The voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have a knack for honoring the most-deserving actors and actresses, regardless of whether they turn in the most-deserving performances.
This year's Academy Awards, more than any in recent memory, remind us that what happens on-screen is just the half of it. Every nomination has a context, and no single group of people senses that context more keenly than the 6,000 or so movie-industry professionals who make up the academy.
The obvious case in point: Heath Ledger. Nothing is going to stand between Ledger and a posthumous Oscar for best supporting actor for his turn as the Joker in "The Dark Knight," not even Michael Shannon's inspired portrayal of a mentally unstable mathematician in "Revolutionary Road."
Was Ledger's performance the best? Possibly. (OK, probably.) But it doesn't matter. The tragedy alone — rising star cut down in his prime — will win him the Oscar.
In the end, the life and career circumstances of the players mean just as much as the nuances of their screen work. Consider, for instance, the talented gentlemen vying for best actor.
Let's be generous and say we've got a three-horse race. With sincerest apologies to Richard Jenkins, whose inhabitation of joyless professor Walter Vale carried the most overlooked film of the year, "The Visitor"; and slightly less sincere apologies to Brad Pitt for his skillful, yet significantly makeup-aided portrayal of the backward-aging Benjamin Button — the Oscar will go to either Frank Langella, Sean Penn or Mickey Rourke.
Langella, the long shot, belongs to a venerable class of nominees who, after decades of quiet critical praise, convert their sweat equity into a singular, twilight Oscar nod. His turn as Richard Nixon in "Frost/Nixon" certainly warrants recognition, but the film doesn't show enough of the private Nixon's intimate moments to justify giving Langella the award outright. This is a clear case of "It's an honor just to be nominated." Still, his age (70) and 40-plus years of service to the industry keep him in the running.
Sean Penn delivers the best performance of the lot as San Francisco gay-rights activist and politician Harvey Milk in the 1970s-era biopic "Milk." Penn, widely admired by his peers, already owns an Oscar for his work in "Mystic River" (2003) and has been nominated five times. Unfortunately, his fine work in "Milk" has been overshadowed by the cosmic event that is the nomination of Mickey Rourke, who has earned widespread praise for a role that appears to have required little acting.
In "The Wrestler," Rourke, a broken-down boxer and actor with esteem issues, plays Randy "the Ram" Robinson, a broken-down professional wrestler with esteem issues.
If ever there were a casting director who deserved a bonus ...
Rourke's private hell plays out in compelling fashion under a thin veil of cinema, and with a Golden Globe win building momentum for his Oscar campaign, denying Rourke the honor would require a herculean effort of artistic integrity on the part of the academy. Don't hold your breath.
Penn should win; Rourke will win.
The performances of the top nominees in the women's race are more evenly matched, but the end result will depend no less on circumstance. The contest pits the future of Hollywood against its establishment.
Kate Winslet, having been honored with not one, but two Golden Globes for her roles in "Revolutionary Road" and "The Reader," finds herself in contention at the Academy Awards for the latter of these films, in which she plays a solitary West German tram conductor who begins an unlikely romance with a 15-year-old boy.
This, it would seem, is Winslet's year. Passed over on each of her previous five nominations, the academy would appear remiss if it did not finally acknowledge her consistently outstanding work — even if hers was not the best performance, which, alas, it was not.
Meryl Streep, whose 15 nominations in 30 years is an Oscar record, embodies complex, conflicting emotions better than anyone, and her portrayal of Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley's parable "Doubt" was the best performance, male or female, of 2008.
As the principal of St. Nicholas Church School in Bronx, New York, Streep strategically exposes the humanity of a character hidden beneath a studied, stern disciplinarian veneer.
She's awesome, but she's also off the board: Streep should win; Winslet will win.
Of the three remaining best-actress candidates — Melissa Leo as a down-on-her-luck single mom trying to scrape together a balloon payment for her double-wide in "Frozen River"; Anne Hathaway as the walking train wreck Kym, who gets out of rehab just in time to spoil her big sister's wedding in "Rachel Getting Married"; and Angelina Jolie as Christine Collins, the real-life single mother of "Changeling" whose son was abducted in Los Angeles in 1928 and replaced with an impostor — Hathaway is the dark horse.
As usual, Jolie brings her on-call emotionality and hornet-stung lips to a challenging, juicy role. No one does distraught better than she, but in the end, we've seen it before. Not to mention, she's already won an Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted" (1999).
Leo's stark portrait of a woman who shuttles illegal aliens over the Canadian border just so she can afford to feed her kids Tang and popcorn for breakfast, brilliant though it may be, is just too real to celebrate in the current economic climate.
Which leaves Hathaway, an actress who has been working hard to shake once and for all her "Princess Diaries" image, and may have done so with this role. Extenuating circumstances here include her traumatizing relationship with crooked Italian businessman and playboy Raffaello Follieri. She'll get some sympathy votes, but her odds are long.
At least the best picture Oscar will go to the best picture, right? Well, probably. Maybe.
Majority consensus (count me in) has "Slumdog Millionaire" winning, and doesn't Fox Searchlight deserve it! This Little Studio That Could has produced more movies worth seeing in the last 10 years than many studios do in a lifetime, including four best-picture nominees ("Slumdog," "Juno," "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Sideways") in the last five years. Fox Searchlight also brought us "The Wrestler."
"Slumdog," a sweeping, nostalgic love story set in the slums of India, would be a sure bet to win were it not for, again, contextual elements. As the film began piling up awards-season hardware, the very real plight of the film's child actors, themselves "slumdogs," came to light, and not everyone approves of how the children have been compensated.
Will this late bad press kill the picture's chances? Doubtful. But if any film stands a chance of upsetting "Slumdog," it's "Milk."
Take Penn out of the picture, and you've still got this unbelievable ensemble cast, headed by supporting-actor nominee Josh Brolin as troubled conservative politician Dan White, and including such talents as Emile Hirsch ("Into the Wild"), Diego Luna ("Frida," "Y Tu Mama Tambien") and James Franco ("Spiderman," "Pineapple Express") in the repertoire-expanding role of Harvey's true love, Scott Smith.
"Milk" has the pedigree, but "Slumdog" has the momentum and is a marginally superior film. "Slumdog" should win and will win.
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