Category confusion is always a hot topic in the Film Experience comment section. It's been debated across this awards season, from regional critics honors to the major precursors, from the smallest indie flick to some of the year's biggest blockbuster offerings. So. It's only logical for the LEAD or SUPPORTING polls to make a return. Last time, the lot included Killers of the Flower Moon, Passages, Barbie, and much more. Now, let's redirect our collective attention to newer releases, including the much-discussed May December. Are Charles Melton and Julianne Moore co-leads alongside Natalie Portman? Let's discuss…
I'm inclined to consider May December as a three-lead film. Part of that judgment comes from how Haynes orchestrates his tonal games around the actors, having them perform almost as if each occupies a different register. Portman's hyper-artifice dominates the narrative, but it's essentially countered by Moore's more lived-in thorniness, her projected self-delusion, and melodramatic manipulations. Together, they form a vicious cycle that inspires many uncomfortable laughs. But then comes Melton, puncturing the camp balloon with a sense of actual human cost, all pain and bruised naturalism.
Screentime counts may show that the Moore-Melton duo has fewer minutes on screen than Portman. However, as I stated before, screentime isn't everything. What do you think?
Let's continue our explorations through the season's Oscar contenders. Carey Mulligan comes next for her Maestro performance. The actress's first billing and the film's structure position her as a lead of equal importance to Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein. Still, some would say that Felicia Montealegre is too underdeveloped as a character to be considered a lead, more an extended version of the long-suffering wife archetype than anything else. Thoughts?
Though Michael Mann's Ferrari is, in many ways, another of the director's explorations of constrictive masculinity, the narrative is keen on detours into feminine perspectives. Penélope Cruz is the primary beneficiary of this gambit, having many sequences for herself in Adam Driver's absence. At the end of the day, the story isn't about Laura Ferrari, but the character's importance, paired with Cruz's star power, makes for a lasting impression. Unsurprisingly, when coming out of the theater, most audiences seem to be talking about the Best Supporting Actress contender rather than the putative leading man.
When a major contender divides its tale between actors of disproportionate legacy, the weight of a storied career can be enough for awards bodies to name one lead and the other supporting. Take The Holdovers. The film is about the relationship between a teacher and his student and how they change each other over a despondent holiday season in the early 70s. However, voters have settled on Paul Giamatti as the picture's sole lead, with Dominic Sessa deemed supporting despite them sharing the brunt of the storytelling. Even when accounting for screentime, Giamatti only has six minutes more than his younger costar.
Despite its literary origins in Martin Amis' work, The Zone of Interest is a film virtually dispossessed of narrative. Things happen, but they are presented as quotidian observation, cold and detached, stuck at a clinical distance that goes deeper than the camera's aversion to closeups. Still, in the Auschwitz captain's household, the Höss matriarch is as important as her husband, embodying the picture's poisonous domesticity with even more clarity than the man. If Cristian Friedel is a lead, shouldn't Sandra Hüller be considered one too?
Jumping beyond performances vying for gold, let's assess another Sandra Hüller picture. While the embattled writer accused of murdering her husband is the sun around which everything else orbits in Anatomy of a Fall, the script is generous to the other characters. Indeed, some could argue her silver-haired lawyer and blind son have as much narrative weight. The former has undoubtedly captivated social media, fancam and all. The latter, played by Milo Machado Graner, feels especially important, as the film's resolution and final statement converge on him rather than Hüller's cipher-like figure.
After winning the Volpi Cup in Venice, Peter Saarsgard has been campaigning as a supporting actor for Memory. The film is a two-hander shared between him and Jessica Chastain, with each character bringing different issues with the very concept in the title. To say one of them is above the other, narratively, feels like missing the point.
But then there are those films about relationships where the dynamic is at the center of the film, but one figure takes on an antagonistic role and is therefore deemed supporting. Priscilla and Eileen fit the bill, with Jacob Elordi and Anne Hathaway existing more as ideas than protagonists, helping us understand their leads by colliding with them. Does that make them leads?
On a less volatile or violent note, we have the romance of The Taste of Things. When dealing with such central love stories, it often feels right to consider both parties co-leads. Where does Juliette Binoche fit, then?
Then there's a movie whose dialogue implies an inflated sense of importance that the character's on-screen presentation doesn't corroborate. Josephine is described as central to Napoleon's rule, but Scott's framing of history leaves little space for Vanessa Kirby to deliver on that promise. Maybe it'll be like Kingdom of Heaven, where Eva Green's borderline lead and stupendous turn was obfuscated by butcher-like editing. Her complete characterization only saw the light of day through the director's cut, and the same might happen to Vanessa Kirby in Napoleon.
Now, Talk to Me is nowhere near Oscar talk, but one can still debate its categorizations. After all, Sophie Wilde has been nominated as a supporting actress by more genre-savvy organizations, a placement that makes little sense when one watches the movie. Or maybe it does, and I'm just crazy. What's your take on it?
Finally, for some silly fun, why not debate one of the holiday season's unlikeliest movie stars? Is the giant lizard a supporting character or an inhuman co-protagonist in Godzilla Minus One? I guess this is a question one can ask about most kaiju titles, where the monster drives the picture, but humans get to be our guides into the mayhem.
Please leave your thoughts in the comments, argue for your position on these cases, and mention others that should be added to the discussion.