Ranking Oscar Nominees: Best Supporting Actress 2016

From left to right: a Brit playing a Miamian, drug-addicted mother, a Montanan playing a Massachusetts housewife living a life of tragedy, one of Hollywoods most respected actresses reprising her award-winning stage role, an Aussie playing an Aussie, and the most consistent sassy sidekick actress in Hollywood are your 2016 nominees for best Supporting Actress. All are strong choices, but who did I like best?

5. Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

This is really odd. I love Manchester by the Sea, flaws and all, but somehow Michelle Williams' performance as Randi, the ex-wife to Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), really hasn't stuck with me all that strongly. She's good, don't get me wrong, every actress nominated in this year's lineup was, and that big 'My heart was broken' scene with Casey Affleck is certainly effective. She portrays the breakdown of her character's defenses and her confused, emotionally unstable state incredibly well, and infuses the scene with a great deal of raw emotional power. The thing is, however, though the scene I found to be good, it was far from the highlight of the film for me, and that's essentially the highlight of Williams' performance. I much preferred the more quieter and subdued emotional intensity of the scenes with Lee and Patrick, and in the other flashbacks and scenes in the film involving Williams, she's good enough in portraying the amiable and nice wife who loves her kids but gets annoyed by Lee's antics sometimes. I really love the film, but I really don't think Williams is one of its highlights, and even in her big scene I was more impressed by her co-star. I'm sounding really negative here, this is indeed a good performance, but far from Williams' personal best as an actress as her screentime is limited, and the role is really not all that substantial .

4. Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures

A bit of an odd nomination, in that she probably gives the least Oscar baity performance/has the least Oscar baity role amongst the most prominent members of the ensemble. Hidden Figures is a very fine, if rather by-the-books and standard biopic about three black women who achieve the unthinkable with NASA amidst the backdrop of the Space Race with Russia. Taraji P. Henson, Kevin Costner, and especially Janelle Monáe all give very strong performances in showy roles, and oddly enough the sole acting nominee from the film, Spencer, has the quietest and most understated role in the film. Henson has her 'no bathroom' scene, Costner his various rousing speeches, Monáe her courtroom scene, Spencer is consistently strong throughout the film but never gets a single big scene to strut her stuff. That's not necessarily a bad thing in itself, I'm not a huge fan of Oscar scenes being Oscar scenes for Oscar's sake, but it does leave Spencer's performance a bit sidelined at points in terms of how it fits into the film overall.


What about the performance itself? Well, though the impact of the character may be a bit muted in terms of how she fits into the overarching story of sending John Glenn (Glen Powell), Spencer's portrayal of Dorothy Vaughan, a mathematician at NASA who became the first African-American supervisor of the West Area computers, is nevertheless a strong and assured performance that does add something to the film. She develops a great chemistry with Henson and Monáe as the most quietly humorous and gently sarcastic of the duo, and does help to amplify the showier roles of the other two actresses with her interactions with them. Spencer's role also most directly deals with the racism of the time as she has several scenes dedicated to them. She's pretty great in the scene where she gently but firmly explains to her sons after being kicked out of the library that while racism is the way things are, that doesn't mean it's right; and her penultimate scene with Kirsten Dunst's Vivian, her boss whose subtle racism goes unnoticed even by herself, where she responds to Vivian saying she has nothing against black people with 'I know you probably believe that', is an excellent bit of writing but also an excellent delivery. Dunst and Spencer are pretty good at subtly developing their character's relationship into something of a mutual respect. She never has an absolute knockout scene like Henson's 'no bathroom' scene in the emotional stakes department (which by the way, is one of the best acted scenes of the year), but on the whole her performance works very well in a decidedly low-key fashion. When Dorothy gets to show her expertise with computers, it's all very heartwarming because of how likeable Spencer's made her to be as a character.

3. Naomie Harris, Moonlight

I'd completely understand if someone found this performance to be completely terrible, or largely ineffective. It certainly does stand out from the rest of the film - which is remarkably subdued in tone through most of the performances -, in that Harris' Paula is quite the loud, abrasive, rather histrionic figure which sticks out in particular during the first act of the film, when you compare her to the other two principal adult actors, Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monáe, who both give very restrained performances. Harris' performance is indeed a bit of showboating in a film where even its stylistic flourishes in terms of editing, the soundtrack and colour scheme are all very unassuming, and I'm compelled to think that if I liked the film less, I would've found her performance to stick out like a sore thumb. Thing is though, I loved the film, and though Harris' performance is somewhat the odd one out of the many performances in the ensemble, it doesn't hurt the great ensemble for me. Rather, it amplifies it. Harris first and foremost disappears effortlessly into the dialect and accent of a lower-class Miami single mother. It's clear from the very first scene that Paula's not in a very stable state of mind, her drug-addled state and troubled personality clear from the outset, and I think Harris plays into this instability of her character very well. I found that she played off Ali and Alex Hibbert (as her young son Chiron) very well, and makes Paula an appropriately off-putting and rather sad figure who resorts to emotionally abusing her son to fill the void in her empty life.


She's incredibly good in building up this fiery intensity across each of the first two acts. Her confrontation with Ali's Juan about how she should raise her son is quite a powerful scene, largely due to Ali of course but Harris is very strong too, and in the second act where she incisively guilts Chiron (Ashton Sanders) into giving her money for her drugs. Then in her final scene she's such a brilliant mess of emotions as an aged Paula, recovering from addiction, and trying to reconnect and apologize to her son (Trevante Rhodes). Harris and Rhodes carve quite the remarkable scene together with a sense of their troubled history but also of a flawed love that keeps them connected. Her mannerisms toned down, Harris reveals the honest regrets of her character brilliantly, and it's a terrific end to a very, very strong performance that's admittedly divisive, but it worked for me very well.

