A recent headline, suggesting 'ways in which Jennifer Aniston could win the Oscar' (I shan't quote it directly but it's here if you must look upon it) didn't raise my eyebrow. Didn't even cause a twitch! If you've followed the Oscar game your whole life and especially if you've followed it in the past ten years when the internet has amplified all of the minutea you'll know that journalists are always looking for fresh angles or, with or without those, highly fantastical angles sold as plausible to use for click bait. So though the articles (I'm sure they are plural though I haven't actually read them) didn't worry me at first -- I believe that Julianne Moore will win gold -- but the immediate enthusiastic social media response to the idea that Jennifer Aniston might have an Oscar coming in February is what finally shoved my unwilling eyebrow up.
"Consider..." that here are two movies (Still Alice and Cake) that virtually no one outside of the press & industry has seen since both opted for one week qualifying releases. Yet they're the two that the fans are getting emotionally invested in in terms of "should/will win" arguments. It serves as a useful reminder that around Christmas-time each year the narratives truly begin to take over, media "battles" are created, and the actual films and performances are left far far behind...
For some awards runs this 'hide your movie and thus prevent any discussion about it that does not revolve around its Oscar viability' is extremely useful. That's particularly true if the film is forgettable or disappointing (see August: Osage County's bizarre release last year).
But if a film is actually good, hiding it or waiting until the last possible second to really get it out there can cause problems. I think this is what A Most Violent Year is going through right now but we'll see. (It could rally since it has strong elements but not really an awards narrative and thus hardly needs to or can benefit from hiding). In some cases hiding your film will utterly destroy its Oscar viability. Grand Budapest Hotel, an indisputable example as its so atypical, and even arguably Boyhood, would likely reap zero nominations if they were to have only been released last week and then promptly pulled while asking for nominations. They just wouldn't have the personal attachments, Oscar hooks, or prestige momentum without the fact of their actual quality staring everyone down for months on end.
Which brings us to the highly visible Julianne Moore and Jennifer Aniston and their highly invisible films Still Alice and Cake.
Julianne Moore needs only to conquer Hollywood's ageism to win. Her inarguably still dazzling looks will sure help, but ageism is a pernicious evil in the world and amplified further by Hollywood, an image-making business. Yes, the voting body skews elderly but they're statistically very resistant to aging women, preferring to give actresses their gold statues during years of great promise rather than their years of "have already proven themselves" (the opposite is the case for those with penises). The Oscar race is particularly tough on women in their late 40s and all through their 50s, those perilous years between Mythical Movie Star Beauty and Grand Dame Genuflection. In the latter period an actress can win... usually provided she has already won, like an endurance victory lap (see Hepburn & Streep). But winning after your mid 40s is tricky in the Best Actress category. In fact, only one 50something has ever won the top female prize and that was Shirley Booth in her film debut Come Back Little Sheba (1952).
Despite those terrible odds Julianne Moore has the pedigree, the goodwill, and the actual performance to win (she's brilliant in Still Alice) with echoes of some of her great screen work in this woman who is slowly dissipating from early on-set Alzheimers. The only thing she might not have is the movie. I personally like Still Alice but it is inarguably a modest star vehicle, streamlined to the point of minimalism to key in on Julianne's performance.
So where does the Jennifer Aniston talk come from? From narrative and narrative only (since, remember, very few people have seen the film) but time tested narratives they are. Lest I sound like I'm dissing Jennifer Aniston, who I think is very good in Cake, I should make it clear that I retweeted and agree with this notion from TFE's friend and fabulous actress Melanie Lynskey:
Dear people surprised that J Aniston is so good in Cake-She has always been great! Impeccable technique/timing,+ expressive,funny,vulnerable
— Melanie Lynskey (@melanielynskey) December 19, 2014
But despite that deserved applause, I don't actually think quality of performance is why Jennifer Aniston has won her Oscar nominee traction. Call me a jaded pundit, but I think she's won traction on this quadruple whammy alone:
- Smart campaigning - her team saw an opening and hit the promotional trail hard
- Perceptions of a "weak actress year" (which it wasn't but we've discussed that to death) and the only strong competition left standing being an actress that everyone agrees is brilliant but who the Academy hasn't proven very interested in after their fling with her in 2007.
- That famous, disappointingly reductive "whoda thunk it" narrative (remember this Sandra Bullock story?) that is almost always trotted out for fine comic actors when people notice they also have dramatic skill. (The fact that comic skill alone isn't respectable is a more troubling problem but not the topic of this piece)
- And, finally, the dread "De-Glam" factor.
It's this fourth Oscar hook that worries me most, as a longtime very committed Julianne Moore fan. Oscar voters have historically had a very hard time resisting beautiful women who were "brave" enough to appear uglier than they are on screen... often with the aid of prosthetics or, before prosthetics became the norm, dumping costuming. Deglam is such a potent allure that the great beauty Grace Kelly even nabbed the Best Actress trophy not just from her competitive set but from one of the greatest performances of all time (Judy Garland in A Star is Born).
So can Jennifer Aniston take the Oscar? My guess is no and that this is your typical 'everyone needs something to talk about' Oscar situation. But the immediate bandwagon enthusiasm about this possible upset serves to remind us of just how popular deglam performances are and just how resistant the whole system is to giving great screen actresses their due IF they aren't lucky enough to win during their years of "shows great promise!"
Though the combination of Jen's deglam advantage (she wears prosthetic facial scars as a suicidal woman with chronic pain from a before-movie accident) and Hollywood's ageism (which might be a non issue since Aniston is 45 herself) do worry me a smidge my guess is that this still won't be enough once people start actually watching the films. Cake isn't big or showy enough to be an "Oscar winning" film and Aniston doesn't have the advantage that some actresses had with minor triumphs in that she wasn't having a great year that it punctuated (Grace Kelly's impossible-to-imagine Garland beat down in 1954 was due in large part to the fact that she had multiple smash hits that year and that her star vehicle was also a Best Picture contender).
So there's little to worry about, unless of course people (i.e. the media and industry) are just really bored and just don't want Julianne to have one.
I hope this "can she win?!?" fervor dies down because media-created battles where there shouldn't be one breed ill feelings. I'd rather celebrate both women to be honest. Though I think an Oscar nomination will be generous to say the least (given Johansson Cotillard etcetera) Aniston's grieving bitch in Cake deserves applause. In some ways her new character is akin to the depressed women she played in The Good Girl and Friends with Money but those were duller cousins. It's as if Aniston finally understood that you don't have to smother your star charisma to successfully play a depressed person. Better to let your light blaze to illuminate the specificity of the depression. I am personally enjoying imagining that she learned this from Julianne Moore herself who has always excelled, nay, absolutely dazzled while playing extremely depressed women. Depressed people in real life are rarely intoxicating to look upon but there's no reason they can't be that onscreen while still reading as authentically sad. That's the alchemy and the magic of great screen acting.
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