BENGALURU: It is almost time for the major races at the Oscars and we take a good look at the Best Supporting Actress category. Although not a major competitive space, this category usually sees some interesting performances, and this year is no different.
While Meryl Streep is picking up her 19th Academy Award nomination, bettering her own record for most nominations ever, she does not look like she is winning this one. The post-modern fairytale film, Into The Wild might be an entertaining watch, but is not the hottest film on the awards circuit. Her witch, while spritely, engaging and convincing to the last toenail, is nothing that pushes her own stretched boundaries.
Keira Knightley, who gets her second Oscar nomination after Pride and Prejudice (it’s been nine whole years since!), shines in The Imitation Game.
She’s bright and endearing, and puts in a lot of effort into her character. But it just wasn’t a movie made for a woman’s role; and sadly this stops her from giving the nuanced and engaging performance we saw her give just a few months before in Begin Again.
Our next contenders, Emma Stone and Laura Dern, gave equally riveting performances this year. Stone, as the ex-drug addict daughter to celebrated superhero actor, Michael Keaton in Birdman, is a captivating watch. Her rousing monologue to her deadbeat father is in itself reason to give her the damn statue and be done with it. Laura Dern, gets her second ever Oscar nomination 23 years after her lead performance for Rambling Rose. Dern lost to Jodie Foster (Silence of the Lambs) that year. We just couldn’t see enough of Dern in Wild. Playing mother to Reese Witherspoon’s character, Dern fills up the screen with her warmth and ‘motherliness’. All her scenes are shown as flashback, which is probably not enough to warrant an award, but we hope to see more of her.
However, if the pre-Oscar award trail is anything to go by, Patricia Arquette should bag this one as well. A workhorse that doesn’t know the meaning of stop, Arquette has turned in a performance of a lifetime, with her role as the selfless, loving and mostly ignored mother of two in Boyhood.
Not many actresses get the chance to age an entire decade within a two-hour span and do it so heart-crushingly well. While Linklater’s Boyhood is slated to win many other awards, this category should be a cakewalk