OSCAR
SYMPOSIUM
with
your host Nathaniel
and six very special guests
February 2008
Our Seven Participants
day one / day two / day three
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NICK: Huzzah! I've been waiting for my chance to be on the same page as you, Kim, and here we are with Blanchett. Ditto to every precise, perfect thing that you and Sasha say about her, even if I'm still voting for Swinton.
But will I spoil the sudden, rainbow thrill of fellow feeling if I say that I admired and enjoyed -- the time has come -- the polarizing Marion Cotillard just as much, if not more? The technical exactitude of her performance aside (though it's a major, magnificent "aside"), there is a whole lightning storm of facial and physical expression flickering all over that performance that just doesn't fit, for me, into the Mimicry jar. Edith, terrified to foul up in her first public singing, but maybe terrified to succeed? Edith, angry and testy for a second as she resents, maybe even hates, the audience she's nonetheless about to seduce and to beg for their affection, their oxygen. Edith, whether famous or no, usually looking for a moment or two like she wonders if this recital will somehow start the end of it all. Edith, living flamboyantly, but also working on a diligent, exhausting performance of blithe flamboyance; she and Karen Crowder might understand each other, in a way. Cotillard, never forgetting to act the physical suffering (as Salma Hayek often forgot to do in Frida). As masked as the actress often looks in the still photos -- of her in character, I mean -- I found the real-time spectacle of her work to be astonishingly lively, and though "subtle" seems like not quite the word, I did feel that if I blinked, I missed a telltale furrow of the brow or dart in her glance or clasp of her fist or grimace of unvoiced horror. Quite a show, and my pick by a long shot over the terrific trio of Linney, Page, and Christie (virtually equal in my book, but probably in that order). Everything that's been said in praise of the "bigness" of Day-Lewis' performance seems equally apt here, from where I'm sitting.
But as I learned in '07, You Can't Stop What's Coming. Bring it on, anti-Cotillardians. Or am I among friends? (And I mean you all, too, commenters on Nathaniel's blog!)
TIM: I'm not anti-Cotillard in the slightest, but I might be more pro her if there was another single thing in her film to entice me back for a return visit. I'll have to force myself. My quip at the time (and it's a whole year ago now that I saw this) was that she looks like a particularly frizzed-up Ronald MacDonald, which is obviously unfair -- there was real bravura and feeling there, and I like Nick's assessment of it as kind of a performance about giving a performance. If Tilda's Karen is a similar meta-creation, could we say Blanchett is on to quite the opposite tack? Her version of Dylan is all about not wanting to "perform", or not like s/he's being told to, anyway -- it's an anti-performance, a refusal to be boxed for public consumption, and hardly any less compelling. If Blanchett had worked a little of that diva-ish reluctance into the craven panto stylings of Elizabeth: Armed and Fabulous, I might have had more respect for the movie, her presence in it, and the silly fact of her double nomination. As for the mimicry/not mimicry issue, I'll admit that I think all acting is mimicry -- good when it captures the complex, often self-contradictory essence of a person, real or imagined; bad when it stops in their skin. Cotillard gets way down beneath Edith Piaf's skin, just as Blanchett does with Dylan and Day-Lewis with Daniel Plainview and Tommy Lee Jones with Hank Deerfield.
What about Julie Christie? It's beautiful work, but I do wonder if, in a strange kind of way, she has the easiest task in this category, which is to act Alzheimer's by not acting it, if you get my drift. There's no doubt that her approach works, even if I think a gauzy script is licensing this literary version of the illness -- "There's something delicious in oblivion" etc -- where a tougher one might have made her work a little harder to diagnose its symptoms. Still, the faraway haze of her performance is totally effective in context, and I can't begrudge her a likely win: her best scenes (stopped in her tracks when she forgets the word for wine, and dealing with Pinsent in the day room, as if she was playing nurse) were pretty breathtaking.
Linney's the only one I like even more in this category. It was only on my second viewing of The Savages that I really grasped quite how much wonderful acting she's doing in it: my own Best Actress blog-vote for her this year was for the prickly brilliance of Jindabyne, but I now consider the utterly different Claire and Wendy to be near equals. For me Wendy Savage is far above Page's Juno (or even Amy in Enchanted) as the great comic turn of this season -- I love how she's constantly displacing her guilt on to such fool's errands as the search for the big red cushion, and her way of massaging her own self-worth by trying to upgrade Lenny's surroundings was a terrific script notion, terrifically played. And that little stroke she gives the dog while Larry's ploughing away on top of her! I plain love her in this movie. Love, love, love. It's the best nearly-wasn't nomination of this year, including Tilda's.
BOYD: I'm with Nick on Cotillard and I think it really is a once-in-a-lifetime performance for an actress. It is really her role and her role completely and to think that the whole dang thing was shot completely out of sequence -- forcing her to be a decrepit old wreck in the morning and a teen in the afternoon -- just underlines what a superb achievement it is for Cotillard, that sprightly but somewhat bland girl from the Taxi franchise and that terrible Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe film set in France. The fact that she plays a famous diva (yes, great diva first, then great singer) helps her overcome the foreign-language obstacle. Being a diva needs no translation, and this is one of those rare French films that doesn't rely on dialogue for its appeal. It's a show and no one loves a show quite like AMPAS voters. For all the greatness of Marion, however, I am also with Tim when he suggests it is a great performance in a not-so-great movie, which might hurt its chances come February 24. Too long, too jumbled, too mannered. Quick: what was Piaf's involvement in Leplée's death, who interviewed her on the beach and when did she first land in the US?
