The new Smackdown season is upon us. Before we get to the main event, which will be in a day or two depending on when we finalize it, let's look at the ways in which even movie introduces the characters that will then go on to help their supporting actresses win a nomination. We'll take them in the order in which they show up in their movies.
After the jump you can also vote to determine the reader ranking of the contenders. You know you want to do it. Meet...
Okay try to turn it over now! Katharine? Mary! SOMEBODY ?!?
Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer). 3 minutes into Hidden Figures
After a brief prologue featuring a child genius at math, we cut to the main story. That'd be three mathematically gifted adult black women working for NASA. On this particular morning though the women are having trouble making it to work. Octavia gets one of only two comical introductions of this year's Supporting Actress nominees, and the only intro that's visually comic as we see only her legs sticking out from under a car at first. In this amusing and smart opening gambit to immediately invest you in the the titular trio we get all their personalities in a nutshell: Katharine is lost in her own very busy brain; Mary is sassily and confidentally chattering away; and Dorothy (Spender) is just trying to take care of the situation at hand and all the other women, too. She'll continue this dynamic with even more dynamism in the film. It all works. This introduction is endearing and you are with the heroines from moment one.
What are y'all out here getting into?"
Rose Maxson (Viola Davis). 5 minutes into Fences
Before we meet Rose, we've heard her name dropped as Troy's wife in a horndog conversation about "eyeing women" between Troy (Denzel Washington) and his best friend (Steven William Henderson). When they arrive at Troy's home, Viola enters the backyard. She laughs at Troy's brush off and horny response to her question in which he manages to remind her place is in the kitchen and then the bedroom. Her voice is full of conspiratorial warmth as if the three of them have had this exact small talk banter every work days for years. They seem happily married in this first scene together but it's also performed... and why and to what extent we will see as the film develops and the complexity of their lives together is unveiled.
WHAT HAPPENED?!? WHAT HAPPENED,CHIRON? Why you didnt come home like you're supposed to?
(Naomie Harris). 11 minutes into Moonlight
So many things about Moonlight are perfect including this disorienting shift in tone when we first meet Chiron's mother. We knew there was trouble at home from Little's (Alex R Hibbert) demeanor, but the previous scenes have been weirdly calming in the house of Juan and Teresa (Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monae). Director Barry Jenkins and cinematography James Laxton keep her out of focus for a crucial second but you can feel and then see her disruptive energy coming from the blue streak at the bottom of the frame and Harris' urgent delivery, less comforting and more accusatory than we'd expect from a mother whose child has been missing for a day. Harris we'll keep on knocking the movie off its hypnotic rhythms and Chiron off his meek game each time she resurfaces. Hers is the most dramatic and forceful of these five introductions as befits a character with way way too much messy drama of her own.
[Laughing V.O.] Misery island is where me and your Aunt Randi got married."
Randi Chandler (Michelle Williams). 28 minutes into Manchester by the Sea
This intro, a flashback which is not labelled as such in the film's organically sliding structure of memories coming in and out of view in the present, is a surprise. Her introduction cuts from a voiceover suggesting a combatie marriage, to an almost comic sniffling exasperation, in which the marriage actually seems pretty wonderful. Michelle Williams first scene is funny in a real mundane way that you aren't at all prepared for given the sober context and themes of grief. But these happy memories, with their jokey sadness, only make the real grief to come more upsetting. You don't know what you got til it's gone.
This is John and this is Sue... they are such nice people."
Sue Brierley (Nicole Kidman). 41 minutes into Lion.
We spend the first forty minutes of Lion with just little Saroo, lost and afraid and orphaned in India after a misshap with a train in the middle of the night which takes him hundreds of miles from home. We are introduced to his kindly adoptive mother through a scrapbook of photos. In all of them she looks decidely normal and neighborly. Unlike some movie introductions there's no hint that she'll be an important character -- she's just another complete stranger to Saroo and the photos contain not one hint of glamorous movie star Nicole Kidman. Neither does the performance we're about to see...