There is some attention being paid to the performances of Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones in Hope Springs, attention I gave the performances in my review, but was certainly overshadowed due to my distaste for the film itself.
Personally I don’t subscribe to the notion that a film is somehow “better” because an actor gives a good performance. I’ve had such conversations where someone will say they like a film, I respond, “Really?” and they say, “So and so gave such a great performance.” Okay, fine, they gave a great performance, but I thought we were talking about the movie as a whole?
In Hope Springs both Streep and Jones are great, and I take that into consideration when deciding my overall opinion of a film, but is an ugly piece of jewelry worth wearing just because it has diamonds? “No,” is the short answer… “No, but that diamond sure is sparkly,” is the long one.
With movies we always tend to think in terms of Oscars and Sasha Stone has brought up the performances of Streep and Jones in comparison with those of Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva in Michael Haneke‘s devastating dissection of love and old age, Amour. Stone is a little more generous than I was in my review when talking of Streep and Jones, but I tend to agree with most of what she says regarding all four performances, though I’m not sure these four performances are going to “ride circles around the rest of the performances given this year,” unless she’s talking about Trintignant and Riva specifically. In that case, she may be on to something.
Stone, however, questions the likelihood of any of these four getting nominations, and with Trintignant and Riva I believe she’s right, they “are not well-known enough outside Europe and art-house Americans to garner Oscar attention.” I think Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts are going to have similar trouble with the equally excellent Rust and Bone.
She adds it may be tough to get them a nom because “they are ‘old’ people, [and] there is nothing sexy about them.” That seems a bit off. Isn’t the argument that the Academy is generally made up of “old” people and they tend to vote that way? Perhaps the key is the “sexy” aspect and the idea the 94% white and 77% male Academy members won’t be taking DVD screen captures of Streep and Riva.
Personally I think Streep is Teflon when it comes to the Academy. She won last year for a performance that wasn’t deserving of an Oscar and, for as much as I wasn’t a fan of the film, her Hope Springs performance destroys it. But when has a good performance in a so-so movie ever stopped the Academy from handing out nominations? Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh know what I’m talking about, just look at My Week with Marilyn. Stanley Tucci also knows courtesy of The Lovely Bones. And looking over Streep’s list of nominations there are a few that stand out there as well.
As of now, the only thing standing in the way of both Streep and Jones getting a nom is time. The early August release date may be a blessing if, as Stone suggests, performances over the course of the rest of the year fail to move the dial. However, if things begin to stack up, Hope Springs could easily be forgotten. In terms of the crop of films seen so far this year, Streep and Jones are certainly on the stage until someone knocks them down, but we still have a long way to go.
