Maria Bakalova is only twenty-four years old and had appeared in three Bulgarian features before Sasha Baron Cohen tapped her to play his daughter in
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. He needed a deliverer of jokes but more importantly somebody who could be his confederate in the undercover filming of unwitting subjects. Whether it was pure luck or he saw something in her she turned out to be nearly his equal in performing the comic subterfuge while staying in and improvising as the character. She also has some nice dramatic moments, surprising given the premise. She has little chance of winning but let the nomination be reward enough for being alone with Rudy Giuliani in a hotel room.
Amanda Seyfried is still young but has been at this for a while. She was eighteen when she got the supporting role as one of the Plastics in
Mean Girls (2003). Her profile continued to rise through HBO’s
”Big Love” (2006-2011),
Mama Mia! (2008),
Les Misérables (2012) and while some of the projects designed to be blockbusters never quite caught on (
Red Riding Hood, Pan, Epic, In Time, The Art of Racing in the Rain) she was also making some nice decisions indie wise (
First Reformed, Lovelace, Chloe). Fincher chose her to be his Marion Davies in
Mank and it garners her first Oscar nomination. It’s a solid performance but stuck somewhere between an ingénue role and something that takes big dramatic swings. She and the film humanize Davies for those who may only know of her as the mythical analog for
Citizen Kane’s Susan Alexander Kane, but it isn’t the kind of performance that usually wins here.
Youn Yuh-Jung may be unfamiliar to American audiences at large but has been working in Korea since the 1970s. She had a strong debut in Kim Ki-Young’s
Woman of Fire (1971) and
The Insect Woman (1972) and spent decades on television and film. But one need not be versed in her career to appreciate her talents as the grandmother in
Minari. The Academy voters sure didn’t know her but had no trouble getting her onto the ballot. As the woman flown into rural 1980s Arkansas to help raise her grandchildren while their parents work Youn hits the right balance of humor and pathos, seen mostly through the eyes of Alan Kim’s David, first being scared of and ashamed of his elder before realizing he may have the coolest grandma around. The 73-year-old is not the first non-English speaking role to be nominated here. Marina de Tavira got the nod two years ago for
Roma (2018), both Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi for
Babel (2006), and Valentina Cortese in Truffaut’s
Day for Night (1974). Penélope Cruz won at the 2009 ceremony for her Spanish and English performance in Woody Allen’s
Vicky Christina Barcelona. Will Youn Yuh-Jung make some history?
Olivia Colman was no secret to any fan of British television and film for the past twenty years – I first fell in love with her as Sophie on
”Peep Show”, for you maybe it was
”Broadchurch” or
”Mr. Sloane” or
Tyrranosaur – but the rest of the world got to know her on
”The Crown” and
”Fleabag” just before she had an upset win as Oscar’s Best Actress for her tortured and pathetic Queen Anne in Yorgos Lanthimos’
The Favourite (2018), beating out Lady Gaga in
A Star is Born and one Glenn Close in
The Wife.
The Father is a real tour de force for Anthony Hopkins, and while Colman’s role is not as complex she skillfully conveys the entire arc of bewilderment, amusement, guilt, and pain in her lesser screentime. I don’t think it will be enough to get her a second Oscar this time out but she is definitely an actress on the Academy’s collective radar now.
Glenn Close currently holds an impressive if slightly dubious record. Along with the late, legendary Peter O’Toole she has amassed the most Oscar nominations in history without having won. Eight is that number. She is one of only fourteen performers with at least eight noms. She started out hot out of the gate with a nomination for her feature film debut as Supporting Actress for
The World According to Garp (1982). Jessica Lange, double nominated in both lead and supporting categories for
Frances and
Tootsie won over Glenn. She was the only member singled out from the ensemble of
The Big Chill (1983) the very next year, losing Supporting Actress to Linda Hunt in
The Year of Living Dangerously. She was nominated for the third year in a row for
The Natural (1984), losing to Peggy Ashcroft in David Lean’s
A Passage to India. Glenn earned her first nomination as Best Actress for her iconic psycho in
Fatal Attraction (1987) but lost to Cher and
Moonstruck. Nominated in back-to-back years again, this time as the lead in
Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and watched Jodie Foster win her first Oscar for
The Accused.
Despite some good big screen work in the ‘90s and first decade of the 2000s (
Reversal of Fortune, 101 Dalmatians, Cookie’s Fortune, The Safety of Objects) and winning Tony and Emmy awards, she did not get another Oscar nomination until
Albert Nobbs (2011) where Meryl Streep won her third Oscar, Best Actress in
The Iron Lady. As mentioned above she lost her seventh bid to Olivia Colman in
The Favourite which was the surprise winner over her work in
The Wife (2017). Ron Howard’s
Hillbilly Elegy was savaged by critics and the only other nomination it managed was for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling. Close gives a fierce if mostly one-note performance under some of that makeup. I doubt many Glenn Close fans would consider this one of her best two or three film performances but at the age of seventy-four and never having won before, how many more chances will she get? Look, nobody thought
The Color of Money was one of Newman’s best,
Scent of a Woman is not in the same class of Pacino performance as
The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, or
Serpico, and to say
The Departed is a better Scorsese film than
Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, or
GoodFellas is just silly. And yet…sometimes that’s just the way the Oscar cookie crumbles. I would have given it to her a couple tries ago.
Albert Nobbs is miles better than Streep’s Thatcher, in my book. If Glenn Close does win she joins Geraldine Page as the only performer with eight nominations and just one win. If she loses she stays with O’Toole as the only winless actor with that many nominations. I think the nickname Glenn Close-but-No-Oscar only has a few weeks left of usefulness. She’ll win. Finally.
If/when she does her 46-year-old
Hillbilly Elegy co-star Amy Adams will become the living actor with the most nominations without a win (six, so far).