by Jason Adams
There's a scene set at the three-quarter mark of Sebastián Lelio's film Disobedience (which I reviewed right here) that shatters me into a million jagged little pieces every single time I watch it. Alessandro Nivola's Orthodox character Dovid has just had a heated argument with his wife Esti (a fabulously good Rachel McAdams) in which she's admitted she loves Ronit (the also fabulously good Rachel Weisz), the daughter of the just deceased Rabbi who's returned home after running away to New York. Dovid is a spiritual leader himself, on track to replace the Rabbi, and he has endless duties to attend to this week of Shiva, or mourning.
And so Dovid goes to meet with some mourners who've just come in to town for the eulogy service (the Hesped) who it turns out are the choir who will perform at the ceremony. And they sing. The film cuts to a wide-shot - Dovid standing with his back turned to us in the center of the room, surrounded by mourners in black, all facing him. As Nivola turns towards the camera, slowly it moves forward in on him and trains in on his face as the singers crescendo - Nivola keeps everything in this moment internalized; his face hardly moves.
And its devastating. It's the sort of acting moment that doesn't tear it up in Oscar clips, but it's all the more powerful for its restraint - typical of Nivola's gorgeously low-key approach whenever he goes to bat; think back on his singing scene in Junebug as well. And it's why I'm going to spend this whole awards season shouting his name in the middle of any Best Supporting Actor conversations I come across.
I keep reading that the Supporting Actor contest seems thin at the moment, before the Awards Contenders all roll down upon us from Toronto and the like - so who are you rooting for Supporting-Actor-wise out of the films we've already seen in 2018?
Friday, September 14, 2018 at 9:01PM 
;)
