Uri wrote:The Original BJ wrote:Ryan Gosling is the obvious omittee -- it's truly strange that for a duet like Blue Valentine, only half the deserving pair would be cited.
As we all know, women exist, men operate. Hence actors, as a rule, don't get awards for domestic dramas. Most of the times they are honored for getting out there and DO something, and in the relatively rare cases they win for films depicting the more personal aspects of life, they tend to be manifesting an extreme, or "extreme", take on it: alcoholism, ugliness, perversion, old age. Only during a very brief period, during the late '70s and early '80, as a reaction to the rise of feminism, they were allowed, the way films were (and as we know best picture and best actor are closely related), to win for family centered stories. To this day, Hoffman's first Oscar is the only one which can qualify as a win for a leading man for a straight forward domestic drama (Fonda, another winner of this sort at that time, was old and dying). And he had the advantage of being able to be conceived by some as the "offended" side of the marital equation depicted in KvK, while Gosling couldn't. This is why the Gordon Pinsets, Paddy Considines or the Patrick Wilsons are hardly ever being nominated while their female costars are. Which makes the possibility of Clooney being a strong contender this year for The Descendants an interesting one. Then again, he plays a guy whose wife cheated on him. He got it in the bag.
Interesting thesis but I think it really goes back to Old Hollywood and the so-called "women's pictures" in whcih Bette Davis or Kay Francis or Ruth Chatterton were the stars and the reasons the films got made. Poor George Brent or Herbert Marshall or Brian Aherne were just "there" while the women suffered and suffered.
In Away form Her, Julie Christie suffers from a devastating disease while Gordon Pinsent stands hopelessly by; in
In America, Samantha Morton goes through that agonizing child birth while Paddy Considine feels bad; in
Little children the relationship is more complex but all eyes are on Kate Winselt, not Patrick Wilson. In
Blue Valentine I don't think either character comes off looking well - they both suffer - they both cause the other to suffer - it's an unfocused film, but I personally thought Gosling gave the better performance. The upshot here, though, was that it was Williams' persistence that got the film made and Gosling, who was allegedly her boyfriend at the time, was chosen for his role as opposed to making the film happen.
I'm not saying this reasoning is valid, but I think it's there. In
Kramer vs. Kramer , Dustin Hoffman was playing the abandoned woman in reverse and was the focus of attention.
On Golden Pond doesn't really fit the scenario. Fonda won primarily because he was old and dying in real life and had not won before, but he was also playing a cantankerous old guy. On the other side of the coin in sexist Hollywood, actors playing gruff or canterous characters often win Oscars while women never do. Think Lionel Barrymore, Charles Coburn and David Niven vs. Gladys Cooper, Agnes Moorehead and Edith Evans. Downright mean, though, usually defeats both sexes. There are exceptions, of course - Ed Begley, James Coburn, the great Mary Astor, Mo'Nique off the top of my head, few if any others.
