Oscars 101: Best Supporting Actress

In which I run down on the nominees (and likely winners) of the Academy Awards.

Almost a month ago I mentioned how impossibly wide open the Best Supporting Actress race is, and that still appears to be the case.  There is still no common consensus, no clear front runner and no generally agreed upon favorite.  The nominated women all gave incredibly strong and incredibly different performances, all of which fall within the typical spectrum of Academy tastes.  I could rearrange the nominees five completely different ways and still find the order just as believable as any other.  In short, this is anybody's race to be won:

Emma Stone – Birdman
Patricia Arquette – Boyhood
Keira Knightley – The Imitation Game
Meryl Streep – Into the Woods
Laura Dern – Wild

Despite being a strong and varied list of nominees, I can't help but feel that room should have been made for Melanie Laurent's excellent performance in the arthouse thriller Enemy.  She gives a much stronger performance than Stone in a much more nuanced role than Knightly, and yet didn't make the grade with the Academy.  The film might have bit a bit too obscure (or a bit too arthouse) for their liking, though.  Likewise, Rene Russo's turn as an opportunistic station manager in Nightcrawler was certainly worth a nomination as well.

Emma Stone in Birdman - Despite being consistently excellent in everything she does - Birdman being no exception to this - Emma Stone is easily the weakest of the nominees.  Her slot could have been filled by any number of equally talented women who had been given far meatier roles to work with (Rene Russo and Melanie Laurent being only two examples of which).

While certainly excellent in Birdman, her role acts more as a narrative function than as a driving force to the plot.  She bears witness to the film's brilliantly ambiguous ending, offers added depth to Keaton's character and gives Norton's somebody to play off of during a few otherwise uneventful scenes.  She's functional, but the limited scope of her role never allows her to be anything but that.

Patricia Arquette in Boyhood - If I had to choose a front runner in this category, it would be Patricia Arquette.  If I had my druthers, she would be listed among the lead actresses, rather than the supporting one.  Although oftentimes occurring off screen, her character is the driving force of Boyhood's narrative (even more so than Ellar Coltraine's character).  And when given freedom to explore her character on screen, she gives an earnest, complicated and instantly memorable performance that grows and develops over the twelve year span of the film's production.

Beyond simple excellence, she also is wracking up the majority of the pre-Oscar awards in this category.  Her momentum will be hard to surmount, especially with so little time left and so few stand-out performances able to rise to the challenge.

Keira Knightly in The Imitation Game - There is no questioning the fact that the Academy loves a strong, willful, independently-minded woman.  There's a reason, after all, why Monster and North Country were so easily accepted by Oscar voters in their day.  And although not nearly as explosive or flashy as the women in those films, Knightly's take on Joan Clarke is as nuanced and deep as any brought to life on screen.

Although she holds her own against the incredible screen presence of Benedict Cumberbatch, the same can't be said of her fellow nominees.  Arquette's performance is so much showier than Knightly's an she is far more dominating  against her cinematic backdrop.  Not only does the Academy unreservedly love anything and everything that Meryl Streep is in, but the role was practically tailor made to highlight her particular skill set.  Knightly's quietly determined and socially aware Clarke simply can't measure up to the standard set by the competition.

Meryl Streep in Into the Woods - Meryl Streep is nominated so innumerably often by the Academy that it's almost a given that she'll be in the running for something in any given year.  It's almost gotten to be a bad joke by this point.  Regardless of how talented she is and the strength of the roles she's given, there are other women in other films that deserve critical attention and are often overshadowed by Streep.  I'm not saying that the Academy should pass her over when she gives a deserving performance, I'm just saying that they should be more aware when and for what they actually do nominate her for.

When it comes to Into the Woods, however, the attention is warranted.  Streep gave a stellar performance to a character that in lesser hands could have landed flat on her feet.  She sings with the grace and skill that we've come to expect of her in such matters and she is the absolute standout in an otherwise crowded and deserving cast.  I doubt that a musical performance will be the one to win her her fourth Oscar, but you never know when it comes to the Academy's favorites.

Laura Dern in Wild - As in all things, the Oscars tend to award careers more often than they award specific performances from any one year.  Regardless of how deserving any one actor is for any one role, too often the voting body passes them over to make up for previous slights against now established actors.  Laura Dern, whose career has brought her to the Academy's front door in the past, may finally have broken through with the awards body.

Wild's director, Jean-Marc Vallée, has started to make a career as an actor's director.  His cinematic vision helped earn Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto Oscars last year, for instance.  It very well may be that the Academy will be won over by his light-handed directorial approach once again with Dern and Witherspoon.

Safe Bet:  Patricia Arquette in Boyhood

Long Shot:  Laura Dern in Wild

Longer Shot: Meryl Streep in Into the Woods

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