Supporting Actress 2021

This race kind of sucked because it was DeBose from start to finish and no one else even came close. Dench was a bit of a surprise nomination because almost all of the precursor awards were nominating fellow cast member Caitriona Balfe in her spot instead. It's wild that they decided to give Dench another random nomination over someone who got more buzz than anyone else besides DeBose. Excited to see how DeBose compares to Rita Moreno's win for the same role and how the other nominees stack up.

2021 Best Supporting Actress

 

Ariana DeBose - West Side Story

 

This was DeBose's award basically all season long, but how tough is it to follow in the footsteps  of a legend who won an Oscar that many consider one of the greatest Supporting performances of all time? And then to go out there and win your own Oscar while Rita Moreno is in the same film as you and you have key scenes in the film with her? You gotta give it to DeBose for rising to the occasion and delivering a very good performance in an already iconic role. DeBose was already a Broadway star and well versed in dance, so this wasn't exactly a tough transition for her but you can't just go out there and sing and dance well enough for this one. No, you have to put your own little spin on it and I think Debose succeeds in doing that and not just trying to mimic Moreno's performance from the original. Her "America" rendition is a bit more proud and defiant than Moreno's more sarcastic, sassy take on the song. Her take on "A Boy Like That" is deeply moving and heartfelt by how much anger and sadness she is repressing to try and reach through to Maria. I'd say she also stands out in the confrontation at Valentina's shop where she bravely has to try to talk to Tony while the Jets threaten and attack her. DeBose's performance feels more restrained , yet still full of that Puerto Rican strength, whereas Moreno lets us know how Anita is feeling with her snappy comments. You can't avoid comparing the two because they won for the exact same role. DeBose does her best and gets an Oscar for it, not too shabby I'd say.

Jessie Buckley - The Lost Daughter

I will admit right off the bat that I didn't like this film at all. I understand what it was trying to go for but I felt it was too ambiguous at times and the two versions of the main character, which Buckley plays the younger version of, is too disparate. Buckley's older self is played by Olivia Colman, nominated in Best Actress, and who gives an alright performance but nothing I thought was amazing or award worthy. Buckley gives the better performance of the two versions for me because she has so much more to work with from the role. Her parts are flashbacks where she is a young mother with a husband and two girls working in academia and translating Yeats' poems. We see that she can be a shitty mother by trying to ignore them as they make noise and her husband is on the phone and reluctantly goes to comfort them. By being mean to them, not responding to them when being annoying, by yelling and getting angry at them over little things. You get the feeling that she never wanted to be a mother and question why she ever had them in the first place. None of that is discussed or even hinted at it which is a big flaw of the film to me. Why is she acting like this? Why does she eventually abandon her family for years to go be who she actually wants to be? It's a frustrating film in that regard but I did enjoy Buckley's performance. She plays the overwhelmed and frustrated mother part well and I like how when she goes to a conference and her work and meets Peter Sarsgaard's character she does a complete 180 and her character comes alive. With that affair we see the vibrant, expressive, effusive character that contrasts the dour and haughty persona she has with her kids. And I feel for her exhaustive demeanor with her kids because that obviously takes a toll and it seems to explain her reason to just say fuck it and have an affair and then abandon the family for awhile. Buckley displays all this incredibly well and makes me excited to see more of her work. She seems to be a hot actress at the moment so I think that bodes well for her future chances with the Academy. She was in the just nominated Women Talking, so I have that to look forward to. But again, her performance is nothing like Colman's and it leads to me wanting to see more of Buckley and less of Colman in that I mean just show the flashback scenes as the whole film and go from there. The fact that Buckley had me thinking like that should tell you about the film and her performance. Can't wait to see more even if this one wasn't quite a winner.

