by Eric Blume
While Nathaniel updates the Oscar charts over the next two days, I thought I'd chime on with some thoughts on one of the year's most packed-with-candidates categories, Best Actor. It's always good for TFE readers to talk about the big races, and I'm here to offer a perhaps unpopular take. Since the debut of King Richard at TIFF in September, many have crowned Will Smith as the runaway winner of this year's Oscar. Smith is a well-liked, bona fide movie star with twenty years of box office hits and solid performances. He may indeed be our victor. But after finally catching up with the film this past weekend, I'm going to put it out there that I don't think his victory as assured as so many do.
Sure, Smith gives a charismatic and spirited performance in the film, and his megawatt charm holds the picture together despite its weaknesses and cliches. But there's not much of an arc to this character, who finishes the picture right where he starts it...
The two "confrontation" scenes, one with wife Aujanue Ellis and one with coach John Bernthal, are obligatory at best, and don't offer much. nuance into his character (they're better for his co-stars). The filmmakers always find a way to rationalize Richard's behavior as okay, and there's no real acknowledgement that maybe Richard was a monster, or that there are any sort of complexities to him. He's always our valiant hero. This still from the film pretty much sums up Smith's performance:
...which is two hours and twenty minutes of Smith saying "World's Best Dad" over and over again. In short, there's not a lot of depth. He may win in the same way Rami Malek did a few years back, on the emotional wave of an inexplicably beloved crowd-pleaser that warms an audience who doesn't want too much of a challenge. But others might be perplexed and annoyed that Venus and Serena couldn't be the heroes of their own story, and that there's not much to Smith's character.
While many things could change over the next three months, Smith in particular has two extraordinary performances competing against him. On the charisma and star power front, Andrew Garfield has equal wattage with his performance in tick, tick...BOOM! The screen can barely contain Garfield, whose energy is so livewire he ignites verve into each scene.
And Garfield has much more of a scale to play within his own vehicle. While the two 'confrontation' scenes aren't much stronger than the ones in King Richard, Garfield's character has a much larger arc surrounding those explosions. He has so many emotional beats to play, offering up a huge range of flavors from fear, desperation, rage, confusion, selfishness, humor, to inspiration and beyond. Plus, he learned how to sing and does so beautifully. He makes musical theater feel urgent and vital. It's a major performance by a long-loved actor who many felt was robbed of his nomination (and win) for The Social Network a decade ago
Then there's Benedict Cumberbatch. He's winning a lot of the regional critics prizes and there's nobody who has a more complex, textured role on paper in this category this season. Cumberbatch knew what he had, and he found both a series of specificities and a series of ambiguities to anchor this film and give it a deep case of whatthefuckery.
I've always admired Cumberbatch just fine, but I certainly never thought he had a Daniel Day-Lewis performance in him! You can never relax in The Power of the Dog because you have absolutely no idea what Cumberbatch might do next, even though it remains fully in character. Cumberbatch falls into Jane Campion's storytelling style in the same way Holly Hunter did in The Piano... they're so closely in lock-step with the dark recesses of the character that they're able to surprise you by doing the unobvious, but absolutely human, thing at all times. And we know how this ended for Holly Hunter in her collaboration with Campion.
There are, of course, other actors who are also excellent this year who could also surprise with nominations like Joaquin Phoenix, Clifton Collins, Peter Dinklage, Denzel Washington, and Bradley Cooper, but Garfield and Cumberbatch are particularly strong challengers, so maybe this won't be a cakewalk for Smith. Last year, everyone thought it was a done deal for Chadwick Bozeman, but in the end, Anthony Hopkins was... just better.
Actors are the largest voting branch, and like it or not, most actors vote based on how much they wish they had gotten the chance to play the part, and how much they would have loved to have been a part of the film. It's evident to actors how difficult the assignment was for Garfield and Cumberbatch, which could result in a real race this year.