FYC: Lily Gladstone, Supporting Actress

by John Guerin

I could not have predicted that in a movie starring Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, and Michelle Williams, a performance by relative newcomer Lily Gladstone would leave me the most affected. The best short film of 2016 is the third act of Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, in which Jamie (Gladstone), a solitary Montana rancher, falls for Beth, an out-of-town lawyer (Stewart), who is stuck teaching an educational law night class four-hours away from her home in Livingston. Stewart, unsurprisingly, adds another formidable performance to her collection of direct yet remote modern women, but the revelation here is Gladstone, who contributes a sensational breakthrough performance that deserves The Academy’s attention...

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1984: Year of the Heroic Farm Wife

As we look back at 1984, please welcome new contributor John Guerin to talk about a famous Oscar triple...

In 1984, 60% of the Best Actress category was farm wives

In May 1985, after scoring Oscar nominations for playing distressed farmwives in Country and The River, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and urged senators to help aid farmers during a devastating agricultural crisis. After a toxic combination of faulty economic policies, mounting debts, high interest rates, and a declining Midwest population, American farmers were experiencing financial hardship unseen since the Great Depression. Both Country and The River offer visions of farm families under such pressures, pitting family and community against unyielding forces of nature and government.

Can you remember the last time an actress testified before Congress after starring in a politically-minded film?

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