film is that you get the feeling there’s more to the man – but neither he (nor the film) is interested in going there. He’s willing to step aside.

(Highlight: First Meeting with “Mrs. Johnson”)

Sullivan Stapleton in Animal Kingdom (as Craig)

He has the sort of “open” face that makes it distressing to watch him, especially when you take into consideration how much he underplays the addiction arc – saving all that pent-up desperation only to completely destroy you when he unhinges in that final scene – well more than he was before. He’s already unhinged, not in the same manner as Mendehlson’s Pope, but just as much. His entire final scene played on a loop after coming out of the movie and it’s startling how with the absence of dialogue and even without the very overt facial tics that you’d expect, he manages to convey that nadir of despair that’s responsible for thrusting the narrative in a new destroy. (Highlight: his death)

                           

FINALISTS: Joel Edgerton leaves Animal Kingdom early on but that doesn’t prevent his Baz from having a lasting effect. ; Rhys Ifans gives a performance to rival the already good cast in Greenberg; Miles Teller functions as well as Eckhart, Wiest and Blanchard as a scene partner for Kidman in Rabbit Hole. He’s fortunate because Becca’s breakthrough moments come opposite him, and he plays excellently off her offering up a not clichéd example of how more than the grieving parties are victims of accidents.

SEMI-FINALISTS: Don Cheadle plays on the angry policemen in Brooklyn’s Finest to excellent results, showing again why he’s one of the best underrated actors at the moment; Kieran Culkin ends up stealing the show from everyone in Scott Pilgrim vs the World because even if his acerbic sidekick is a stereotype his line readings are hilarious; Andrew Garfield in Never Let Me Go; with just a few scenes to work with in The King’s Speech I finally get what people are talking about with Guy Pearce. He’s the right amount of EVERYTHING in the film and works so perfectly against Firth; Jonathan Tucker’s introverted psychiatric patient is one of the saving graces of Veronika Decides to Die. It’s more than his remarkable chemistry with Gellar – his attention to detail (which the script demands in those scenes where he has no dialogue) is impressive.

        

What do you think of my nominees? Who would you toss out? Who would you bring in?

Never Let Me Go

Last year when I heard that the (allegedly) seminal novel Never Let Me Go was being adapted to film I was torn whether or not I should read it first. Generally, the trend is to always read the novel first because the book will never be a complete adaptation, but that’s the very reason that – where I can help it – I always ignore the literary version of any work until after I’ve seen the film. And yet, when the credits rolled for Never Let Me Go I couldn’t help but feel that I’d only been given a fraction of the story. I had that palpable of something – not quite disappointment, but dissatisfaction... Our story is set at Hailsham, a school, we know there’s something amiss from the way the children walk around almost as automatons – and it’s not because they’re “British”. We soon realise that the entire student population are clones of real people, the clones exist to provide body parts to their originals – and after a few operations they eventually die, before reaching middle age. Cloning is the sort of thing that’s become a bit too blasé to root a story, overexposure to the topic is probably the reason. The theme of cloning soon becomes secondary to a love triangle. Ruth, we discern immediately is not someone to root for – her child version has unusually quick eyes and a gait evocative of Briony Tallis. Kathy is our heroine, a seemingly pleasant girl who takes a liking to the school misfit Tommy. The two seem like a fine pair, until one day she happens upon Tommy and Ruth in an embrace...and we flash forward a decade or so later and the story continues.

There was a bad taste in my mouth for a good deal of the film’s second half, I’m not sure if Ishiguro’s novel or Alex Garland’s adaptation is to blame but to balance the already tired cloning premise against the increasingly tawdry love triangle deprives the film of all the poignancy that the actors keep trying to inject into it. And what’s exasperating is that the film has all the makings of being a good one. The costume designs are way less ornate and much more sensible that you’d anticipate, the art direction is inspired, its beautifully shot and the acting is fine...but all those parts does not a good film make. Garland, and director Mark Romanek, to their credit, frames the film beautifully (almost a bit too meticulously at times, truth be told). The three acts unfold fluidly – from Hailsham, to the cottages where the trio are in a sort of limbo in between adulthood and childhood and the final act where everything comes to a close. The unfortunate thing about his framing technique, though, is we end up seeing the film so distinctly as three acts and not one whole. The first act is fair, the second act is lovely and the third act is a disappointment. And the thing is, as good as the second act it epitomises the film’s fatal flaw – Ruth.

I sort of hate how the performances of the trio have become judged, Carey has been given the highest laurels by critics, the blogosphere has given their confidence to Garfield – but for me Keira Knightley emerges as the strongest of the trio, and it’s unfortunate that her performance won’t be able to go very far because she’s saddled with a character that’s so narrowly constricted it’s difficult to watch at times, even if she’s giving the film’s best performance. The film is already suffering from having a pedestrian love-story triangle and having Ruth as the impetus that prevents the affiliation between Tommy and Kathy from thriving. Thus, those last twenty minutes from the film where Ruth is expelled and Tommy and Kathy continue their journey feels violently flat. I’m all for a movie having us guessing until the end, but the “resolution” that the film reaches feels forced and makes so many of more interesting of the plot-points of the second act redundant. One of the film’s strongest sequences occurs as the gang accompanies the gang to a downtown location to seek out the woman who may be her original, the resulting revelation of whether or not the woman is Ruth’s original is handled beautifully – but in retrospect it all seems for naught because the issues raised from the confrontation are never addressed again.

There’s no denying that Never Let Me Go is a movie with promise, and there’s no doubt that something will pique your interest about it. Sally Hawkins, with about fifteen minutes of screen time, carves a multifaceted character that I kept hoping would reappear, the chemistry among the lead trio is splendid even if I’m not altogether convinced of the Carey/Andrew dynamic...but potential doesn’t make a good film. Technically superb, but maddeningly hollow (like another much feted 2010 entry) Never Let Me Go would have benefited from a more innovative script.

C+ (B-?)