Categories One-by-One: Actor

[Mister Tee]

The nominees:

Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)
Andrew Garfield (tick...tick...Boom!)
Will Smith (King Richard)
Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)

This category has fluctuated from a gimme to potentially competitive all the way back to gimme again. It reminds me a bit of Paul Newman's Color of Money run. As soon as that movie opened in October 1986 (to quite solid reviews, especially for the star) "Paul's Oscar picture" was a wide assumption. But year-end critics came along, and Newman won only NBR, as Bob Hoskins swept the glamour prizes (up to and including the Globe). In the end, Newman took the Oscar, but not really in the triumphant way John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Shirley MacLaine had in their years; it was more "There's nobody else we love, might as well get it over with." Newman, perhaps sensing this, didn't even show up to accept. (He did get his recognition-ovation a year later, when he came back to present best actress.)

Smith isn't quite in that category. He'll certainly show up, and plenty of people will be happy for him -- mostly those who've written, this season, "Can you believe Will Smith has never won an Oscar?" (a sentence I could never imagine uttering). But there does seem something more perfunctory about the win than I'd have expected after the reviews emerged from Toronto. The fact that the film died so utterly at the box-office is hard to brush off (and don't give me "HBO Max" -- Dune managed a far larger gross with the same handicap; such a superstar should have generated a bigger hit), and the lack of enthusiasm from those provincial critics -- exactly the ones you'd expect to root Smith on, as they did Phoenix and Zellweger -- was pretty striking. Honestly, until the BAFTAs went for him instead of Cumberbatch, I thought the category would be a jump ball.

The problem for Cumberbatch -- clearly the most highly-praised lead actor of the year -- is the distance people feel from both his film and his performance. It's hugely impressive work, but many find it easier to admire than to love. Andrew Garfield is somewhat the opposite: at least from what I hear, his work is greatly loved, but maybe people don't feel exactly intellectually secure with that opinion. Put it this way: if people felt about Cumberbatch the way they do about Garfield, he'd push the superstar aside and win the trophy. But they don't, and here we are.

Once again: when SAG and BAFTA agree, the Oscar record is unblemished since, I believe, 2002. Smith it is.