The Oscars are upon us again. I’m looking forward to the debates, disagreements, surprises and disappointments that inevitably accompany the Academy Awards.
The fact that we often disagree on the artistic qualities of the nominated films and performances is what makes Award Season so damn exciting.
Today, I want to delve into one particular category: Best Actor (in a lead or supporting role). And I want to ask one simple, but compelling question: How do we assess the quality of acting, the caliber of the performance as we seek to define "best"?
Clearly, such a determination is terribly subjective. There are no tools of finite measurement – no timers, no scoreboards, no bars that can be cleared that indisputably declare a winner. This is not the Olympics, after all.
There are, however, criteria I believe we can use not only to narrow down the field of players, but that can likewise provide a more nuanced assessment of excellence.
First, we consider the script. Or, more specifically, the character contained within the script that the actor has been called upon to play.
How challenging is the role for this particular actor? Is the character simply a darker or lighter shade of the actor’s personality or does the character require the actor to more or less abandon his sense of self and slip into the skin of one with entirely different sensibilities?
Paul Newman once said to me (OK, me and a few other directors), “Don’t judge my work by the roles that were easy, where I didn’t have to stretch and explore and expand. Judge my work by the roles that challenged me physically, emotionally or spiritually. Those are the roles where one false step could bring down the whole house of cards.”
Good point. Let’s look at a couple of nominees and the roles they took on.
"The Artist's" Jean Dujardin faced a very unique set of challenges as he embodied the character of George Valentin, a silent film star in 1920s Hollywood. First, Dujardin needed to research, explore and adapt a style of film acting that has long been abandoned. Since it is a silent film, there is no dialog, so he lost the tool of language, intonation, verbal rhythm and tone.
Finally, add in the dancing, an area in which Dujardin had no previous experience and which required five months of intense training.
Contrast this with George Clooney as Matt King in "The Descendants." King is a wealthy lawyer and member of contemporary Hawaiian aristocracy whose wife is in a fatal coma.
Ostensibly, this story is about a distant and disconnected father of two unmanageable daughters who attempts to pull his family back together in the wake of the mother’s accident. In the midst of this, King discovers his wife had been having an affair. Finding his wife’s lover becomes King’s obsession as his wife lies dying in the hospital.
Putting aside the gaping holes in the story itself, Clooney’s greatest challenge is bringing credibility to a character who is, at best, two dimensional.
Taking a look at these two examples, we see there are very different challenges. As I see it, "The Artist" was an acting challenge whereas "the Descendants" was more of a casting challenge.
