Best Actress 2011

[FilmFan720]

Finally caught up with Albert Nobbs last night, so I can vote here.

If you take the movies they are in out of the equation, this could be on of the more exciting line-ups in recent times: A bright newcomer, one of the most acclaimed young actresses of our time, the most nominated actress ever, an acclaimed actress breaking through with her first lead nomination and the long-awaited return of one of Oscar's most overlooked actresses. It is too bad that none of them are in very good films!

Rooney Mara is very good in Fincher's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but doesn't bring much to the role that wasn't on the page. A welcome breakthrough, but not necessarily Oscar material here.

The Iron Lady is a pretty complete mess of a film, and Meryl Streep's technical impersonation is perfect. Neither she nor the film have anything interesting to say about Thatcher, though, and I can't really endorse a nomination or win here.

Viola Davis is excellent in The Help, part of a cast that brings much more to that script than it really deserves. I wouldn't have nominated her, but can't complain with her on this list.

I went into Albert Nobbs expecting a pretty dreary exercise in gender politics, and was surprised that I enjoyed it more than I thought. The story is pretty trite, but the actors are all excellent and bring a little more life than the film deserves. I can see why Glenn Close wanted to make it for so long: the part plays right into her strengths, yet isn't the kind of work she has gotten to do that last 20 years, and there is a lot for her to play with her. She is my strong runner-up.

I voted for Michelle Williams, though. My Week with Marilyn isn't much of a film, but it is an entertaining diversion that is brought a lot of depth and pain through William's beautiful work (I sense a theme this year...weak scripts elevated by lead actresses!). I was shocked by how Williams, and actress I like but don't always fawn over, transformed herself in that role and created a pretty unique yet accurate portrait of Marilyn Monroe. I happily endorse a win here for her.

My five:

1. Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy
2. Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
3. Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia
4. Maria Bello, Beautiful Boy
5. Saorsie Ronan, Hanna

[Mister Tee]

As I said in the supporting actress thread: this was a year where my favorites pretty much failed to be nominated in each of the lead categories. Here I, like many of you, would have gone for Elizabeth Olsen's beautifully mysterious work in Martha Marcy Mae Marlene (if we took a "vote for anyone, nominated or not" ballot, it looks like we might pick her outright). I'd also surely have nominated Juliette Binoche's superb-even-by-her-standards performance in Certified Copy.

I notice, regarding We Need to Talk About Kevin, that those most enthusiastic about the film tend to be those who either read the book, or have a history of admiring Ramsay's directing. I have neither (never saw Ramsay's earlier films), and I was greatly disappointed by a film I'd truly anticipated liking. What I saw was what Italiano wrote about in the Review thread: a Bad Seed/Omen-ish movie that seemed to be trying to finesse its lurid subject by being extremely vague about plot details (like, how did he get so many people to stand still long enough to be shot with a bow-and-arrow?). Readers of the book, I know, insist this misses the point: that the film is showing the son from point of view of Swinton's character, that she's a woman so ill-disposed toward motherhood that his demonic behavior is a product of her imagination. All I can say is, without the book to guide me to that conclusion, I saw none of this. I'm not even certain any film could achieve such a point-of-view coup; but this one, for me, definitely did not.

Anyway, because of this, Swinton's much-touted performance didn't reach me in any special way -- she was fine, as always, but there wasn't enough there there for me to care. Of the indie candidates, I'd be more inclined toward Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia, or Anna Paquin in Margaret.

Even with all those unfortunate omissions, I can't say any of the actual nominees were beyond the pale. Glenn Close's performance was a bit wan -- you'd think a role she'd been itching to play for so long would have given her more to ...well..play. But she's decent enough. I don't see Rooney Mara as being so much better or so much worse than Rapace in the Scandinavian version of Dragon Tattoo. Both of them played Lisbeth Salander -- a character so well-defined she would have emerged much the same if Cameron Diaz had played her.

The remaining three were, among the nominees, the clearly deserving. Michelle Williams might have given the most surprising performance of the group -- surprising both in the sense of the atypical light touch she shows (after so much suffering in other movies) and in the sense that you'd think it was impossible at this point for anyone to find a fresh way of playing Marilyn Monroe. In another year (like 2012, the way it's shaping up), Williams might have run away with all the prizes. But her film, in the end, is just too minor for her to prevail here.

