You now can.dws1982 wrote
I think Hoffman is Support, and Hunt and Lawrence are both Lead. None of them made my ballot though. I think Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained is also Lead--he really drives a lot of the action in that film.
Correcting Oscar 2012
Re: Correcting Oscar 2012
Hey everybody, I apologize. I didn’t see the description that said adding a new line resets all the voting until after I added the ability to vote for Waltz. Everyone has to recast their votes. My apologies.
"How's the despair?"
Re: Correcting Oscar 2012
I think Hoffman is Support, and Hunt and Lawrence are both Lead. None of them made my ballot though. I think Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained is also Lead--he really drives a lot of the action in that film.
-
Big Magilla
- Site Admin
- Posts: 19353
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
- Location: Jersey Shore
Re: Correcting Oscar 2012
I think all three are leads and checked off the lead box for all of them as I think they could all have been nominated as such that year, but I don't have a problem with any of their actual placements.
It was Philip Seymour Hoffman who had the title role in The Master. He probably could have knocked out any of the lead actor nominees except Daniel Day-Lewis and Hugh Jackman had he been placed there. It had seemed odd to me that he would be placed in support while the equally dynamic Joaquin Phoenix was placed in lead all by his lonesome, but the powers that be decreed otherwise so I shrugged and went along with it. SAG nominated him in support while ignoring Phoenix altogether.
Hunt's placement came as more of a surprise considering that her participation brought star power to a film without a name actor in the lead. The Sessions benefitted from her star power as much as it did the importance of the character. On the other hand, if it had been a no-name Susie in the role, I'm not sure it would have been considered a co-lead, so again I shrugged and went along with her placement even though she was better than most of the actual Best Actress nominees even if she had zero chance of winning a second Oscar for the role no matter which category that she was placed in.
Jennifer Lawrence was a hot new star and wasn't going to be nominated in support regardless of her amount of screen time. She was the film's leading lady, her role as important to the working of the film as Cooper's. Personally, I didn't like the movie and wouldn't have voted for anyone in it. My top five actresses that year were Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, Marion Cottilard in Rust and Bone, Judi Dench in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Emmanuelle Riva in Amour, and Naomi Watts in The Impossible, with Riva my pick for the win.
It was Philip Seymour Hoffman who had the title role in The Master. He probably could have knocked out any of the lead actor nominees except Daniel Day-Lewis and Hugh Jackman had he been placed there. It had seemed odd to me that he would be placed in support while the equally dynamic Joaquin Phoenix was placed in lead all by his lonesome, but the powers that be decreed otherwise so I shrugged and went along with it. SAG nominated him in support while ignoring Phoenix altogether.
Hunt's placement came as more of a surprise considering that her participation brought star power to a film without a name actor in the lead. The Sessions benefitted from her star power as much as it did the importance of the character. On the other hand, if it had been a no-name Susie in the role, I'm not sure it would have been considered a co-lead, so again I shrugged and went along with her placement even though she was better than most of the actual Best Actress nominees even if she had zero chance of winning a second Oscar for the role no matter which category that she was placed in.
Jennifer Lawrence was a hot new star and wasn't going to be nominated in support regardless of her amount of screen time. She was the film's leading lady, her role as important to the working of the film as Cooper's. Personally, I didn't like the movie and wouldn't have voted for anyone in it. My top five actresses that year were Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, Marion Cottilard in Rust and Bone, Judi Dench in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Emmanuelle Riva in Amour, and Naomi Watts in The Impossible, with Riva my pick for the win.
Correcting Oscar 2012
What makes a co-star a lead in a romantic film? That's one of the questions we face in both The Sessions and Silver Linings Playbook. Both center around male protagonists going through rites of passage in life centering around romance. Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) is a 38 year old poet afflicted with polio who wants intimacy for the first time in his life and achieves it with Cheryl Cohen-Greene (Helen Hunt), a sex surrogate. Pat Solitano, Jr. (Bradley Cooper) is a similarly-aged, newly-diagnosed bipolar man recently released from a mental health facility who wants to reconnect with his ex-wife, Nikki, despite her restraining order against him, and pursues her with the help of the unstable, widowed Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). The most glaring difference between these films is the amount of rom com tropes in the latter film. Even from its logline, Silver Linings Playbook operates more as a rom com while The Sessions sounds more like a straight forward dramedy, and traditionally romantic comedies feature a male lead and a female lead. Despite the fact that Hunt arrives in the film a little bit earlier than Lawrence, most groups tended to agree. Although most groups positioned Helen Hunt as a supporting actor, a few broke rank (Chicago, Nevada, San Diego). Is this fair to Helen Hunt's status?