2. Nicole Kidman, Lion

All I can say is I was most certainly not expecting to love this performance as much as I did, although again I did not expect to love Lion as much as I did. Kidman's screen time as Sue Brierley, the adoptive mother of Saroo (played as a young child by Sunny Pawar and as an adult by Dev Patel) is actually rather limited, in fact I'd argue she has barely more screentime than Michelle Williams, but boy is she fantastic. Kidman's had an odd 2010s, she's gave a great performance in Rabbit Hole, devilishly entertaining ones in Stoker, and Paddington as deliciously hateful and oddly alluring (as alluring as anyone who wants to skin Paddington alive) villain, but she's had a few critical misfires with Queen of the Desert and Grace of Monaco, I didn't find her all that effective in The Paperboy, and this year she was truly dreadful in Genius. Well that last one doesn't matter, because if an actor or actress gives a great performance in the same year as they gave an awful one, they can easily redeem their status, and that's what Kidman's done here with her supportive portrayal of a loving adoptive mother who with her husband John (David Wenham) bring comfort and joy to an abandoned, lost and lonely Saroo's life.


Kidman is simply put, wonderful in these early scenes at infusing such a simple but effective joy to her presence here as a loving mother. The way she reacts to Saroo's 'first' words of 'pepper', how she gently tells him that she'll always listen to him, and most powerful of all, her tearful reaction to being unable to handle her other adopted son, Mantosh's, emotional instability, all feel so genuine and realistic. Her portrayal is tender and heartfelt but underlying it is a strong resilience. Her chemistry with Pawar is excellent, but her chemistry with Patel is something else altogether. Even though her screentime becomes more limited, and her presence becomes more supportive and with less direct focus, I found her even more compelling as the film progresses. Her joy and pride at Saroo is very well handled, the genuine warmth in her performance creating such a warm bond with Patel, is merged perfectly with her growing stress at having to deal with a mentally troubled son, and one who's growing increasingly distant. Kidman is brilliant at portraying a mother who struggles to keep her family together - her silent reactions after a dinnertime confrontation have particularly stuck in my mind. Like Harris and the next performance I'm moving onto, her performance only gets better as the film progresses to its end. When she realizes that Saroo is trying to reach back into the past to find his biological mother, Kidman is tremendous in showing how accepting she is, finding joy in Saroo's own joy, so endearing in her penultimate scene of saying goodbye to him before he flies back to India in search of her, but her highlight scene, where she explains to Saroo why she decided to adopt, is a tremendously acted scene, by Patel too of course, but Kidman is extremely moving in showing what motivate her and John's simple kindness. This is a great take on a well worn character type, a performance I love the more I talk about it.

1. Viola Davis, Fences

Davis's performance as Rose Lee, the supportive wife to Denzel Washington's Troy Maxson, is a very interesting study in how stage acting differs from film acting. I'm sure people who have more expertise in the fine arts of acting will be able to comment more on this aspect of Davis's performance, but just by comparing the two clips above, it's rather interesting to see how Davis modifies her award-winning stage portrayal of the character to the silver screen. This scene, the 'I've been standing here' scene, was one of the most promoted scenes from the film in trailers, TV spots etc. and yet still hit me with an incredible, unexpected impact when placed in context of the film. Where she delivered her lines with an extreme intensity and crowd-rousing aplomb onstage, she modulates it in the film to something equally impactful, but also more fitting to film. Her character's rage and anger is every bit as palpable as it was before, but she adds so many little nuances and a more raw, human energy to the delivery of her lines that just feels so right.


Essentially, if Davis only had that single scene in the whole entire film, she might still just about make my lineup. As it is, there's far more to her performance beyond that. In the early stages of the film, Davis is actually a rather quiet and unassuming presence as Rose, amiably listening to her husband's tall tales, supporting her son in his college football dreams, bantering humorously with her husband's best friend, supporting her husband's son from a previous marriage in his jazz dreams (we unfortunately never get to see Lyons Maxson dueling in a battle of the bands with Sebastian Wilder). She's just a straightforward, loving wife, and it's interesting to see the usually domineering and incisive Davis play a sort of retiring sort, but she never disappears into the background through her sheer screen presence and her subtle indications of a housewife who wants a bit more from life sometimes, and a slight discontent with her husband's emotional abuse of their son. Her performance really starts to kick off once Troy reveals an extra-marital affair to her. Davis is pure devestation in her response to this betrayal, leading to the aforementioned scene which is just brilliantly played. Afterwards, Davis is simply tremendous in carrying the rest of her scenes, whether it's her cold response to Troy begging for forgiveness by stating that he is now a 'womanless man', merged with a warmth in her care for the newborn child born out of wedlock to Troy; or her incredible final scene where she carries the film in the absence of Washington, no mean feat. Davis is incredible in her final speech in summarizing all her regrets of her marriage to Troy but also her love for him, regardless of his flawed mistakes, and gives the film a perfect summation and conclusion. Her performance is a whole boiling pot of emotions that rise and fall, a tricky role to say the least, but Davis nails it with a career-best performance that come Oscar time, will be very deservedly rewarded.