The final two give deeply impressive performances in films that are problematic to say the least. We've discussed The Help at such length here that I feel no need to rehash it at this late date. Suffice to say that I fall on the side that thinks Viola Davis, through sheer force of will, makes her character into something far more potent than the cheesy script set out. If The Help has value beyond being a beach read -- and I think it does, marginally -- it's because of what Davis brings to the project.

Much the same can be said about what Meryl Streep does in The Iron Lady. As I said last winter, I don't think the filmmakers had the vaguest idea what they wanted to "say" about Margaret Thatcher -- I believe they respected her woman-breaking-into-man's-domain stature, but loathed her politics, which left them with almost no point of view around which to center the film. So, they fell back on Streep's virtuosity -- and Streep rewarded them with her most impressive "just watch what I can do with technique" exhibition in many a moon. She not only gives us Thatcher's persona; she gives us Thatcher in the extremis of dementia, and makes the details scarily convincing. I wouldn't endorse other filmmakers following this path -- ceding all power and focus to the acting demonstration of their lead performer. But with this performer, in this year, in this project, they've made something perversely fascinating, and, in a close call, I have to give it my vote for best performance of the bunch.

[Sabin]

I haven’t seen My Week with Marilyn or The Iron Lady, so I’ll be abstaining. Glenn Close’s performance is likely the worst nominated performance of 2011. Not her fault. Just very poorly directed and misguided. Viola Davis is good in The Help. She is a supporting actor in the film, but I wouldn’t nominate her in that category either. She’s better here than in Doubt, but it’s another role where she nobly struggles against the tide. She does cry in most of her scenes. Maybe it's by choice, but through direction, but she's quite good if not instantly personable.

Because The Iron Lady looked like a toxic event, I wouldn’t have minded seeing Davis win. Of the three I’ve seen, Rooney Mara is the standout. I haven’t seen the original and I don’t really care if it’s just a retread of a previous performance. It doesn’t begin to feel that way on the screen. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a lot of incredible filmmaking in the service of very little. I’ve read reviews that cite it as another example of Fincher’s obsession with process and clearly the strongest parts of the film involve crosscutting between people doing their jobs…but this isn’t Zodiac. It’s a lame mystery that at its best feels like Zodiac, and at its worst feels endless. But within the margins is Rooney Mara’s electric performance that manages a feat of integrity even though her character is marginalized by a perfunctory love story.

Best Actress
1. Anna Paquin, Margaret
2. Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene
3. Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy
4. Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
5. Monia Chokri, Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires)

[flipp525]

Still, I didn't think Mara's was the worst highly touted performance of the year - that was Tilda Swinton in the zombie-like remake of The Bad Seed called We Need to Talk About Kevin, and this in a year when there were two great performances by actresses in roles in which their characters were involved in similar situations.

Maria Bello's portryal of a mother who wakes up one morning to find her son opened fire on his classmates and then killed himself in Beautiful Boy is a much more complex, heartbreaking portryal in a much less hyped film.

I haven't seen Beautiful Boy, so I can't really comment on whether or not it was the preferred mother-of-homocidal-son film of the year, but I found your take on We Need To Talk About Kevin and Tilda Swinton's performance in it lacking something.

The book upon which the film is based, first of all, is one of the most compelling things I've ever read. Brilliantly written and compulsively addictive (which, for a novel written in complete epistolary form is quite a marvel). Secondly, I think what makes Swinton’s performance as Eva Katchadourian so natural and compelling is that she never completely disappears into the role. Because Eva herself is so uncomfortable in her role as a mother, it makes complete sense that Swinton, too, would glide ungainly through her own life. The dark hair against the paleness of not only her skin, but the washed out world in which she lives, lends a deathly pallor to the proceedings. This is the kind of consistently dutiful and daring work that Swinton has been turning in for years. It’s nice that she’s now being fully embraced for it. And it’s interesting to bookend this character as the alternative to the one she played in The Deep End a decade ago. Eva Katchadourian, in many ways, is just as fiercely devoted to Kevin’s protection in the end as Margaret Hall is to her son, Beau’s.

Neither the book nor the film isgoing for grace, humility and depth. He shoots his classmates with a crossbow for Chrissakes!

And if Lisbeth Salander is one of the "best literary characters of this young millennium", God help us all.

