This one has shaped up to be a two-horse race, which at least makes it more interesting than an presumed winner.
This is
Viggo Mortensen’s second Oscar nomination. His first was for Cronenberg’s
Eastern Promises, the year Daniel Day-Lewis won for
There Will Be Blood. There was a topic on our site back in
2009 where Viggo said he might not make another movie. At that point he was exhausted by the pace he’d been on. Not surprisingly he is still acting, though seemingly he is taking work anywhere but Hollywood. Happily
Captain Fantastic found its way to him and he took it on. The indie didn’t get huge distribution over the summer, but it was noticed by enough of his admirers in the Academy to make the cut for Best Actor, even though the film itself received no other nominations. He won’t win this year, but plucking the nomination out of relative obscurity compared to the other campaigns being run shows how respected he is among his peers.
This is
Ryan Gosling’s second nomination, as well. His first came for the gritty
Half Nelson, when Forest Whitaker won for
The Last King of Scotland. Gosling’s career started as a child on
"The All-New Mickey Mouse Club" in the mid-1990s, the class that also included Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake. When he reemerged as a 21-year-old in the skinhead drama
The Believer (2001), it was clear his choice to go the route of the serious actor rather than pop star of his teenage castmates was the correct one. The adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’
The Notebook gave him the opportunity to try his hand at 21st Century matinee idol, but he also rejected that track in favor of projects like
Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, Blue Valentine, Drive, and
The Place Beyond the Pines, playing against his leading man looks. But he did also show off his comedic chops in
Crazy Stupid Love and his supporting role in
The Big Short. Whether falling in love with an inanimate sex doll, tenderly kissing the girl he loves before beating very bloody Hell out of a would-be assassin in an elevator, or mentoring a middle-aged broken heart through the modern dating scene, Gosling can be incredibly charming on screen. That charm is on full display in
La La Land, and coupled with the overwhelming momentum of the movie as a whole it has propelled him here. Oh, by the way, he also learned how to proficiently play jazz piano for the film, and does all of his own playing on screen and on the soundtrack.
He won’t win this time, which is a year that also includes his unnominated but brilliantly over-the-top comic turn in
The Nice Guys, but the kind of material he is attracted to will surely bring him back again and again over his career, and you gotta figure he’ll win one eventually (he is only thirty-six). Lighter more comedic performances don’t generally win Best Actor, with Jean Dujardin in
The Artist and Jack Nicholson in
As Good As it Gets being the two most recent. Usually it’s the darker dramatic work that wins this prize, and when Gosling does win it will probably be for one of those.
Andrew Garfield is enjoying his very first Oscar nomination. While he is best known to mainstream audiences for his Spider-Man reboots, the 33-year-old Englishman has been doing good work for years. I first noticed him in
Boy A and
Red Riding, and other than Peter Parker his most high-profile gig pre-2016 was as Eduardo Saverin, the man cut out of Facebook by Jesse Eisneberg’s Mark Zuckerberg in Fincher’s
The Social Network. He was excellent along side Michael Shannon in 2015’s
99 Homes, but after 2016’s double shot of
Hacksaw Ridge and Scorsese’s
Silence, you gotta figure he’ll be starring in a lot more good projects over the next few years. Up next is Andy Serkis’ debut
Breathe about a man paralyzed by Polio and
Under Silver Lake, a thriller from David Robert Mitchell (
It Follows).
As far as the work goes, he is excellent in both
Hacksaw Ridge and
Silence, and it doesn’t hurt his cause to have two great performances out there, even if he is only officially nominated for one of them. No actor has yet been double nominated in the same category in a year, though eleven times an actor or actress has been nominated for both lead and supporting work in the same year, most recently Cate Blanchett for
Elizabeth: The Golden Age and
I’m Not There, Jamie Foxx for
Ray and
Collateral, and Julianne Moore for
Far from Heaven and
The Hours as the only instances in the 21st Century. The one odd case in Oscar history is Barry Fitzgerald for 1944’s
Going My Way, where he was nominated both as lead and supporting for the same performance, which they have disallowed ever since. The point being that when there are two great lead performances in a single year, one of them rises as the Oscar choice. With
Hacksaw Ridge’s five other noms, including Best Picture and Best Director, it’s not surprising that this is the performance that got formally recognized.
