Oscars 2021: The Lead Actors

Let’s keep the suspense going! Even if the supporting actor races are fairly boring at this point, that isn’t true of the screenplays, and there’s also legitimate uncertainty in one of the lead races. The excitement is so contagious, it’s spreading across categories!

BEST ACTOR

NOMINEES
Javier Bardem—Being the Ricardos
Benedict Cumberbatch—The Power of the Dog
Andrew Garfield—Tick Tick Boom
Will Smith—King Richard
Denzel Washington—The Tragedy of Macbeth

WILL WIN
Not this one, though. Smith has this baby sewn up. Of course, that’s what I said last year about Chadwick Boseman, and we all remember how that turned out. But come on, Smith has the SAG/Globes/BAFTA trifecta, plus there’s the random “We’ve never before honored this massively successful movie star with a tiny trophy, it’s his time” narrative in play. Game over.

SHOULD WIN
Cumberbatch. To be clear, I admire all of these performances: Bardem’s wily charm, Garfield’s unabashed theater-kid energy, Smith’s smiling menace, Washington’s brooding intensity. But Cumberbatch is the only one who really rattled me. There’s something spooky about the way he inhabits the role of Phil Burbank—not that he fully disappears into it, but that he embellishes the character’s outsized grandeur with just the right degree of macho posturing to make him larger than life, yet still scarily realistic. He’ll haunt you, in part for how he gradually reveals that he’s haunted himself.

MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT
Benedict Cumberbatch—The Power of the Dog
Peter Dinklage—Cyrano
Winston Duke—Nine Days
Oscar Isaac—The Card Counter
Simon Rex—Red Rocket

Good lord, this was tough. I always struggle to whittle my Best Actress field down to five, but the men this year were equally competitive. Dinklage uses bluster to shield the bruises, shattering your heart in the process. Duke hollows out his character, only to reemerge fully formed in a glorious, triumphant final scene. Isaac isn’t human. Rex is a magnificently despicable reprobate, an utterly bankrupt predator whose hypnotic magnetism only makes him more appalling.

MovieManifesto’s winner: Benedict Cumberbatch—The Power of the Dog.

MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT: SECOND TIER
Udo Kier—Swan Song
Hidetoshi Nishijima—Drive My Car
Joaquin Phoenix—C’mon C’mon
Anthony Ramos—In the Heights
Dan Stevens—I’m Your Man

Kier’s shameless flamboyance is unapologetically delightful. Nishijima contains roiling emotional turbulence within his cool, impassive poise. Phoenix is remarkably humane, locating the pathos in helplessness. Ramos is effortlessly charismatic. Stevens finds just the right balance between indecently sexy and unnervingly creepy.

Honorable mention: Matt Damon—Stillwater; Ed Helms—Together Together; Cooper Hoffman—Licorice Pizza; Cillian Murphy—A Quiet Place Part II.

BEST ACTRESS

NOMINEES
Jessica Chastain—The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Olivia Colman—The Lost Daughter
Penélope Cruz—Parallel Mothers
Nicole Kidman—Being the Ricardos
Kristen Stewart—Spencer

WILL WIN
Anybody. But seriously, this race is wide open; the only one I’m comfortable eliminating is Cruz, and even then I’m seeing specious “Well, a lot of voters really like her…” rumblings on Twitter. You could exhaust yourself overthinking this—Kidman won the Globe! Colman is an Academy fave! Stewart played Princess Freaking Diana!—but I’m going with Chastain. She won at SAG, but beyond that, she just delivers such a classic Oscar-style performance, spanning years in the life of a famous person while slathering on makeup and flaunting an exaggerated accent. Maybe the Academy has evolved beyond that (to be clear, Chastain is good, even if her movie isn’t), but I still think it’s irresistible to a wide swath of voters.

SHOULD WIN
I never thought I would survey a field of five actresses and think to myself, “Welp, Nicole Kidman is definitely the weak link here.” I don’t think she’s bad in Being the Ricardos, but she never quite transcends the mannered quality of the material (which supplies its own rewards). Chastain does transcend the film around her, but her showiness is more enjoyable than immersive. (Again, this is by design.) Stewart threads that needle more delicately, and the tension between the character’s celebrity and her own is provocative, even if it doesn’t quite square with the movie’s peculiar angularity. Cruz, by contrast, tamps down her inherent charisma, resulting in a beguiling portrayal that meshes glitzy star power with quiet tenderness; she’s good to the point that you wish the movie centered on her as opposed to detouring into its thematic concerns.

Still, I’m taking Colman, whose ruthlessly unsympathetic performance gives The Lost Daughter its ghastly kick. It’s clichéd to praise an actress for daring to be unlikable, but Colman is doing something different here, digging under the character’s skin and showing how her shame and resentment can curdle into arrogance and cruelty. Netflix really should’ve released this movie on Mother’s Day.

MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT
Paula Beer—Undine
Jasna Đuričić—Quo Vadis, Aida?
Alana Haim—Licorice Pizza
Rebecca Hall—The Night House
Renate Reinsve—The Worst Person in the World

I take it back; it was tougher to cull this field down to five than it was for Best Actor. Just brutal. C’est la vie. Beer is utterly enchanting, which obscures the fact that, in her own way, she’s as scary as Colman. Đuričić is fearless in her rigor, which only amplifies her agony. Haim is thrillingly natural, with a gives-no-fucks directness that camouflages her inner turmoil. Hall is devastatingly vulnerable and also a little frightening. Reinsve is an open wound who keeps pouring on the salt.

MovieManifesto’s winner: Rebecca Hall—The Night House.

MOVIEMANIFESTO’S BALLOT: SECOND TIER
Olivia Colman—The Lost Daughter
Jodie Comer—The Last Duel
Millicent Simmonds—A Quiet Place Part II
Madeleine Sims-Fewer—Violation
Tessa Thompson—Passing

Comer mingles terror with steel. Simmonds holds the screen with remarkable ease. You are not ready for Sims-Fewer’s ferocity. Thompson’s own fierceness derives from her astute intelligence.

Honorable mention: Niamh Algar—Censor; Maren Eggert—I’m Your Man; Emilia Jones—CODA; Alexis Louder—Copshop; Thomasin McKenzie—Last Night in Soho; Milana Vayntrub—Werewolves Within.

Coming tomorrow: Best Director and Best Picture.