[Precious Doll]

2011 had a wealth of great performances so it was disappointing, though not surprising, to see the Academy nominate Meryl Streep and particularly Rooney Mara.

My choices:

1. Nadezhda Markina for Elena
2. Sareh Bayat for A Separation
3. Viola Davis for The Help
4. Tilda Swinton for We Need To Talk About Kevin
5. Megumi Kagurazaka for Guilty of Romance

With special mentions to Ariane Ascaride (The Snows of Kilimanjaro), Leila Katami (A Separation), Anna Paquin (Margaret), Shannyn Sossamon (The Road to Nowhere), Deannie Yip (A Simple Life).

[Big Magilla]

This was a very strange year in which the two best performances of the year, both of which were given by actresses in this category, were ignored while many lesser performances were considered, and one actually won.

First off, I went kicking and screaming into Fincher's remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo only to come out liking it better than the Swedish original with one exception - I thought Rooney Mara was a weak substitute for Noomi Rapace who I thought was terrific in the original. What's worse, she took the place of a captivating young actress whose breakthrough performance had been mentioned for awards recognition all year long, but who came up empty in the end. Elizabeth Olsen was mesmerizing as the haunted escapee from a cult throughout Martha Marcy May Marlene much in the same way Jennifer Lawrence was in the previous year's Winter's Bone opposite the same actor (John Hawkes).

Still, I didn't think Mara's was the worst highly touted performance of the year - that was Tilda Swinton in the zombie-like remake of The Bad Seed called We Need to Talk About Kevin, and this in a year when there were two great performances by actresses in roles in which their characters were involved in similar situations.

Maria Bello's portryal of a mother who wakes up one morning to find her son opened fire on his classmates and then killed himself in Beautiful Boy is a much more complex, heartbreaking portryal in a much less hyped film. Jeong-hie Yun's portrayal of the grandmother battling the early stages of Alzheimer's while dealing with a blasé grandson whose participation in the gang-rape of a young classmate caused her suicide in Poetry is even more layered and complex. Bello's lack of awards traction for a little seen film may have been understandable, but Yun having won the L.A. Film Critics award and placing second in the balloting for the National Society of Film Critics award, should have been imuch more n the conversation.

Other performances I really, really liked were those of Charlize Theron in Young Adult; Emily Watson in Oranges and Sunshine; Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy and, yes, Leila Hatami in A Separation, all of whom were at least as good as the other nominees.

As to those nominees, Viola Davis was certainly award-worthy in The Help, but it was a borderline lead/supporting performance. While I can understand the actress wanting to be considered a lead, I can't understand why everyone from bloggers to voters were so happy to to stand in lock-step and oblige her, especially in a year when there was so much strong competition in the lead category and not nearly as much in support but I can support her nomination in either category.

Michelle Williams continues her trajectory as one of the most interesting actresses of the day. We get to see a welcome lighter side of her in My Week With Marilyn. Not only is it refreshing to see Williams in a different light, it's refreshing to see a film about Marilyn Monroe that unlike everything else written and performed about her over the last fifty year,s hasn't been about her death. On the other hand, it's really a slight bit of fluff about the making of a not really very interesting film.

Meryl Streep is once again technically brilliant as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, but the screenplay lets her down, It's a series of events told without any insight. It's the least interesting of her recent nominated work.

That brings me to Glenn Close who delivers a soulful performance as a woman so beaten down by her life's circumstances in Albert Nobbs that even when happiness seems within her grasp she's incapable of cracking a smile. It's the truest and best of the nominated performances.

My top five in order of preference:
Jeong-hie Yun in Poetry
Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs
Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady
Viola Davis in The Help (borderline supporting)

6th place - Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene ; Charlize Theron in Young Adult; Maria Bello in Beautiful Boy (tie)

[mlrg]

Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady

[Cinemanolis]

My nominees

1. Michelle Williams - My Week with Marilyn
2. Meryl Streep - The Iron Lady
3. Tilda Swinton - We Need to Talk About Kevin
4. Charlize Theron - Young Adult
5. Anna Paquin - Margaret

[mayukh]

No contest – Elizabeth Olsen was, hands down, the best of the year. She is so in a class by herself – filled with such imagination and sensitivity and alertness – that it's painful to think that she was, pre-awards season, perceived as a sure thing for a nod.

