Ana de Armas and the perils of playing a good person
Sunday, December 8, 2019 at 10:10AM by Cláudio Alves
When looking at the 94 performances which have conquered the Best Actress Oscar, some jump out as weird anomalies. It's not so much a question of the actor's work as it's an issue of character type. Good people are rare. Not those who are idealized icons or martyred by nightmarish cruelty, but the few that are just regular decent folk. That's one of the reasons Emma Thompson's Margaret Schlegel from Howards End seems so out of place, for instance. She's an average person who seems intrinsically decent but whose goodness isn't simplistic sainthood. More importantly, she's all that but isn't boring to watch.
That's a rare feat and few actors can accomplish it. In screenplays, such roles tend to look simplistic and lacking in substance. Just think of how insufferable Cosette tends to be in Les Misérables or how unconvincing Jane can be in Pride & Prejudice adaptations. Tom Hanks is one of those rare performers who can take such a role and play it to perfection, bringing humanity to decency and making ordinary kindness interesting to watch. Emma Thompson is another. And, in a delightful surprise, so is Ana de Armas…
In Knives Out, she plays Marta Cabrera, the full-time nurse, and confidant of Harlan Thrombey, a rich writer of intricate whodunnits. He is also the dead man whose demise propels the film's central mystery, but Marta is the heroine of the piece. She's the one who we, as an audience, ally ourselves with and the resolution of her fate is what anchors Johnson's twisting plot in emotional reality. As the overused saying goes, Marta is the heart and soul of Knives Out. That is an often-thankless role, but this mystery's script adds sufficient details to flesh out Marta as a character and not just a moral backbone.
One of her quirkiest idiosyncrasies is the inability to lie without exploding into bouts of uncontrollable vomiting. When there's secrets to hide and millions at stake, being a human lie-detector is an unfortunate situation, not to mention a ridiculous character trait. Daniel Craig's eccentrically accented Benoit Blanc, on the other hand, sees this as the perfect tool for mystery-solving and nominally makes Marta the Watson to his Sherlock. Nothing could be more appropriate for Dr. Watson is another one of those good person roles that are so often tedious to observe.
Rian Johnson's script gives Ana de Armas a lot to work with, that's obvious, but the excellence of the performance is all on the actress. She's stupendous as Marta, perfectly telegraphing her character's thought process with expressive transparency and humorous exaggeration. More importantly, she conveys Marta's most important attributes and makes them seem natural. Not so much her regurgitating proclivities but her inherent goodness, the consummated competence of a good nurse and the kindness that makes her choose potential penury and jail time instead of risking another's life. Whether Marta wins or loses in this game of deceit, she plays by her rules and her rules alone.
A moral code of decency and utmost kindness isn't something that's easily followed or dramatized. Ana de Armas' genius is the way she doesn't hide that effort. In many pivotal scenes, we see how Marta struggles to do the right thing, how she gets irritated by her boss's antics or enraged at a rich prick's threats towards her mother. When a teary phone call reveals its Machiavellian purposes, there's a flash of disgust in the actress's features. When her fate seems sealed and Marta has nothing left to lose, we see a sardonic smile and the dejected humor of someone smart enough to understand the full consequences of her actions and the absurdity of her situation.
It's brilliant work, full of little details sprinkled over what could have been a caricature of the perfect immigrant. Through Ana de Armas' work, Marta isn't a mere plot mechanism, she's a fully tridimensional person we can fall in love with and cheer on. Better yet, she has great chemistry with every single one of her co-stars. There's the jovial repartee she has with Christopher Plummer, the tense allyship with Daniel Craig and Chris Evans, the cautious friendliness with Katherine Langford and even the swallowed anger and rigid posture when she receives a dirty plate from Don Johnson. She's just wonderful and Knives Out is her perfect "a star is born" moment.
These types of performance, especially in genre pictures, rarely get recognized by awards bodies. That said, I hope the Globes remember Ana de Armas' excellence tomorrow. Do you?
Reader Comments (16)
Ana de Armas is wonderful. I think if the film were to receive any Oscar attention for its actors, she'd be its best bet because her character is the easiest to latch onto. Most of the actors are playing elitist douches while de Armas plays its moral center.
I thought she was really great in Blade Runner 2049 as well. I agree. Hopefully she gets a globe nomination tomorrow.
So, does anyone think that, maybe, Armas might be the "surprise that's not really a surprise" for Best Actress this year?
She was good but I think it would have been a better film if she had a darker side at the end
I can't wait to watch the film a second time to really track her performance; I bet it only deepens once you know all the film's secrets.
Adoro la Margaret Schlegel di Emma Thompson.
Ana de Armas is quite good here, but the Academy would never nominate this kind of role. Genre bias reigns supreme.
Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking and Amy Adams in Junebug come to mind. Both very very good hearted roles
Great performance. She should/will get the Globe nomination. That's as far as it should/will go, but hey, "Golden Globe nominee" for the rest of her career is nothing to sniff at! Rubber-stamp all of the above for Daniel Craig as well.
Man, she was fucking good in this. I'm impressed at what she did in the film as she just conveyed that air of innocence and kindness that is rarely seen in films. Plus, I love the fact that she had a moral code and is just someone that just wants to be a good person. Ana de Armas definitely has a future and I would love for her to do more roles like this that allows her to showcase her strength as an actress. I would put her in consideration for an Oscar nod. She was just low-key in what she is doing and those are the performances that matter.
Wow! I do love those performances. My impersonator is doing his homework.
Peggy Sue-
I literally LOL at that
She's great and incredibly authentic in a movie full of arch, outsize performances, if maybe a little overly reactive as a character (similar to the position of Daniel Kaluuya in "Get Out"). I worried that she was too much the terrorized victim - in addition to the saintly immigrant - but like Kaluuya she assumes satisfying agency by the end.
I know Suzanne, right? When my impersonator is contributing more than I am I should probably quit. Oh well, our Thelma and Louise pact to change handles by next year can't come soon enough! Love ya sis xo
Maybe she will surprise and win over Awkwafina at the GG Comedy category??
Wonderful post! Ana's performance is the main key for how Knives Out works so well. The first twist hits the movie so early, and if Marta wasn't played by someone dynamic and as someone to root for, the rest of the story would've been fallen flat. I'm hoping Ana lands a Best Supporting or Best Actress nod.