And all through the internet the chatter reached a crescendo when the Danish Girl trailer dropped. Do you think he’ll win back-to-back Oscars? they ask. And indeed, had Eddie Redmayne not won last year for his remarkable turn as Stephen Hawking he would probably win this year (sight unseen) for his portrayal of Lily in The Danish Girl, Tom Hooper’s second film since The King’s Speech. You know who also pops in that trailer though? Alicia Vikander, big time. Her star is rising fast in Hollywood since she broke through in Ex Machina earlier in the year.
Best Actor is going to be very competitive and very crowded this year, with the absurdly overdue Leonardo DiCaprio as the one to beat — again, sight unseen. The truth is, you can get some idea from a trailer how good the performance can be. You can factor in subject matter, level of difficulty and the director’s past work. You can have everything going for a project and it can bomb spectacularly. Thus, none of this should be taken seriously but just speculatively. And since there is no THERE there in the Oscar race right now, until this weekend anyway, speculative is all we got.
We know that it’s extremely rare to win back-to-back Oscars for Best Actress. It’s only happened twice and one of those was a tie. How about Best Actor? It’s only been done twice — Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks are the only two. Tom Hanks is probably your best precedent for Redmayne except that Hanks was by then a beloved public figure and American icon. Redmayne is more in Daniel Day-Lewis territory and despite how many great performances Day-Lewis gave after My Left Foot, he didn’t win again until There Will Be Blood. Of course, because of his Oscar follow-up films, Day-Lewis didn’t give those kind of back-to-back performances that Hanks did with Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. Gump was the Best Picture winner and thus, gave him the edge. We don’t yet know if The Danish Girl will be anywhere near that level. Hanks’ Gump is still imitated and talked about today. It is part of the fabric of American culture itself.
What will make the difference or Redmayne is who’s nominated with him. When Hanks won his second Oscar his competition was Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption, John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, Paul Newman in Nobody’s Fool, and Nigel Hawthorne in the Madness of King George. It’s easy to see how he could have triumphed, though Freeman was just as memorable in Shawshank.
Still, this year Redmayne will be facing maybe DiCaprio in The Revenant, Johnny Depp in Black Mass, Michael Fassbender in Macbeth and/or Steve Jobs, Tom Hanks in Bridge of Spies, Will Smith in Concussion, etc. It’s theoretically possible he could win back-to-back — it will just depend on whether the competition blows him away or not. Will this be a game-changing year? It’s hard to say. Generally speaking, though, with both Spencer Tracy and Tom Hanks they were well known and well liked. Redmayne, despite working the circuit last year, is still barely known “out there.” That will likely change after this year.
