Hey everybody. Michael C. here. Growing up in the dark days before Twitter, back before I could get my Oscar gripe on 24/7, I had to focus all that emotion on Siskel and Ebert’s annual "Memo to the Academy" special. Watching year after year, one of the refrains the duo drilled into my head was that the Academy should expand their idea of what constitutes an Oscar-worthy performance. Don’t lazily jot down the names of those appearing in best picture contenders. Evaluate each performance on its own merits, apart from the film that contains it. They were adamant on the subject.
Or at least they were, until the 1998/99 episode when Gene found the limits of Roger’s open-mindedness by suggesting James Woods receive a Best Actor nod for John Carpenter’s Vampires. After Gene went on for a bit about Woods’ talent for commanding the screen, Roger demurred, “Yeah, but if you’re gonna nominate someone for Best Actor you kinda want them to be in a little better movie, don’t you think?”
Gene wasn’t having it: “No. I want the performance. I don’t care about the movie.”
This altercation zeroed in on a question that has always nagged at me. If even a harsh critic of stodgy thinking like Ebert has to draw the line somewhere, is the issue that cut and dry? Is it really possible to separate the performance from the film? [more]
I can always feel my brain rebel against the idea. Critics never tire of declaring it - I’m as guilty as anyone - but whenever I hear it I always imagine a silent “within reason” tacked on to the end of the sentiment. “Be more adventurous in your voting. Don’t hold a performance responsible for the faults of the film... but, you know, within reason.”
Performances don’t exist in a bubble. I don’t think it’s outrageous to say that many roles arrive with a built-in limit on their potential. To name just one recent example, I thought Jessica Chastain elevated the hell out of Mama, finding all sorts of nuance that wasn’t on the page, but one would be hard pressed to call it a major achievement. There was a ceiling to how great one could be in that role and, to her credit, Chastain bumped up against it.
When it comes to work in lesser films a good rule of thumb is that the films have to at least aspire to real quality for the performance to have room to reach greatness. Matthew McConaughey delivers an exceptional performance in Jeff Nichols’ upcoming Mud even as the film itself ultimately fails to deliver on the same level. Yet if Mud wasn’t swinging for the fences with its ambitious screenplay, McConaughey would not have had the opportunity to succeed to the degree he does.
Admittedly, this is a non-issue to a large extent, because there is so much space for awards voters to expand their thinking without coming close to running out of worthy performances. But even as we are justly critical of the lazy thinking of voting bodies, we should acknowledge that the issue isn’t nearly as cut and dry we would like to think. If we are being honest, doesn’t a list of our favorite performances look awfully similar to a list of our favorite movies?
Previous Burning Questions
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