2004 Best Actress: My Choice

It's time once again to go over the nominees in our most recent category and year, and evaluate them, and pick our own winner. This time I had so little watching time that a couple of these viewings are several weeks old for me, so I'm going off memories that aren't fresh. The individual posts about the movie are fresh (I would usually do them the same day or the day after) but now I'm having to think about how Annette Bening, who I watched several weeks ago, stacks up to Imelda Staunton, who I watched last night.

Anyway, once again the nominees for Best Actress, 2004, are:

• Annette Bening as Julia Lambert in Being Julia
• Catalina Sandino Moreno as María Álvarez in Maria Full of Grace
• Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake in Vera Drake
• Hilary Swank as Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby
• Kate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Academy's Choice: Hilary Swank

Weighing the Performances:

Annette Bening in Being Julia

We had some real heavyweight champs this time around, no pun intended toward Million Dollar Baby, but I think I can now safely say that Annette Bening was a real featherweight this time, nominated, essentially, for the sort of role that might have won her an Oscar in, say, 1935. No, seriously, I've been watching a lot of the older Oscar-nominated films from the 20's and 30's recently, to sort of ground myself in Hollywood history as I go through these films, and frankly, Bening's performance was fine for that era, but in modern times we demand authenticity, and Bening doesn't deliver here. This is a performance, in the purest sense of the word. Julia doesn't behave like a real person, but as a larger-than-life persona that could only exist on stage. Which is somewhat appropriate as the movie about stage acting, but most of the time, once an actress steps off the stage, and especially when she knows she isn't being watched anymore, she drops the act. Bening is clearly channeling the charming but entirely outdated theatrics of Gloria Swanson or Norma Shearer. It's a nice throwback to old Hollywood, but it doesn't feel self-aware, like she's deliberately trying to hearken back to the era where Davis or Garbo would pour on the theatrics. That would probably be enough to change my opinion entirely, like when Jack Nicholson deliberately made Jake Gittes a Bogart type in Chinatown, but without just "doing" Bogart. In this case, though, it's like she really believed she was doing some real, quality acting here, the kind only one of the greats could do, but in practice it almost comes off like unintended caricature. Considering her entire competition this year are going for utter authenticity, such a performance almost seems ridiculous, and what's really funny is that earlier in the year, I recall people suggesting that this would be the film that got Bening her long-deserved Oscar. Yeah, she was the early (and I mean early) favorite to win, though as I said in my initial review of the film, I really don't understand why people think of Bening as this oft-snubbed actress who should have won years ago. I've never really thought she was anything special. She certainly isn't here.

Catalina Sandino Moreno in Maria Full of Grace

Catalina Sandino Moreno was a newcomer both to American audiences and audiences in general, as Maria Full of Grace was her film debut, making her part of a select group, and in distinguished company, such as Glenn Close, Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, Orson Welles, Oprah Winfrey and Edward Norton, among many others. I don't know if it was her direction or her newness that had her performance come off so natural and real, adding to the edge-of-your-seat nature of her plight. Ms. Moreno's best scenes come from when she needs to act normal even as she goes through customs, is caught, and has no choice but to go along with the authorities, not knowing how she's going to get through this. It feels very much like watching a documentary, as she doesn't behave like an actress would be tempted to, but seems to actually be feeling the anxiousness and worry that her character is. And that's just the more intense scenes; her understated but emotionally turbulent performance works in a number of settings, such as at the doctor where she learns her baby has survived her muling with full health, at the home of the sister of a fellow mule who is dead, and she has to pretend she doesn't know this, while confronting her co-worker who also got into muling but now seems to blame her for it, you name it, we're in her skin the entire way. It's such an honest performance one would almost be tempted to suggest she wasn't really acting, though we know she was, and that she's capable of other performances.

