| Holden Pike | 02-18-23 12:48 PM |
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While Cate Blanchett is not the oldest of the five nominees she is definitely the most nominated. Tár is her seventh nomination and she has two wins (for Woody's Blue Jasmine in this category and for The Aviator's Kate Hepburn in the Supporting category). Had she not won an Oscar, or not won Best Actress before, I'd say she was due the way Glenn Close is way overdue. With a couple Oscars at home already I don't suspect Tár, while a good performance of course, is so overpowering that it will get her a third. But obviously barring getting hit by a bus she is going to be back here many more times. She won't ever catch Meryl Streep's number of nominations (quite possibly nobody ever will), but she will surely get into double digits.
The one who may well win chiefly because she hasn't won before is Michelle Williams. This is her fifth nomination (Blue Valentine and My Week with Marilyn as Best Actress and Brokeback Mountain and Manchester by the Sea as Supporting). She plays essentially Steven Spielberg's eccentric mother in his thinly-veiled The Fabelmans, and while she is good and has a couple showy scenes it hardly feels like a meaty lead role and after all the impressive work she has done, including unnominated turns in Kelly Reichardt's Wendy & Lucy, Meek's Cutoff, and Certain Women, it would be a little hollow to win Best Actress for a solid but not-much-more role. Yet stranger things have happened.
Speaking of playing Marilyn Monroe, while the film itself was incredibly divisive (and understandably so) you can't really fault Ana de Armas or her performance. I can't and her fellows in the Acting Branch of the Academy didn't, anyway. I like what director Andrew Dominik was going for in Blonde, even though I don't think he hit his target very often. But I was mesmerized by de Armas, and not just because she is nude for seemingly about a third of the flick. The Cuban-born beauty seemed to come out of nowhere when she flickered seductively in Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and then shined so very brightly at the center of Knives Out (2019). At only thirty-four she should continue to see her star rise. Blonde is so derided by its detractors I can't see her winning, but I will not be shocked to see her back again as a nominee more than once in the next couple decades.
And for those keeping score at home, that makes two actresses who have been Oscar nominated for playing Marilyn (Williams & de Armas) while Monroe herself was never nominated.
And speaking of controversy, the brouhaha over Andrea Riseborough's nomination was much ado about nada. For those who have now taken the time to find and watch To Leslie there is no doubt it is an Oscar-worthy performance. Playing a Texas woman who once won a couple hundred thousand dollars in the lottery only to blow it all on booze and excess over the years, alienating her friends and most crucially her son, Riseborough is sad and tragic and absolutely magnetic. The performance is all the more impressive if you are just learning that Andrea is English. Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) was probably the first time I noticed her and you may have seen her in Battle of the Sexes (2017), The Death of Stalin (2017), Mandy (2018), The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021), or last year's disappointing Amsterdam (2022). She is heartbreaking and fully committed in To Leslie. While she has long odds of actually winning her odds of even making the Best Actress cut seemed long, too.
Michelle Yeoh is somehow sixty-years-old and started acting in film almost forty years ago! After becoming an action star in Hong Kong she hit the international stage, first as a Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and then in Ang Lee's worldwide phenomenon Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Since then she has moved back and forth between the Asian and English film businesses and I am sure had no idea that agreeing to do The Daniels' weird, funky little script would land her with her first Oscar nomination. It may lead to a win, both for the fun and dexterity of her work in Everything Everywhere All at Once and for her long career. If she were to win Malaysia-born Yeoh would be only the third Asian woman to win an acting award, following Youn Yuh-jung (Korean) for Minari a couple years back and Miyoshi Umeki (Japanese) for Sayonara (1957), both in the Supporting Actress category.