Judi Dench - Belfast

This was the surprise announcement on nominations morning because everyone was expecting Caitriona Balfe to get the nod here instead. Both are from the same film and Balfe has hit all the precursor awards before this, so I feel like I can confidently say this is a veteran/career nomination for Dench and nothing else. Before getting to Dench, Balfe did have a lot of buzz as a threat to DeBose and yet was completely absent in the category. But that speaks to how great of a performance it truly is. Maybe there were issues with Supporting versus Lead, but I think they campaigned her in this category. Her role is meatier and she gets to show off way more acting chops simply because Dench isn't in much of the film. Dench plays Granny (Balfe plays Ma) and while she does have that adequate grandparent quality to her performance, there just isn't a lot to it. She adds some good humor to the film and comes off as a deeply loved member of the family. I think her one shining moment is the extreme closeup of her face at the very end of the film, but that's not enough for me to nominate her. Good enough work, but nowhere near the impact that Balfe has on the film. Kinda hard to get excited about this when it robs Balfe of a nomination and who knows if she'll ever get another chance, especially since this was Dench's eighth (!) nomination in her career.

Kirsten Dunst - The Power of the Dog

 

This is Dunst's first Oscar nomination but doesn't feel like she already has one? I guess because she has been acting as a little kid since 1989 and has been in all kinds of different types of films since then, her filmography is fascinating to look through. So I was happy to see she was nominated for this role as a widower who marries Jesse Plemons' character (her real life husband) who tries to assimilate into a different lifestyle and who turns to booze to cope. It sounds like a heavy performance, but Dunst is a supporting character so the focus isn't on her so much as it is her son in the film, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Benedict Cumberbatch. I do feel like it's a very good performance but also feel like it came along with the film, too. Not to denigrate Dunst as she does a great job of navigating a very complex character and a tense story. It's tough as the only real female performance in the film and it's one where she has to play a weary, socially anxious, out of her element, coherent drunk who is terrified of Cumberbatch's character because he torments her and her son. It's a character that could easily be pathetic where you look at her in disdain but she earns your empathy despite her fragility. A lot of what I read is that this performance and character gets better and better on each rewatch and I imagine that to be true. Jane Campion is great at crafting female characters that are much more than they initially appear to be and Dunst is no exception. I like that her performance makes everyone else hit harder or have more meaning behind them. Her son, her tormentor, her husband all benefit from what Dunst creates and are better off for it and so are we. I like that Dunst learned a couple piano pieces and practiced them religiously to get them down and only a bit of one was used in the final film. Apparently she stayed in character while shooting which just shows how dedicated she is to her profession. A good performance helped by the attention the film got which is why I say it came along with the film, but it holds up on its own easily. A great first nomination for Dunst.

Aunjanue Ellis - King Richard

 

Inevitably there are performances that come along for the ride with films that do well in awards season. I do think that Ellis partly came along for the ride as Will Smith basically swept his way to Oscar gold. But Ellis does give a very supporting performance that services the film and Smith well. She doesn't really have a big stand out moment other than the brief scene where she calls out Richard for having other kids/affairs and really holds her ground and doesn't back down when confronting him. It's solid and the rest of the performance is formed around that type of acting. She is the stalwart mother who loves her daughters more than anything and does everything she can to help them succeed, including coaching them. There are brief moments where she shines like when she yells at Smith in the car to not ever leave the girls to walk home on the streets as punishment. Which you can see her good moments are when she steps up to Smith's overbearing father and puts him in his place. It's good work that I'm not sure if the film did alright and didn't have Smith at the center if she would have been nominated alone. It's great that she was and I'm fine with the nomination and performance but don't expect an all time acting job. It's straightforward and simply good work.

Not gonna lie, this is a pretty weak year. The Dench nomination just felt like the Academy wanted to reward her one more time for her career. Balfe would have been such a better pick that would have elevated this group a bit and challenged DeBose for the win, honestly. Ellis just comes along for the ride. She isn't given much to do and has one little scene that comes out of nowhere that was strong but also felt shoehorned in. Dunst puts in good work and it's nice to see her get a nomination finally. Buckley was impressive in her role even if it felt a bit disparate compared to Olivia Colman's performance of Buckley later in her life. Nothing really could compete with DeBose who has a great performance in a tough, iconic role. Really wish this year would have been more competitive, I already know 2022 is.

Oscar Winner: Ariana DeBose - West Side Story

My Winner: Ariana DeBose - West Side Story

Jessie Buckley

Kirsten Dunst

Aunjanue Ellis

Judi Dench