![]() ![]() And yet there’s no better route to an Oscar campaign than playing a messy show-biz icon (see Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Bakker, Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland, and Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury), backed by a hefty campaign budget. De Armas’s talents are evident-look no further than “ Knives Out”-but in Andrew Dominik’s bio-pic she was out of her depth, restricted from showing Monroe’s wit or charm and condemned to nearly three hours of breathy suffering, as her character is subjected to the drooling predations of various men. “Blonde,” based on Joyce Carol Oates’s fictitious account of the life of Marilyn Monroe, opened to scathing reviews, but Netflix’s flush awards operation has kept its star in the conversation. Was there something dismaying about a well-connected white actress displacing Deadwyler and Davis, whom prognosticators had well above her only weeks ago?įair enough, but I’d sooner raise an eyebrow at de Armas. Then again, why feel sour about an undersung actress in a low-budget drama getting recognition for what, by all accounts, is a great performance? The hand-wringing on Tuesday had to do with the question of whose spot Riseborough presumably “took.” A Black actress hasn’t won Best Actress since Halle Berry, in 2002. (She won!) It’s hardly news that the Oscars aren’t a scientific yardstick of “merit,” and anything involving names such as Paltrow and Aniston couldn’t be called grassroots. The Riseborough affair recalled such wild-card campaigns as Sally Kirkland’s cannonballing into the 1988 lineup, for an obscure film called “Anna,” and Melissa Leo’s self-funded “For Your Consideration” ads for “ The Fighter,” in 2011. It’s easy to be cynical: given a quorum of celebrity pals, you, too, can maneuver your way into the Best Actress race. Many of their posts had similar language, suggesting a cut-and-paste job: “To Leslie,” we were told repeatedly, is a “small film with a giant heart.” What was going on here? A glitch in the matrix? A blackmail scheme? A celebrity fan club with a curiously limited vocabulary? The answer is more straightforward: Riseborough and the film’s director, Michael Morris, are well-liked industry veterans, and they didn’t have the funds to run a traditional Oscar campaign. During the nominating window, however, a slew of celebrities, among them Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, and Jennifer Aniston, rose up to support Riseborough, hosting screenings and posting breathless social-media testimonials. “To Leslie,” about a lottery winner who squanders her spoils, had a limited release in October and has made, to date, around twenty-seven thousand dollars, barely enough to cover a 2023 Honda Civic. Riseborough’s surprise nomination is the result of the year’s most surreal campaign. And so farewell to Emma Thompson (“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”), Mia Goth (“Pearl”), Naomi Ackie (“I Wanna Dance with Somebody”), Vicky Krieps (“Corsage”), and the dozens of other performers who had the misfortune of vying for a spot in this year’s Best Actress race, which was very crowded, very unpredictable, and very weird. (Hello, “ My Year of Dicks,” nominated for Best Animated Short Film!) But, before we dive in, it’s worth taking a moment to acknowledge the departed, like letting a handkerchief fly into the wind. When the Oscar nominations are announced, as they were on Tuesday morning, it’s tempting to get caught up in “hello”s. Your name wasn’t on the A-list before you played Mamie Till, but is now, and you shoulda been a contender. Your climactic courtroom scene had one of the most powerful closeups of the year. You took a grieving-mother role that could have been clichéd and made her thrillingly alive and complicated. ![]() Farewell-and this one hurts-to Danielle Deadwyler (“ Till”). ![]()
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