Award Chatter: Best Supporting Actress: Paranoid, Bratty, Old Junkie Troubadour

The Best Supporting Actress race this year is a pretty open field, for the most part. Three completely worthy performances are working against each other, as well as the esteemed veteran pseudo-Lifetime-Achievement-award factor. It’s a tough category to call, but I’ll go with my first instinct.

Tilda Swinton: My pick to take home the trophy, since Michael Clayton likely doesn’t stand to win in most of its other categories, and this is the only big one that isn’t competing with No Country for Old Men or Daniel Day-Lewis.. Swinton’s paranoid, sweaty and nervous Karen Crowder, legal counsel for guilty-as-sin pesticide company UNorth, brings an uncharacteristically humanistic sort of antagonism to a role that could have easily been played by the numbers. It’s out of desperate self-interest that Crowder, trying her damnedest to control her panic and remain in control of a multi-billion dollar case that’s slipping through her fingers after fifteen years, makes ill-advised attempts at ruthlessness that help drive a career slickster like Clayton to a crisis of conscience. Yet it’s not clear that she has any ruth, so to speak, but rather it seems that her jittery demeanor about her drastic measures are more her fear of the consequences of her actions rather than any remorse about committing them in the first place. It’s that strange guiltless hand-wringing that makes her final scene that much more satisfying.

Cate Blanchett: A true transformation of a performance from the always great Blanchett, inhabiting the form of Bob Dylan during the height of his popularity in I’m Not There - one of those roles for women that just never comes along, and that alone makes it worthy of this kind of recognition. The main obstacle holding it back is that the movie, much like John C. Reilly’s perfect Dylan parody in Walk Hard, was impenetrable and little-seen.

Ruby Dee: The Actress Emeritus was nominated to give her the recognition she deserves after her long and stellar career and her richly compelling life story, because five minutes of scolding Denzel Washington in American Gangster just doesn’t warrant it otherwise, no matter how good that scolding is. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that - I’m all for letting the true legends get their recognition, especially when everyone else in this category is likely to have work in the future that will get them nominated again. She could certainly bring the sentimental vote and stage the surprise win.

Saoirse Ronan: One of three dimensions given to the character of Briony Tallis in Atonement, given by three different actresses. Ronan’s performance as a confused, jealous brat in early adolescence has the most screen time of the three, but her nomination here seems to be necessary to justify the Best Picture nomination, since it wasn’t nominated in any of the other “big six” categories. Ronan is good, but she’ll undoubtedly be better in the future.

Amy Ryan: The other leading contender swept a lot of the early awards for her performance as a gritty Boston junkie who just happens to be the mother of a missing girl in Gone Baby Gone, but her momentum has cooled a bit since then. She could certainly use the win the most out of all of them to cement her own arrival as an A-list actress - Blanchett and Swinton are already renowned, Dee’s lifetime accomplishments dwarf anything Hollywood could give her and Ronan will be back when she grows up. Ryan’s down-and-dirty performance might work against her future in the glamor-soaked industry, but a knockout dress at the ceremony itself could certainly balance that out. Anyway, the performance itself was almost frighteningly real, showcasing the kind of frustrating ignorance that most movies gloss over or romanticize away in their depictions of the poor and seedy creatures, be it in a big city or a small town. It’s Ryan’s Hope that she can bring the trophy home, and she’ll certainly deserve it if she does.