Best Supporting Actress 2020

[Sabin]

I think this is the weirdest acting race I've seen since I started watching the Oscars. There have been plenty of wide open races where it's hard to boil down the top five, like Best Supporting Actor 2015 for example. But this race was just inscrutable from day one so much so that it's one of the best arguments against season-long Oscar prognostication.

Before having seen their films, I'm reasonably sure everyone and their mother thought this was going to be some sort of match-up between Glenn Close for Hillbilly Elegy and Amanda Seyfried for Mank. By nomination morning, I think most us were at best 50/50 as to whether or not they'd be nominated. Hillbilly Elegy was released to RT% numbers more fitting of Norbit or a Zach Snyder DC film. And Amanda Seyfried barely figured into the second half of Mank and failed to get a SAG nomination. As for the performances themselves? It's not inconceivable that had Hillbilly Elegy been better (which is to say: different script, different director) that Close could've won. I'm fine with saying Close is responsibility for Hillbilly Elegy's strongest moments but can't be taken seriously for a win. And Seyfried? She's quite good, but just not enough to do. A fine scene or two in a movie I've come to mostly dislike.

On paper, Olivia Colman looked like a possible winner. Why not? She'd just won for The Favourite, she was starting a career where she was instantly beloved by the industry, and her role was enormously sympathetic in a Best Picture nominee (the only one outside of Seyfried). But again: she just didn't have enough to do. The Father is a very promising film that feels just a tiny bit too schematic in how it excises any fat that doesn't forward the story like an unfolding mystery. Had a scene or two departed from this framework and given us a little more insight into Hopkins and Williams without fear of losing the thread (which I don't think it would have) and perhaps she would be in a better position for a win -- and I would be inclined to support it.

The critics were split between Maria Bakalova and Yuh-Jung Youn. I have no idea if the race truly ended up between those two but for a while it sure seemed like it. With Close, Seyfried, and Williams taken out of serious contention, and with the non-nominated Jodie Foster taking a surprise Golden Globe (none more so than herself), there were only three prime pieces of precursor real estate to go, and Yuh-Jung Youn gobbled them up. It's a shame that the Academy excised clips from the evening so they could get an opportunity to see her performance. That alone would've been responsible for several rentals, who at the least would've said "Okay, if she drinks that kid's pee, I'll check it out." I spent quite a bit of the Oscar season dismissing her chances due to history but having seen her role, her presence in the race shouldn't have be in doubt. Whether one likes the arc of her role or not, she arcs the narrative of the film to a massive degree, goes through arguably the most personal change (more on that in a moment), and garnering sympathy along the way. I don't think she has the most original or challenging role (Han Ye-ri is the one actor who deserved mention) but I thought she was good.

There's so much that I enjoy about Maria Bakalova in Borat Subequent Moviefilm but it's mainly the choices that the filmmakers made to give her a journey of empowerment that felt positively bent. Her character starts out in a literal cage and ends up with agency of her own that doesn't feel inauthentic. But that's largely the filmmaker's doing. As an actor, she gets by on being completely game for whatever the film does to her and largely not acting like she's in a comedy. But I didn't laugh much at Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and I didn't laugh much at Bakalova's performance either. I don't think the movie would've worked without her but I don't think it worked extremely well with her.

I'm torn because I want to vote for the comedic performance. Perhaps if I watch Borat Subsequent Moviefilm again I might find more grace notes in Bakalova's performance but at this moment I'm left with little choice than to go with Yuh-Jung Youn whose role isn't remarkably different from a profane granny but at least finds more than one moment to keep it fresh.

[Big Magilla]

Thanks for posting this, Cal.

I think Youn is head and shoulders above the competition here, one of the most deserving winners ever.

Colman was moving as the daughter in The Father and deserving of the nomination. If not for Youn, she would probably get my vote.

Close's transformation is amazing. Sadly, the real-life character whose grandmother she was playing has emerged as a right-wing jackass of a politician running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio which takes all the ambiguity out of his character as presented in the screenplay. I'm not only glad she didn't win for this, but in retrospect wondering if the second old lady slot in the category shouldn't have gone to Ellen Burstyn in Pieces of a woman after all. If only they had made her the almost 60 years younger Vanessa Kirby her grandmother instead of her mother it might have given her character more credibility.

Seyfried was touching as Marion Davies, but this was another hard to accept age parity suspension of disbelief for me. Davies and Herman Mankiewicz were the same age in real life. Here they come across as a May-December pair.

Bakalova was amusing but I never bought her character as a real person. Jodie Foster was my pick for the last slot.

[mlrg]

Bakalova

[CalWilliam]

Definitely one of the best lineups of the last twenty years, I would say. And the most exciting race since 2000, precisely?

Bakalova is really funny and this nomination is a triumph both for her and the Academy, but she doesn’t belong in supporting.

Glenn Close is very good in Hillbilly Elegy and I’m only sad that this is her eighth unrewarded nomination. Forget the movie, her performance is more memorable than at least her nominated turns in The Big Chill, The Natural and Albert Nobbs.

Olivia Colman offers unsurprisingly great support in The Father. Hadn’t she won for The Favourite two years earlier she would have easily won this Oscar along with Hopkins’. But I have a slight preference for the remaining two.

Amanda Seyfried is luminous as Marion Davies in Mank, a very good film that deserves and requires at least two opportunities. I completely forget she’s an actress from this century.

But I voted for Yuh-Jung Youn, for a wonderful, charismatic and heartbreaking performance in a role that reminded me of my own beloved late grandmother. One of the best winners in this category ever.

[CalWilliam]

If it’s not inconvenient, I think it’s time to wrap up this long year with these seven categories. I’ll post both supporting categories today, on Wednesday the leading ones, and next Saturday cinematography, screenplays, and directing and picture. I don’t think we need too much reflection about last Oscars in order to vote or write down some impressions.

Share your thoughts about one of the most exciting supporting actress races ever.