Let's look at the numbers. Helen Hunt is in The Sessions for 39.66%. Lawrence is in her film for 41.18% of the time. Looking back at Helen Hunt's previous Oscar entry, she was in As Good As It Gets for 42.59%. Just a hair shy. She also has more screen-time than Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty (36.51%) and a hair less than Naomi Watts in The Impossible (41.62%). I haven't seen The Sessions since its release a decade ago, but I remember only a couple of scenes that Hunt shard without Hawkes. Certainly, it's more Hawke's story than hers and he has more scenes without her than she does without him, but Hunt's character is also on an emotional journey that reaches some form of fulfillment having known Hawke's character. To contrast that, Jennifer Lawrence's character doesn't spend a moment on-screen without Bradley Cooper.
I'm interested at why there was such general lock-step that Lawrence was a lead and Hunt was supporting, and I think one of the reasons is that Lawrence gives such a big performance in Silver Linings Playbook while Hunt gives an understated one. Lawrence is an unrealistic force of nature that wears Cooper down while Hunt is a more mature, quiet nurturer. As I write this, it's not inconceivable that they could have swapped these roles. Hunt might be a bit too old but she was certainly more age-appropriate than Lawrence. I think it comes down to energy and archetype more than anything.
Anyway, I'll defer to anyone who has seen The Sessions more recently but I think Helen Hunt warrants lead placements and I think she could have been nominated in that category. Outside of Chastain, Lawrence, Riva, and Wallis, the leading contenders were Naomi Watts (The Impossible), Helen Mirren (Hitchcock), and Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone), none of which were particularly hot tickets come Oscar time. I think Helen Hunt could have overcame them and she should have. Her return to the Academy Awards has largely become one of the most forgotten nominees of the decade and it shouldn't have been. Her accent may be a bit dodgy but increasingly I think she was the most acceptable choice to win.
And I think Lawrence has correct placement in lead.
One more general rumination, can Philip Seymour Hoffman be considered lead for The Master? I say this because I'm surprised to learn that he has 47.45% of the screen-time in The Master. If memory serves, roughly twenty minutes goes by before he arrives on the screen and then Joaquin Phoenix (who has 66.78% of the screen-time) is largely in the passenger seat for the story that Hoffman drives. Certainly, Hoffman has plenty of screen-time apart from Phoenix, his desires are occasionally divorced from Phoenix, and questions about his true intentions engulf the film. Hoffman also embodies the world of the film. The Master is an odd film. Freddie Quell's redemption is arguably the A Story, which he scampers to and from like an animal throughout the film, while Lancaster Dodd's mission with The Cause is the B Story. They both function oddly together because it's never entirely clear what Lancaster Dodd's end-goal with The Cause is. Is it legitimacy? Public funding? Tax exempt status? Political films are difficult in this regard because it's hard to create goals that we can easily track. Contrast The Master with Lincoln, where we always know that the end-goal is the 13th Amendment and we always know if we're moving closer to or farther away from that goal, how, and why.
I mainly wanted to bring up Philip Seymour Hoffman's character to discuss the enigmatic plotting of The Master. It's a film not dissimilar to one of those movies where an audience surrogate (a James McAvoy/Eddie Redmayne-type) gets sucked into a new world, learns some lessons, and leaves changed while the figure that embodies that world continues on the same course wherever that might lead. But The Master is one of those movies that's more defined by what doesn't happen than what does, but what closure isn't reached rather than what is. Imagine a different bit of casting for a moment, like Jeremy Renner or Davies as Freddie. It wouldn't be so hard to imagine that shift. But obviously, we're dealing with the casting that we have.
I think it's a borderline case. I think there's no chance that Hoffman would ever be pushed as lead but that's not really the exercise we're playing. It's what should happen. I'm going to say that his performance as Lancaster Dodd, truly the great actor's last hurrah, is the film's co-lead performance, and a leading performance. I vote Neither because I don't think he would get nominated but nominations for Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman for Best Actor would have been appropriate. Apropos of my comparison to McAvoy/Redmayne, Hoffman has significantly more screen-time than Forest Whitaker in Last King, a hair less than Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn, and more screen-time than any other male supporting nominee or winner with the exception of Maheshala Ali for Green Book (4% more), who is clearly a lead.
