National Society of Film Critics Loves Amour
Saturday, January 5, 2013 at 6:51PM National Society of Film Critics is the last of the three big critics' groups to announce their annual winners and they have followed LAFCA's footsteps in giving their top prize to Michael Haneke's Amour. It's yet more fuel in the film's fire as Sony Pictures Classics awaits the Academy's nominations on Thursday, though with the voting deadline already passed, this prestigious honour will have no persuasive power on Academy voters.
As with LAFCA, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master came in second in the top category, but this wasn't the only place where NSFC agreed with their Los Angeles counterparts. Emmanuelle Riva and Amy Adams also topped the lead and supporting actress categories, respectively.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Matthew McConaughey were the winners in the male acting categories. McConaughey, whose award was shared for Magic Mike and Bernie, has been a critical favourite all season - he won NYFCC's prize for the same two films as well - and is still lurking right around the nomination zone despite missing out on SAG and Globe nominations.
In the nonfiction category The Gatekeepers just edged out This Is Not a Film to the top prize, ahead of a distant Searching For Sugar Man at third. Jafar Panahi's film also managed a citation for Best Experimental Film. Tony Kushner and Mihai Malaimare Jr. rounded out the winners with prizes in the screeplay and cinematography categories, respectively.
Full list of winners after the jump...
BEST ACTOR
*1. Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln – 59 (Dreamworks/Touchstone)
2. Denis Lavant – 49
2. Joaquin Phoenix – 49
BEST ACTRESS
*1. Emmanuelle Riva – Amour – 50 (Sony Classics)
2. Jennifer Lawrence – 42
3. Jessica Chastain– 32
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
*1. Matthew McConaughey – Magic Mike (Warner Bros.), Bernie (Millennium Entertainment) – 27
2. Tommy Lee Jones – 22
3. Philip Seymour Hoffman – 19
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
*1. Amy Adams – The Master (The Weinstein Co.) – 34
2. Sally Field – 23
3. Anne Hathaway – 13
BEST PICTURE
*1. Amour (Sony Classics) – 28
2. The Master – 25
3. Zero Dark Thirty – 18
BEST DIRECTOR
*1. Michael Haneke (Amour) – 27
2. Kathryn Bigelow – 24
2. Paul Thomas Anderson – 24
BEST NONFICTION
*1. The Gatekeepers – Sony Pictures Classics – 53
2. This Is Not a Film – 45
3. Searching for Sugar Man – 23
BEST SCREENPLAY
*1. Lincoln (Dreamworks/Touchstone) – Tony Kushner – 59
2. The Master (P.T. Anderson)– 27
3. Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell) – 19
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
*1. Master (Mihai Malaimare, Jr. ) – 60
2. Skyfall (Roger Deakins) – 30
3. Zero Dark Thirty (Greig Fraser) – 21
Reader Comments (21)
They're not essential, but they're super classy. I expected Amour to sweep here, but I was wrong with Joaquín. I thought he would win by a mile.
Surprised to see Amy Adams win. I don't think she has a prayer of winning anywhere else, the battle is between the two below her on the list Sally and Anne. With the Les Miz backlash that seems to be tilting towards Sally but who knows. It's a real horse race this year not just here but in so many categories, everyone actually except best actor which I think DDL has wrapped up.
The critical lock step in Supporting Actress just makes zero sense to me. Does anyone really think Sally Field was the best supporting actress of the year? Love Sally (Soapdish 4eva!) but she's hardly the standout of that movie. And while her support wouldn't be unexpected with Oscar, it just seems really strange to me that critics should be so gung-ho behind her performance in a year filled with such rich, interesting supporting performances by women. And along the same vein, even though Amy Adams's and Anne Hathaway's performances were greeted with passionate responses, those responses were hardly unanimous. So why the same ballots over and over again? They're Oscar friendly faces, for sure, but it's just so frustrating that they get a boost into awards season, while dozens of worthy performances go completely unrecognized by the few awards bodies who take the time to see all of the movies of the year, rather than the ones that arrive in the mail in the last few months of the year.
It's crazy that turns like Nicole Kidman's are being propped by the guilds of all the things, rather than the critics. When did critics become so toothless? Where's Diane Kruger or Emma Watson or Cecile de France? Hell, where's Scarlett Johannsen or Judi Dench? Those people are never going to get attention from the Oscars and all of them gave really interesting performances this year. If you have the power to reward anyone, why not reward people who wouldn't get recognized otherwise? Let Oscar be the ones to cherry pick the offerings from their favorite movies of the year, don't do the work for them.
I keep thinking the only big thing going against DDL is the fact that this would be his third Oscar, and for leading. Do Oscar members really care about this stuff or not?
