Joaquin Phoenix @ 50: An Alternative Oscar History
Monday, October 28, 2024 at 4:00PM 
Joaquin Phoenix's last great performance was in C'MON C'MON.
Do you have your own dream Oscar ballots lying around? I've been doing them for ages, probably since first finding The Film Experience and becoming entranced by Nathaniel's Film Bitch Awards. In recent years, the mountains of notebooks finally came to be formally digitized, starting with the long process of creating Letterboxd lists out of every Oscar eligibility rulebook, going back to 1927. This way, I was able to make a massive Excel spreadsheet with ballots for every year, following AMPAS guidelines. Oh well, much ado about nothing. The only reason I'm bringing this up is to contextualize the bizarre birthday post in store for today, when Joaquin Phoenix celebrates his mid-century mark.
As the Todd Haynes fiasco and the disappointing Joker diptych have made Joaquin Phoenix something of a sore subject, let's go back to happier times and better movies. Indeed, let me present an alternative Oscar history. The thespian remains a winner but under very different circumstances…
Best Supporting Actor – 2000 (winner)
THE YARDS, James Gray
Once upon a time, I'd have made Phoenix a two-time nominee before his first foray into James Gray's amber-hued cinema. However, watching more movies expands one's idea of past cinematic years, and since I believe in spreading wealth, that affects ideal Oscar ballots. You can say Phoenix is an Almost There case for my personal Academy Awards with his performances in 1989's Parenthood and 1995's To Die For. Both works exemplify a bruised vulnerability that characterized much of the actor's early career, often manifest in inchoate teenage angst that felt so real it could break through the screen artifice of fa Ron Howard family comedy and the satirical sharpness of Gus van Sant's Joyce Maynard adaptation.
But even as horizons expand, there's no way I could deny Phoenix's work in The Yards. From the 2000 Supporting Actress Smackdown adjacent piece on the actor's breakthrough year:
Phoenix plays Willie Gutierrez, the protagonist's old buddy, an almost fraternal figure whose choleric gloom spreads over the film like a virulent infection. In some ways, he's been broken by this criminal cosmos long before we ever set eyes on him, making the character something of a shadow, a dark storm of inarticulate angst that's as foreboding as it is pathetic. There's a wild threat to his introspective presence, a whisper of incoming violence that, once manifested, results in The Yards' most affecting passages. The pairing of Gray and Phoenix would go on to make much better films, but there's already an admirable grandeur to what they achieve here.
Best Actor – 2009
TWO LOVERS, James Gray
Phoenix's third collaboration with James Gray produced another majestic turn, defined by such bone-deep despair that the screen can barely contain it. As Nathaniel once pointed out in his Film Bitch Awards write-ups, it's a tough job to start one's narrative with a suicide attempt because of the conundrum of where to go from there. Such an action usually occurs at the climax of an arc. As an introduction, it's a risky prospect that can easily lead to tonal turpitude. Phoenix avoids the pitfalls, making Leonard into one of his best screen creations. Reimagining Dostoyevsky's White Nights, actor and director peer into a psyche left in disarray, illuminating the complexities of depression in ways few artists have done. It's so easy to render it a pit of bottomless black. Yet, Two Lovers considers a gradation of gray, a stormy sky of impossible depth that still has enough openings to let a stray sunray through.
Some days, I wonder if I should just give him my win instead of Colin Firth's similarly suicidal character study in A Single Man.
Best Actor – 2012
THE MASTER, Paul Thomas Anderson
Before Phoenix's first collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, I'd probably have described him as an actor whose successes center on saturnine individuals whose closed interiorities are both sanctuary and prison. In short, an actor best known for his emotional dexterity rather than expressive physicality. But then came The Master, unleashing a whole new Joaquin Phoenix into the world. One whose flesh and bone is as much a canvas as his face, as much an instrument as the actor's voice. Regard Freddie Quell's sinewy form, the way he juts out in stark angles and oscillated between defensiveness and attack – study it all and you'll see the scars of war, a society's abandonment, the truth of an addictive personality that needs, needs, and needs some more. Phoenix would revisit many of these mechanisms for his Joker. Sadly, the fundamental discipline of this 2012 performance was lost along the way.
