I'm going to release this statement, no matter how
irrelevant, pointless and helpless it might be: I can’t believe that Jessica
Chastain, but also Emmanuelle Riva and also adding Naomi Watts, specially
Marion Cotillard are losing all of the awards, and will lose the Oscar over
Jennifer Lawrence and her performance as a young widow, insanely hot young
widow, who does everything she can to be with a guy who happens to suffer a
mental illness that makes him an unusual upfront, direct and intense man. I’m suffering in anticipation, even though at
this point being almost guaranteed that Jennifer Lawrence will win the Oscar,
has it actually been anticipated for months. Unless they pull a Marion
Cotillard, when she made it against all odds, in this case someone else would win
but Jennifer Lawrence, ironically it could also be a French woman.
Now I will defend my statement, even if I don’t really
have reasons to complain about: by now I’ve seen many films from this season, many ‘Oscar’
films, the ones who were eligible and the ones who were not, and I can make an
overall view. They are all great contributions, brave performances, some way
bolder than others, some way subtle than others. I really don’t want to upgrade
ones in favor of the others, and so on.
So I enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook. I did. But it’s
not that great, it’s exceptional because it is a good romantic comedy, it does
bring a wonderful and often amusing tone to a difficult subject as it is a
mental illness. A bipolar man, Pat, struggles with his decease and wants to get
his life together. The young woman, Tiffany, enters in his life as he begins
his recovery. She’s also fragile, unstable, after his husband’s death and we
can see that through her rollercoaster of emotions, at the same time she’s as direct
and open as Pat, except Pat has a much harder time accepting his own flaws, not
necessarily negative ones. She’s a wonderful spirit, an upbeat and admiring
example of female character in her own terms honest and liberating. Jennifer
Lawrence brings life, this may sound really superficial, but it’s what makes
sense, she really brings life and, like I said some other time, the
unconventional tone to Tiffany. But now I want to add this line, after I read
this article about the film, by Brian Donovan, where he states his reasons why Silver Linings is the best film
of the year. I really can’t get some lines out of my mind: he starts by
saying that Jennifer Lawrence and Lena Dunham are the people that frighten him
the most in the all world. Really, in the all world?? Dude, that’s just fucked
up. He couldn’t live in China, certainty not in Syria because he would shit his
pants every day. And I didn’t even have to go that far, I’m sure not far away
from him there’s hell, except that he doesn’t know it. When he starts resuming
Silver Lining’s storyline, you know, a depressing widow, a bipolar man, he
states that “Those
might be the four most depressing sentences I’ve written in my life, and
they’re only the first 20 minutes of the movie”. Common? Really? Like, really? To me, depressing is reading about a
girl who was sold by her parents at the age of twelve and sent to prostitution,
and then when she was able to return to her village at the age of thirteen she
was sold again, until finally she returned again and found shelter in a women’s
association where she died of HIV at the age of fourteen. Depressing is looking
at the kids ‘living’ in Gaza, complaining about their smelly clothes, about
their dolls smelling like gasoline all the time, being afraid that at any time
they might be blown up. Or a girl studying for her exams and not being able to
do it because they’re shooting at her house, she really wants to study but she
can’t. A kid dying of a cancer that the health insurance denies to cover
because it’s a family thing, now that’s fucking depressing. I certainly don’t
want to devalue the film’s decease, a serious decease, but in Silver Linings
Playbook, Pat does have a warming and welcoming family who is very patient with
him, who loves him unconditionally. Pat is able to live quite peacefully if he
really works on it. Common, it can’t be the most depressing twenty minutes, I
mean, let’s open our minds a little, especially the guy who wrote the article, I
don’t know his background but it doesn’t matter. Yes, it’s inspiring to see a
story where all the characters care, are honest. But let’s not get over
ourselves.
This is
probably what pisses me off about Jennifer’s winning, it’s this article in
particular and/or others like this one, because I have no big problems with people
winning Oscars, including her.
Ok, now
that I spoken about the latter issue, I want to take a look at the other
performances. Like Emmanuelle Riva’s.
In Amour, it is because she’s so natural through the different stages of her
character that you can’t imagine the devastating, the overwhelming magnitude of
her giving. It is as demanding as you can imagine, and she makes it look all so
natural that it’s just simply heartbreaking. It’s precisely because it doesn’t
look like a performance that Riva’s performance is so devastating.
Like Marion
Cotillard in Rust and Bone, there are so many layers to be addressed about
her performance in this film. Stephanie is quite an intriguing, difficult and
unapologetic woman. Even though she’s suffering so much from her accident she
still is who she is, there’s no pity, but there’s that quiet suffering. It’s
all about what we can discover in her eyes, in her look. What we can somehow
figure it out is that she’s an imperfect human being like any other, struggling
the best way she can, in her own terms. It’s a demanding role and she made it
happen, brought Stephanie’s reality to us. It’s one of the rare good
opportunities for Marion to bring her strengths to the screen, she had to give
a lot, bare everything and she did it.
Like Jessica
Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty. Like Marion Cotillard’s Stephanie, Maya is
not an easy character, maybe she’s even more obscure then Stephanie. She’s
certainly hard to be figured it out because there are simply not many clues. It’s surprising that she got an
Oscar nomination with all the noise from the controversy. As a matter of fact, Jessica Chastain’s Maya is the last
member likely to win the Oscar, even though she certainly deserves it as much as any other, but I think she brings the fewer possibilities,
which leads me to Naomi Watts in The
Impossible. This is a film about the human strength and resilience and about
family and Naomi Watts couldn’t possibility look more motherly in this film. I
was very moved and touched by this film, like she said it felt very true, and I
also think that even though they focus in this one family we can see everything
outside this family. We understand the luck and the ones who weren’t so lucky,
the human spirit at times warm and other times ruthless. Anyway, Naomi Watts
balances human being’s strength and a mother’s strength, combines all the devastation,
the physical suffering, the heartbreak, with warmth and subtlety.
Melanie
Lynskey, in Hello I Must be Going, has her
moment. She feels refreshing because she’s this compromising pattern, she’s
able of not only being easily relatable, playing any kind of part, including a
grieving divorced woman, but also bringing somehow something that feels
unsurpassed. And she’s endearing and charming.
Quvenzhané
Wallis feels to me like another tribute to
the film and its director more than the particular ‘performance’. Her character
carries the film, that’s true, but so does Dwight Henry, so where the hell is
he??
The annoying fact is that there are many other compelling
performances out there that it is just unfair to be mentioning just these few. Keira
Knightley’s performance in Anna Karenina is something we kind of expect from
her, of course this is not an excuse to not give her awards, but apparently it
kind of is. Léa Seydoux in Sister and Farewell, My Queen is unique. Alicia
Vikander in A Royal Affair is absolutely charming. Rachel Mwanza in Rebelle,
like Wallis in Beasts, carries the film beautifully. I still haven’t seen films
like Middle of Nowhere, like Smashed, like Starlet, like Ginger and Rosa. Including
comedian performances too, but all of these performances need to gather a
certain number of aspects to be ‘Oscar’ Contenders, so let’s not tire
ourselves! They should all be contenders, but it’s just hard to be…
I really can’t imagine Meryl Streep voting for
Jennifer Lawrence, I really can’t. There’s also this question about being such
an open category. It is because it is open that I feel like they will end up
falling for the same person. And in this case, it’s Jennifer Lawrence to win. As
you can see I don’t really have a big case to debate, I’m happy for anyone who
wins, in fact big congratulations to Jennifer Lawrence for all the awards. But still,
I can’t believe she’s winning. I can’t believe the others are losing over her.
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