If anything, Davis' presence is striking, but I don't think the finished product feels especially inventive – she accomplishes what she has to quite well.

Close's approach, fascinating as it may be, distracts more often than it affects. I appreciate much of what she does, but it feels like an unfinished product – something potentially great.

Mara is quite good – she shows especially fluid control of her body language in a way that gets to the core of her character's wounds. Only in the moments she's on screen does an otherwise pointless film approach something insightful.

That Williams seems, in some ways, so wrong for this role allows her to strike some beautiful grace notes. I'm continually awed by how quiet and sincere a performer she is. This is unimpeachable work.

The Iron Lady was the first time in years I'd felt Streep had really accomplished what others had praised her for so endlessly – immense technical virtuosity married to honest feeling.

Hm...Mara, Williams, and Streep's performances are all very attractive to me. I'll mull it over.

[bizarre]

The true victor here should be Elizabeth Olsen, who, imo, defines screen acting in her debut. Every tiny gesture and facial expression draws us in to who Marlene is, who Marcy May could be and who Martha was - every choice she makes, physically and vocally, is completely and entirely cinematic: she is the movie.

[ksrymy]

I'll save you all from hearing another one of my Help rants. Davis is good, but she resorts to tears when she doesn't know how to act out a scene. My only interaction with Damien during the short time our presences here overlapped was him agreeing with this statement.

This is the silliest thing ever. Actors don't "resort to tears" when they don't know how to play a role. They follow script and direction, and in any case what ends up on screen is a performance that is sanctioned by directors, editors and producers and not a record of an actor bypassing the visions of all three and crying instead.

ETA: Youur logic throughout baffles me. The 'ghostly husband' conceit in The Iron Lady helps Streep succeed because its tacky? Williams' perf felt like an impersonation because the focus was on one week instead of her entire life? Glenn Close is timid (or is her character?)? Lisbeth Salander is the best literary character of the millennium?

And again, there's really no rationale for calling Leila Hatami a "lead" actress in A Separation.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1832382/awards - Hatami is cited as a lead for every award she for which she was nominated (albeit alongside Bayat and Farhadi in some cases). As BJ said, midst while I wrote this, the central plot is around Nader and Simin's family. This would typically boost someone to lead status.

The dead husband angle is a cheesy way of getting to see a more emotional side to Streep's character. This makes it less of an impersonation.

If we get an entire career instead of a week, there is more chance for emotion. We could have seen her failed marriages and other relationships, etc. that would give her a better chance to show a larger range than what we were limited to here.

Close is timid as Nobbs because that's what she has to be. Her role does not call out for massive speeches. She's subtle and effective, but not as good, personally, as the other actresses I listed.

Actors and actresses can change what's in the script you know. Even if the script calls for tears, in this case, Davis could have risen above that. She can be on the verge or tears, but we don't need to see massive tearstains down her cheeks every time. Her best scene was the "everything I wrote, he wrote. Everything he said, gon' die with him" speech because we could hear the heartbreak in her voice instead of needing the visual of crying.

Lisbeth Salander is a fresh, original character who is very deep and literary even though the novel doesn't call for it. At face value, it's a generic New York Times best-selling Peyton Place thriller with a political message about sex trafficking and rape. I'd put her right alongside Khalid Hosseini's characters as the best so far. She's more than a character; she's a symbol for the women that were, and still are, so taken advantage of which Larsson dedicated years of his life trying to help.

Does this adequately answer your (always) condescending questions, bizarre?

[The Original BJ]

The disparity between the quality of the nominated actresses and the quality of their vehicles here is among the more staggering in recent years. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of my favorites came from movies I just liked a lot better.

My choice for Best Actress this year would be Juliette Binoche's radiant work in Certified Copy, possibly the best she's ever been, and that's saying something. I also loved Leila Hatami's wrenching role in A Separation (to chime in on the category debate begun in the other thread, I think the core of the movie is the relationship between the central couple, so I could consider her a lead even though she's absent from that good chunk early on). And the quiet, deer-in-the-headlights power of Elizabeth Olsen in MMMM was top-notch as well.

Rooney Mara has an instantly iconic character that she pulls off with absolute confidence, black humor, and pained pathos. But I'm not sure I sensed any great innovation here -- the character just seems so well-defined by this point that whoever landed this role would have likely come up with something very similar. Mara certainly does it well, though, and I'm interested to see what she has in store for a follow-up.