(EDIT: voting for Waltz in Django is enabled)
Let's look at the numbers. Helen Hunt is in The Sessions for 39.66%. Lawrence is in her film for 41.18% of the time. Looking back at Helen Hunt's previous Oscar entry, she was in As Good As It Gets for 42.59%. Just a hair shy. She also has more screen-time than Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty (36.51%) and a hair less than Naomi Watts in The Impossible (41.62%). I haven't seen The Sessions since its release a decade ago, but I remember only a couple of scenes that Hunt shard without Hawkes. Certainly, it's more Hawke's story than hers and he has more scenes without her than she does without him, but Hunt's character is also on an emotional journey that reaches some form of fulfillment having known Hawke's character. To contrast that, Jennifer Lawrence's character doesn't spend a moment on-screen without Bradley Cooper.
I'm interested at why there was such general lock-step that Lawrence was a lead and Hunt was supporting, and I think one of the reasons is that Lawrence gives such a big performance in Silver Linings Playbook while Hunt gives an understated one. Lawrence is an unrealistic force of nature that wears Cooper down while Hunt is a more mature, quiet nurturer. As I write this, it's not inconceivable that they could have swapped these roles. Hunt might be a bit too old but she was certainly more age-appropriate than Lawrence. I think it comes down to energy and archetype more than anything.
Anyway, I'll defer to anyone who has seen The Sessions more recently but I think Helen Hunt warrants lead placements and I think she could have been nominated in that category. Outside of Chastain, Lawrence, Riva, and Wallis, the leading contenders were Naomi Watts (The Impossible), Helen Mirren (Hitchcock), and Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone), none of which were particularly hot tickets come Oscar time. I think Helen Hunt could have overcame them and she should have. Her return to the Academy Awards has largely become one of the most forgotten nominees of the decade and it shouldn't have been. Her accent may be a bit dodgy but increasingly I think she was the most acceptable choice to win.
And I think Lawrence has correct placement in lead.
One more general rumination, can Philip Seymour Hoffman be considered lead for The Master? I say this because I'm surprised to learn that he has 47.45% of the screen-time in The Master. If memory serves, roughly twenty minutes goes by before he arrives on the screen and then Joaquin Phoenix (who has 66.78% of the screen-time) is largely in the passenger seat for the story that Hoffman drives. Certainly, Hoffman has plenty of screen-time apart from Phoenix, his desires are occasionally divorced from Phoenix, and questions about his true intentions engulf the film. Hoffman also embodies the world of the film. The Master is an odd film. Freddie Quell's redemption is arguably the A Story, which he scampers to and from like an animal throughout the film, while Lancaster Dodd's mission with The Cause is the B Story. They both function oddly together because it's never entirely clear what Lancaster Dodd's end-goal with The Cause is. Is it legitimacy? Public funding? Tax exempt status? Political films are difficult in this regard because it's hard to create goals that we can easily track. Contrast The Master with Lincoln, where we always know that the end-goal is the 13th Amendment and we always know if we're moving closer to or farther away from that goal, how, and why.
I mainly wanted to bring up Philip Seymour Hoffman's character to discuss the enigmatic plotting of The Master. It's a film not dissimilar to one of those movies where an audience surrogate (a James McAvoy/Eddie Redmayne-type) gets sucked into a new world, learns some lessons, and leaves changed while the figure that embodies that world continues on the same course wherever that might lead. But The Master is one of those movies that's more defined by what doesn't happen than what does, but what closure isn't reached rather than what is. Imagine a different bit of casting for a moment, like Jeremy Renner or Davies as Freddie. It wouldn't be so hard to imagine that shift. But obviously, we're dealing with the casting that we have.
I think it's a borderline case. I think there's no chance that Hoffman would ever be pushed as lead but that's not really the exercise we're playing. It's what should happen. I'm going to say that his performance as Lancaster Dodd, truly the great actor's last hurrah, is the film's co-lead performance, and a leading performance. I vote Neither because I don't think he would get nominated but nominations for Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman for Best Actor would have been appropriate. Apropos of my comparison to McAvoy/Redmayne, Hoffman has significantly more screen-time than Forest Whitaker in Last King, a hair less than Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn, and more screen-time than any other male supporting nominee or winner with the exception of Maheshala Ali for Green Book (4% more), who is clearly a lead.
(EDIT: voting for Waltz in Django is enabled)
Last edited by Sabin on Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"How's the despair?"