There is now way in HELL we'll see Sally Field win Best Supporting Actress. I'd almost be willing to eat my shoe leather a la Charlie Chaplin if that were to happen. It's Hathaway's, and she deserves it. Amy Adams would deserve the Oscar over Field, however strong Field was in Lincoln (and she was). Adams's performance is a character as chilling, brainwashed cipher -- there is a kind of ghastly wholesomeness about the character as written AND interpreted. It seems to me that PTA understood this appeal of Adams as an actress -- the chipper, blank innocence that worked to great effect in Enchanted -- and gave her a role in which she could both riff on that appeal in a Norman Rockwell way and subvert the living shit out of it. Still, Hathaway is wrenching -- her solo in Les Mis is a descent into an abyss, and her reappearance in the end as a kind of angel breaks the heart as much.
I agree with the general sentiment on the best supporting actress category. It's been reduced to the same 3-4 names, which is sad. There are so many possibilities.
My personal number 1 pick, Olivia Munn from Magic Mike, has not been mentioned by a single awards body so far, unfortunately.
I believe Supp Actress is ripe for an upset victory. Hathaway and Field will split votes. The Sally Field narrative is better than Hathaway's. What I'm curious about is who will win SAG for Best Male Actor? Day-Lewis has won it twice. They're a younger awards body than the Academy and are more willing to spread the wealth in a way the Academy rarely does. Washington and Kidman have never won SAG — I could see them upsetting there.
@Amir I totally forgot about Olivia Munn! Yes! Where is she? Or Carmen Ejogo? Alicia Vikander, Rosemarie DeWitt, ugh the list goes on and on.
I don't believe in vote splitting so the Academy is going to really like Sally or Anne.
And I feel like I'm lacking something but I don't love Amour. The acting is great but the script was unsurprising from start to finish. I've seen better French films over the years.
I would rather Field in support than any one else,
I love the NSOFC because they really just tend to reward whatever they think is best and will stick their neck out time and time again for the smaller films and we need more groups who will be willing to do that beyond LAFC's Best Actress award. HOWEVER... every year, without fail, they always have a glaring winner that I shake my head at and really make me wonder how they came to THAT choice and this year's Amy Adams citation is the very one for me. >_>
It took Meryl Streep how many years and nominations to win a 3rd Oscar? They are not giving it to Sally Field after 2 wins and (presumably) 3 nominations total. Its not going to happen.
Do not fool yourselves. There is no way in hell Hathaway will loose. No one is campaigning as much and as hard as she is. No one.
Inscription, inscription. Streep's wait had everything to do getting a second Actress prize not a third Oscar. If her first wins were Actress awards, her inevitable third would in Supp Actress ala Ingrid Bergman.
7 career nominations for Bergman (2 Actress Awards; 1 Supporting)
17 career nominations for Streep (2 Actress Awards; 1 Supporting)
I totally agree with TB's first comment.
These critics watch a lot of films every year and of course they can see far more interesting performances in those films, but come the awards season, their list is trying so hard to mirror the Oscar predictions.
Jason Cooper, you make as good a case for Adams as can be made. I'm not a fan of hers, as some people here may know, but I'm almost resigned to her being nominated in a year without too many "prestige actresses" in supporting roles. My difficulty with her performance in "The Master" is that the "brainwashed cipher" is more than thematically paper-thin: I can imagine no background that brought her there, no prior existence that would even allow me to understand why Lancaster Dodd would choose her to be his wife; she's not plausible because she isn't complex enough even to be plausible. And the lack of any interior seems an artistic choice that gets at the heart of my problem with the movie: it makes what I would call artistic category errors. It seems to think that if it is empty (like Adams's character), it will convince us that it has depicted emptiness. If it is structurally random (much of the last half of the movie), it will convince us about the depth of its grappling with randomness. There's an almost sentimental literal-mindedness about it. Another actor might have taken the same material and pulled a world, a background, a life, from it, just as Julianne Moore did in Anderson's earlier films, playing roles that also could have been thin and implausible. If PTA deliberately made Adams dull as dishwater, then he's more at fault than she, but I don't think Adams is capable of much more than pleasant caricature.
Clearly Amy Adams has become an easy target this season. That's quite sad and undeserved it.
amanda -- that's right. I'm unsure as to why people keep pretending Sally Field has a shot. Even if Anne Hathaway werent' around this year they wouldn't be giving Sally Field a third Oscar. They just wouldn't (and I say this as someone who loves her).
Nathan, Sally Field could easily take SAG and could tie at the Critics Choice Awards. The Academy made Julia Roberts wait, and Hathaway is far too interesting of a presence to deny roles were her unique gifts are better suited. I'm not saying she won't win the Oscar but she doesn't read as a lock to me they way Day-Lewis is.
Nathan, Sally Field could easily take SAG and could tie at the Critics Choice Awards. The Academy made Julia Roberts wait, and Hathaway is far too interesting of a presence to deny roles where her unique gifts are better suited. I'm not saying she won't win the Oscar but she doesn't read as a lock to me they way Day-Lewis is.
Owen, thank you so much for your great post. The Master tediously apes at brilliance but quickly reveals what a shameless fraud it truly is.