Will Academy members pop it in the DVD player again before making a final decision? Somehow, I doubt it. Christie will win because she is a glamorous diva from abroad too, and she has a track record that Cotillard can only dream of at this point in time. She is a known quantity and no one needs to pop a screener into any kind of player to be reminded of her greatness. Having won an Oscar in 1966 is almost like not having won an Oscar at all - and I'm counting on the she's-still-without sentiment to get Tilda her first statue too, Blanchett be damned.
SASHA: It's not going to happen for Tilda, I don't think. Here we must invoke the Marisa Tomei rule - the American in the bunch takes the prize. In this case, it's down to Ruby Dee or Amy Ryan, in my opinion. Do we really think that all of the acting prizes are going to go to Europeans? I just don't see it happening, folks. Day Lewis, Christie (or Cotillard), Bardem and....? No, I take the Marisa Tomei rule on this one and am contemplating it for Best Actress too: Laura Linney, the singular American (if she is even American). Julie Christie is practically American as we've claimed her long ago. Cotillard, it seems to me, is following the Ellen Burstyn trajectory (other than the French/American thing): brilliant performance in a "weird" film.
BOYD: I'm afraid I completely see the logic of the Marisa Tomei rule, but if Dee wins for that one great scene in American Gangster then I will officially petition AMPAS for a "Best blink-it-or-you-miss-it-cameo-performance-by-a-well-loved-actor-still-without-Oscar-after-all-these-years" category. In fact, they should have instated that category at least as far back as 1999, when Judi Dench won an Oscar for looking like what Tim might call a sea anemone for all of 12 minutes. (Perhaps this means that no one should rule out a win for Blanchett in the Best Actress category either?)
NICK: Boyd, I think of that as the Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life rule, too. The exciting thing for me about Linney's nomination, including all the glories of the actual performance, which Tim already evoked so beautifully, is that she actually got the Joan Allen-in-Upside of Anger nomination that Joan didn't, for insane reasons related to chaos theory, actually get. I.e., the "if she gets nominated, she might actually win, because everyone loves her AND she's brilliant in this vehicle AND why doesn't she have one already" nomination.
But I still say Christie's got it locked up. And that hilarious parting shot in the SAG speech ("It's because I'm still in character...") sure can't hurt. Let's give this woman another microphone!
DENNIS: Yes, absolutely, Nick. And I would add to the foundation of Christie's likely win her poise in immediately referring to the WGA strike and the importance of unions in Hollywood during her SAG award moment. Not that it was a calculated move or anything, but if that didn't make her some friends... But I remember taking a sharp breath as she approached that Alzheimer's comment, and after she said what she said I laughed and commented to my wife, "Wow, that was an absolutely beautiful, hilarious bullet-dodging we just witnessed there, and I think she just won the Oscar too!"
I finally saw Gone Baby Gone last night, however, so I may have something to say about all that. And though I wouldn't claim to know everything about Dylan, I will say that clearly Blanchett's performance is no stunt. There's a meticulous, indifferent, ambivalent beauty to it that marshals the warring impulses we see in Pennebaker's film into a very real character. That last sideways glance "Dylan" gives to the audience before the credits roll is Haynes' grand, weird, delirious experiment all packed up and ready to stand up next to everything we've ever heard or felt about the mysterious Mr. Zimmerman. If anyone but Blanchett wins, even the spectacular Amy Ryan, but especially Ruby Dee/Judi Dench/Beatrice Straight, it will be cause for some serious head-scratchin'.
NATHANIEL: Gah! How did I not remember to stack the symposium deck against Marion Cotillard? I kid. I kid. I wish I could cotton to the argument that she's underneath the skin and that all acting is mimicry and so on and so on... but frankly, and with all due respect: I heard those same things about Capote, about Ray, about The Queen. Every time someone plays someone famous in a biopic the same arguments of "transcendent!" go flying... Maybe because I'm immune to this particular acting spell, I just don't see it. But the sameness of the praise leads me to believe that the recreation of icons has a peculiarly bewitching effect on people. There is just no way that all performances of people in biopics are transcendent and under the skin. It's not that I don't think those performances can be special. I just don't think they are judged on the same spectrum of quality. They are almost always judged through the lens of what we already know about the famous person (note all the references to how much we already understand about Dylan before Cate gets to reworking him) we're seeing recreated.
If this Edith Piaf were a fictional character would people be as entranced by the performance? Or would they think "gee, this movie is a mess. She's old now. She's young? Is this the same actress? Who is this woman she's playing?" I can't find any connective tissue in that performance and maybe that's the film's fault, maybe it's mine since I'm so very tired of biopics... but I hate the film SO much that I can't bear to revisit it to try and stitch the various pieces of Piaf it gives us together to get a sense as to whether Cotillard understood what she was creating or whether she was just doing her damnedest to sell each scene as it came to her. Her work feels so full throttle throughout that I tip towards the latter in my suspicions. She's better than the movie for sure. But I prefer actors to present a full character and then modulate that same character through the scenes... like say, Laura Linney who blooms beautifully if only in stubborn sly increments as Wendy Savage. Or Julie Christie, who actually works in reverse, emptying the character out.
As for Blanchett. I think the unneccessary double dip will prove an insurmountable hurdle for the win. It's a case of too much which can only naturally lead to thoughts of "Blanchett again?" which can only lead to "Blanchett just won, didn't she?" which can only lead to "Blanchett just won for playing a famous 20th century icon!" and then back to "Blanchett again?" I really think that the very visible Elizabeth nomination did not do her (or Angelina Jolie, *sigh*) any favors.
Next Page
Kim wants to know how you pronounce Cotillard, Nick experiences puppy love, Dennis studies Affleckology, and Nathaniel issues a challenge based on our two eldest Oscar nominees
