The Winner
Natalie Portman,
Black Swan
The Standout
Michelle Williams,
Blue Valentine
The Competition
Annette Bening,
The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman,
Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence,
Winter's Bone
Credible Threat
Lesley Manville,
Another Year
Interesting Outlier
Kim Hye-ja,
Mother
World Traveler
Yahima Torres,
Black Venus
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Oscar Winner Natalie Portman, Black Swan Oscar Nominees Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine Credible Threats Halle Berry, Frankie & Alice Sally Hawkins, Made in Dagenham Lesley Manville, Another Year Julianne Moore, The Kids Are All Right Emma Stone, Easy A Hilary Swank, Conviction Tilda Swinton, I Am Love Naomi Watts, Fair Game |
Interesting Outliers Patricia Clarkson, Cairo Time Kimberly Elise, For Colored Girls Greta Gerwig, Greenberg Kim Hye-ja, Mother Noomi Rapace, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Paprika Steen, Applause World Travelers Clara Augarde, Love Like Poison* Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Raavan Isabelle Huppert, White Material Katie Jarvis, Fish Tank Jeon Do-yeon, Secret Sunshine Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Vincere Birgit Minichmayr, Everyone Else Julie Sokolowski, Hadewijch Yahima Torres, Black Venus* |
| All performances classified by year of U.S. release, except *'d titles, which never played U.S. theaters. The Oscar Ballot ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ This was not a challenging year for prognosticators: the list of five was easy to forecast weeks in advance, more or less duplicating the Independent Spirit Awards' roster. In my view, the least accomplished performance glided to a victory that, given the competition, ought to have been a nail-biter. All of that said, this roster is no occasion for kvetching, full as it is of serious commitment and of tonal and stylistic risks. The lineup also reflects refreshingly diverse approaches to performance, all the way from Portman's heightened posturing to Williams's fine-tuned naturalism. Every actor showed us a new side of herself (as Bening, Portman, and arguably Kidman did), or achieved a new peak in a style of acting she'd been mastering in recent years (Williams), or announced herself as a newcomer who'd be sticking around a while (Lawrence). Oscar had plenty of viable alternatives worth weighing across this year of releases, both in his usual generic wheelhouse (Swank, Watts) or somewhat further afield (Manville, Kim, Swinton), so nobody here cruised to a nod. More to the point, they did not cruise through these performances: you feel the personal stake in their grief, their horror, and their hard-won resilience, whether in comic, dramatic, or cray-cray spook-house contexts. I suspect this will stand as a benchmark year for quite some time. | |
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