Even with the two great performances it’s unlikely he will be an upset winner this time, though his career is clearly taking off in a big way.
Casey Affleck is enjoying his second nomination, the first being Supporting Actor for
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (the year Javier Bardem won for
No Country for Old Men). Apparently the initial idea for
Manchester by the Sea was pitched by John Krasinski and Matt Damon to Kenneth Lonergan to write. He did, and at early stages Damon was going to direct and star in it, then just star while Lonergan directed. By the time the financing and schedule were secured, Damon was too busy to take the role and it went to his friend Casey Affleck. Which is all great news for Casey.
Manchester by the Sea isn’t Casey Affleck’s first starring role, that was in Steve Buscemi’s very good and underseen indie
Lonesome Jim (2005). The low key reality of his persona was a great fit for brother Ben’s Boston Noir
Gone Baby Gone (2007), and his psychotic Texas sheriff in Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s
The Killer Inside Me (2010) is Devilish fun, but playing the haunted and self-destructive Lee Chandler is easily the best role he has been given. He’s wonderful in the film. It’s a character that starts off as unlikeable and mysteriously withdrawn, but as the flashbacks continue to unwravel the full nature of the tragedy that broke him in the past, the audience and his nephew grow to understand why he can’t possibly move back to this town, for any reason, not even a good or noble one. Though punctuated with brief flurries of violence, it is a mostly still performance as the structure of the film reveals who he really is and why.
Denzel Washington is the old veteran among the nominees. At the age of sixty-two, this is the seventh nomination of his storied career. His first two noms were in the Supporting category for
Cry Freedom and
Glory. Since then it has been all Best Actor, starting with Spike Lee’s
Malcom X, Norman Jewison’s
The Hurricane, Antoine Fuqua’s
Training Day, Robert Zemeckis’
Flight, and now his self-directed
Fences. His two Oscar wins came for
Glory and
Training Day. Another win would put him in elite company. There are only six people who have won more than two acting Oscars: Walter Brennan, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Meryl Streep all have three each, and Katharine Hepburn has four. Whether Denzel wins this year or not, assuming he doesn’t drop dead anytime soon it figures he will break into their ranks at some point.
August Wilson’s
Fences is a Pulitzer Prize and Tony winning play, published in 1983 and produced on Broadway in 1987. It is Wilson’s most famous work, the sixth of what became a ten-part Pittsburgh Cycle of plays. The original production starred James Earl Jones as Troy Maxson, the middle-aged sanitation worker who feels that but for his race and a stretch in prison he might have been one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. The crushing weight of his own anger and disappointment with life causes him to block his son’s chances at possibly excelling as a football player who could potentially get a college scholarship. In the play/film we see how his charm and drive, despite his setbacks, keep him moving forward. By the end of the play the pain some of his bitter drive has caused others comes fully to light, and Denzel gives one of the best if not the best performances of his life as the bombastic, endearing, and flawed man. Denzel and Viola Davis starred in a 2010 Broadway revival that earned both of them Tony Awards, and the power and lived-in authenticity of their performances is what lifts the film adaptation.
So it appears to come down to this: will it be Denzel’s third win, or Casey’s first? If Denzel had somehow never won in his previous nominations he would be an absolute lock and they’d be scrambling to make up for not having anointed him before, and I don’t think it’s controversial or a stretch to say
Fences is a much better performance than the two he’s actually won for. But Casey Affleck is
really good in
Manchester by the Sea. Affleck may get other great opportunities that turn into nominations down the line, but Denzel most certainly will. Will the established icon’s masterful work in a passion project get the nod over a younger actor who nailed the role of his life? One is a very dynamic, boisterous performance, the other quiet and subtle.
We’ll know in a few weeks. If I had a ballot I would be voting for Casey Affleck, but if Denzel’s name is called to the stage Oscar night you can’t really fault them for their choice.
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