Imelda Staunton in Vera Drake

Threading the subtle needle of addressing a hot-button issue in a way that makes it more about the character than the issue, Imelda Staunton had the task of trying to make an unlicensed woman performing secret abortions seem both sympathetic and have us questioning the wisdom of her actions at the same time.. There's no question her character wants to help people, but she also knows what she's doing is criminal, and potentially dangerous (she maintains that the procedure has never harmed anyone before, but she also seems unable to stay around after it's done and watch the results). It's a fine line she has to walk. She portrays Vera as a woman full of heart who lives to help others, but when she's brought face to face with a criminal investigation, she breaks down and is unable to call her actions what they are. It's really something that we're able to watch her court scenes and feel both like she's being unfairly judged but also that perhaps she's earned this. Staunton, like we usually get with Mike Leigh's actors, gives a performance much like what I said of Moreno above; very natural, authentic and seeming more like we're watching an actual person instead of a performance. As Staunton has a stage background, and in other roles I've seen her in she's as theatric and melodramatic as Bening in Being Julia, this actually was a true effort on her part, but was likely helped by Mike Leigh's approach; having her just hang out with the actors playing her family, without a script, just getting used to each other. I don't know that Moreno had that, which makes me lean, so far, to her.

Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby

Hilary Swank did an unconventional "deglam" for her role as Maggie in Million Dollar Baby, a white-trash woman with nothing in her life except her dream of being a boxer. I talked about "deglamming" in my initial review, and I mentioned that here, Swank's deglam consists mainly of not looking like a conventional Hollywood beauty and allowing her face to get messed up and covered in blood, sweat, tears and bruises. It's very easy to see her as the backwoods woman from Missouri she's supposed to be, but most of that has to do with Swank's natural unconventional look. She didn't have to do much to look like a poor wannabe boxer, is what I'm saying. Even her southern accent probably wasn't a stretch for her. What's really crazy is that this is Swank's second win and her first win was another where she deliberately looked masculine and did a southern accent. Somehow that's a winning combo for Swank with the Academy, as since then she's tried for more nominations with more conventional Oscar-type roles like in Insomnia, The Gift, The Homesman, The Affair of the Necklace, Amelia and Freedom Writers and the Academy hasn't cared a whit. She's one of only seven performers to win literally all their nominations, and she did so with two very similar roles. What part of this role impressed the Academy so much that they just had to award her again? After all, her first win was for playing a trans man (how well would that go over nowadays?) so what was more challenging about a woman who wants to box? Well, probably all the off-screen training and prep that went into it, I'll grant that. Going even further, I wasn't impressed with her portrayal of a southerner, thought it might have been the script that let her down there. The line "don't rightly know" still doesn't sit well with me. But the scene where she, only able to move her facial muscles and those not much, tells her mother what she'll do if she comes back again? Oh, boy, that was a chills moment. So I can't say I didn't appreciate the nomination, but a win? Let's look at our final performance, and decide.

Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Kate Winslet is a transcendent actress, who I firmly believe is going down in history for her generation the way we revere Katharine Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland or Elizabeth Taylor today. She's a winner now, as well, but wasn't when this film was made, and I gotta say, I think it was a missed opportunity (I have a feeling she will win again some day, though). This was a very tough role, and one of the true stretches I saw among the five performances here. I've pointed out how she's really playing three versions (maybe more) of the same character, and having to make each convincing and believably a part of the same person. She's the Clementine who's just a young broken bird with her own issues, a spiteful bitch who hates her lover and wants nothing more than to get out of the relationship, a free spirit who encourages her man to come out of his shell, and even just a reflection of how he likes to think of her, and the real question is how much of these are part of her real persona, how many of them are just her ex-lover projecting them on her, or is it possible that they're all facets of the real woman? Man, I'm tired just thinking about what must have gone into that performance.

My Choice: Kate Winslet

It's probably appropriate to say this here; I'm going to change up my methods a bit. Up until now I've been drawing a new category and year each time. It's led to some frustration as I've more than once drawn the same category twice, and there's been several categories I haven't gotten to do at all yet. I mainly set it up the way I did so that I wouldn't get bored doing a full Oscar year in one go, but to be frank, I've actually done this more than once now, and I think I prefer it.

So from now on what I'll do is draw a year, and then do the year in full, still film by film, category by category like always, but in this case, just drawing the category so that I'll know what order I'll do them in for that year.

The main difference is that you'll see a full year finished, category by category, with the same opening and closing posts as always, and I'll be honest; I thought about going back and doing the rest of the year for years I've already covered (1938, 1954, 1929-30 and 1974) but I think instead I'll wait until those years come back around.