For once, the Academy and I agree on something. Phoenix should have been nominated in 2012, but not won. While AMPAS went with Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln, Denis Lavant gets my imaginary Oscar for Holy Motors.
Best Actor – 2013
HER, Spike Jonze
After these killers, depressives, and all-around human wrecks, there's something nearly breezy about Phoenix's work in Her. Well, at least on a surface level. Go deeper and you'll glean another history of solitude within this futuristic sad sack of a leading man, yearning so hard he'll latch onto an AI companion who makes him feel loved. The characterization is delicately realized with a light hand and the quality of gentleness Phoenix would reprise for Mike Mill's beautiful C'mon C'mon. Melancholy dipped in milk and honey, tinged with the soft orange sorbet sunset of Hoyte van Hoytema's lending, this performance is an ode to the romantic in all of us. It's also a sad song in its honor. What could have become an exercise in pity – between performer and character, performance and audience – turns out insightful instead. What a surprising triumph, one of those casting decisions that may seem odd in the moment but makes perfect sense in retrospect.
Though I love this performance dearly, Phoenix wouldn't be my Best Actor winner for 2013. That honor's reserved for Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips.
Best Actor – 2018
YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE, Lynne Ramsay
At the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, You Were Never Really Here won the Best Screenplay award for its auteur, Lynne Ramsay. Moments after the Scottish cineaste's speech, the Best Actor prize went to the same film, causing astonishment in the room. No one looked more surprised than Joaquin Phoenix, though the quality of his work ought to have given him some hope for the festival laurels. As a man immersed in the most savage violence imaginable, the actor folds into himself, burying deep until he becomes a void ready to suck us in and the whole movie too. What's most intriguing is how terrified he is, beset by a self-reflective terror that often leads to bouts of narrative-stopping catatonia. Considering how much Ramsay's direction relies on pure formalism, it's incredible how much Phoenix manages to build a multidimensional character while never interfering or disrupting the picture's sensorial priorities.
As far as I'm concerned, You Were Never Really Here is one of the defining cinematic achievements of the 2010s. Even so, there's no denying Ethan Hawke's First Reformed turn, so Phoenix remains a five-time nominee and one-time winner in my Oscars.
If you could decide Joaquin Phoenix's Oscar history, what would it look like?
Reader Comments (3)
Not sure about the whole ballot thing - I'd have to revisit all the years you mentioned - but I love every single performance in his partnership with Gray, in particular his duet with the wondrous Marion Cotillard in The Immigrant. I can tell you that I am not a fan of You Were Never Really There - in fact, I hate this movie with a passion - and Her - I hate the movie but he's serviceable. But his Razzie award would go for his performance in Irrational Man, Woody Allen's worst movie. Oh Gosh, I forgot I hate him in Napoleon. And Inherent Vice. And Gladiator
Other than his work with Gray, I think he's wonderful in Joker (well deserved Oscar), The Master , C'Mon C'Mon and Walk The LIne.
So, he's basically Kevin Spacey, an actor I detest with terrific performances here and there?
I'd love to see your ballot for every year.
I have nominated him 6 times but he has never won
95 To Die For but Spacey wins
00 Gladiator but Finney wins
05 Walk the Line but Ledger wins
09 Two Lovers but Renner wins
12 The Master but Cooper wins
19 Joker but Driver wins.
He's an acquired taste to be sure. And when I say that my least favorite performance of his is in The Master, that's all you need to know about his (and that film's) effect on me as a viewer. I haven't seen any of the James Gray collaborations, probably need to rectify that, if only for the actresses involved.
In my alternate Oscar universe, he would never have won so far, but he would have been nominated for To Die For, Gladiator, Walk the Line, Her and Beau Is Afraid.