Best Supporting Actor
The Best Supporting Actor race, like Best Actor and Best Director, has three I’m quite confident in and two not so much. And, go figure, the three I’m confident in are three performances from three movies I’ve seen.
At the top is Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master, which I’m sure you already figured considering the headline gives it away, but beyond the obvious nature of the pick I had an interesting conversation with another Seattle critic last night when asking what she thought of The Master.
Her interpretation was interesting in that she felt the performances informed the characters more than anything else. It’s a testament to both Phoenix and Hoffman and makes you wonder if anyone else could have played these roles and created these characters or brought as much to the table as these two were able to. A good performance should elevate and define the characters just as much as a screenplay or directorial guidance. In this case, from what I saw on screen and read in interviews, both Hoffman and Phoenix did just that — one being the stoic figurehead and the other the gangling wanderer.
In the runner-up position I currently have Alan Arkin, whose performance in Argo is one of the film’s pure joys. One concern I have over the pick is Arkin seems to play the same character a lot of the time as of late, a cranky old-timer of sorts from Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning and there’s a hint of sameness even in his Get Smart character. Is it his fault his acting is perfectly tailored for a certain character? I say it isn’t, but then again isn’t that sort of what happened to Christopher Walken?
In third I have an actor I actually thought had given up entirely. Robert De Niro, ladies and gentlemen, actually acts in Silver Linings Playbook to the point you wonder who the guy we’ve seen in films such as Godsend, New Year’s Eve and Killer Elite actually is. This isn’t Robert “Paycheck” De Niro. Here he delivers a heartfelt performance and it works and is likely going to find him earning his seventh acting nomination.
Now we enter “I don’t know” territory. I am hesitant to place Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained) in my top five as the film has the energy behind the film seems limited at best. Hal Holbrook for Promised Land feels like a safe pick for now, which is why I went with it and I’d feel more comfortable bringing Dwight Henry over the bubble line if more people were still talking about Beasts of the Southern Wild, but it seems all attention for that film belongs to Quvenzhané Wallis.
My full list of contenders for Best Supporting Actor is one of my longest with 21 total names, all of which you can see here. Many of the performances have been seen, seven have not, and many have yet to be seen by the masses. This is a race that could change in a heartbeat and is one that will be tracked closely over the coming months.
For now, here’s my top five and you can check out the full field right here.
- Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)
- Alan Arkin (Argo)
- Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook)
- Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained)
- Hal Holbrook (Promised Land)
You can read yesterday’s article looking at the Best Director category here.