Albert Nobbs is basically a movie with a strong enough premise that doesn't quite bother to develop that into much of a story. And so its headliner is limited by the static nature of her film. But...despite that, Glenn Close manages to deliver quite a few memorable scenes of emotion that make this nomination far more than just reward for her dream project. In particular, I think the scene in which she describes her dream of living with Mia Wasikowska's character is just heartbreaking. And yet, at the end of the day, I do think Close's work is a bit too passive to reward -- she doesn't really let us in to Albert Nobbs, and I think the character remains a little distant and opaque because of this.

At heart, The Iron Lady has the same major flaw Albert Nobbs does: there's essentially no reason for its existence other than to provide its leading actress a showcase role. Certainly Meryl Streep takes hold of this movie and never lets go -- she's completely commanding throughout, and her impersonation of Thatcher is uncanny. But I just kept asking myself while watching the movie, to what end is this in service of? The movie's take on Thatcher is so wishy-washy -- beating us over the head with the fact that she was a powerful woman in a world of men, but ignoring much analysis of the politics that took her to power -- it's hard for Streep to play anymore than a boldly outspoken woman who, oh yeah, goes batshit crazy at the end. I didn’t object to Streep’s victory -- Meryl is Meryl and that third Oscar was long overdue -- but she doesn’t get my vote for this.

Despite liking Michelle Williams a lot, I had some initial skepticism about her tackling Marilyn Monroe. Most of Williams’s screen triumphs have been of the glum sort, and I wondered if she possessed the lightness and self-aware sense of humor required to portray Monroe. And yet, not only did she capture this part of Marilyn perfectly, she conveyed the lonely, needy side of her as well, so that her performance was a fully human creation and not just a caricature. Like some of these other movies, My Week With Marilyn was no groundbreaking screen triumph, though at least it was a pleasantly watchable trifle.

But my vote is with Viola Davis. I understand that some people will object to this choice, simply based on distaste for The Help, which I admit is an uneven movie. But I think it’s a far more interesting effort than most of these films. And while some of these actresses stand out because they’re so clearly superior to the movies surrounding them, I think Davis goes a step further, making her material MORE interesting simply because of her work. Yes, The Help dips into silliness, but every time Davis appears, every time we see that collected stillness burying suppressed rage, every time we see those eyes welling with tears, The Help becomes a much more mature and dramatically affecting movie. So, for constantly pushing her movie into far thornier territory than it probably had any right to go, and for creating a complicated, deeply human character -- and yes, an actress is capable of making a maid a three-dimensional role -- she's my choice.

[Reza]

Voted for Streep.

My picks for 2011:

1. Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin
2. Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
3. Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
4. Charlize Theron, Young Adult
5. Elisabeth Olsen, Mary Marcy May Marlene

The 6th Spot: Mia Wasikowska, Jane Eyre

[bizarre]

I'll save you all from hearing another one of my Help rants. Davis is good, but she resorts to tears when she doesn't know how to act out a scene. My only interaction with Damien during the short time our presences here overlapped was him agreeing with this statement.

This is the silliest thing ever. Actors don't "resort to tears" when they don't know how to play a role. They follow script and direction, and in any case what ends up on screen is a performance that is sanctioned by directors, editors and producers and not a record of an actor bypassing the visions of all three and crying instead.

ETA: Youur logic throughout baffles me. The 'ghostly husband' conceit in The Iron Lady helps Streep succeed because its tacky? Williams' perf felt like an impersonation because the focus was on one week instead of her entire life? Glenn Close is timid (or is her character?)? Lisbeth Salander is the best literary character of the millennium?

And again, there's really no rationale for calling Leila Hatami a "lead" actress in A Separation.

[bizarre]

I've only seen Close and Davis.

Davis is great, breathing new life into the stockiest of the stock just as Spencer did. The small details make this performance matter - like her "whew!" after confronting Hilly or her inability to hold the book when it is given to her at the church reception.

Close is awful - 'nuff said. This is your passion project?

My nominees:
1. Elizabeth Olsen ... Martha Marcy May Marlene
2. Anna Paquin ... Margaret
3. Kirsten Dunst ... Melancholia
4. Emily Browning ... Sleeping Beauty
5. Viola Davis ... The Help