This is a very personal plea to the voting members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. To me, Ellen Burstyn’s performance in Pieces of a Woman emerged as some of the finest acting seen in cinema all year. But unique to this performance, her work as Elizabeth Weiss struck a particularly deep chord within me. I connected with the performance in a way that I rarely do.
To explain, allow me to tell you about my Great Aunt Florence.
My father’s parents both died before he was 18. His Aunt Florence became a stand-in mother in his own mother’s absence. Naturally, when I turned up, Aunt Florence became my stand-in grandmother. I really don’t have many childhood memories that didn’t include her. She lived close by, so she ate Sunday lunch with us nearly every week after church. It’s an odd trick of the mind that I relate the smell of fried chicken to her to this day. It was her favorite meal.
Most importantly, Aunt Florence loved movies, and she loved instilling a sense of the arts in me. I remember when I was six years old she stopped by our house with another nephew to say hello on her way to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was incensed because I had not been invited to go, despite most definitely being way too young to see the film.
She made up for that later.
Aunt Florence treated teenage me to a movie nearly every weekend. My parents (mostly my father) also took me to movies, but that was mostly to see films they also wanted to see. Aunt Florence let me pick, and it led to some of the most wonderful memories of my teenage years.
I remember seeing Ron Howard’s Far and Away on opening weekend with her. That coincided with the debut of almond M&Ms which were given out for free at our screening. Another taste sensation that oddly reminds me of Aunt Florence.
I remember her sleeping through Robert Zemeckis’s Contact.
But my favorite film-related memory with Aunt Florence has to be when she took me to see Oliver Stone’s JFK. Now, Aunt Florence was a sweet natured church lady. She sang in the choir. She attended Wednesday night Bible study. She’s wasn’t judgmental or a Bible thumper. She was just old-school religious in the best way possible. Imagine my sheer horror when Tommy Lee Jones achieves an erection during one of Clay Shaw’s “all men” parties. Or the topless dancers in the strip clubs. Or the then-record usage of variations of “fuck.”
She took it all in stride, though, saying only “I remember the day John F. Kennedy was shot” when she left the theater. I was silently mortified, but she never criticized, chastised, or rebuked me for taking her to the film. She was good people.
Forgive me for spending a little more time than I probably should telling you about my Aunt Florence, but you have to understand the deep connection I had to cinema thanks, in part, to her. I miss her still even though she passed in 2008. But when Ellen Burstyn appeared on screen in Pieces of a Woman, it was as if I were spending another few minutes with Aunt Florence.
The sense was always there through the film, even if I didn’t directly realize it. It wasn’t until the end of the film when Vanessa Kirby’s Martha addresses a courtroom and Burstyn’s Elizabeth smiles from the audience as her daughter finally achieves closure. The hair. The scarf. The purple accents. It all hit me in this primal, intensely emotional way.
Speaking with Burstyn last month, I had a few minutes to briefly share that connection with her. She told me that is one of the greatest benefits to acting – that an actor can tap into something inherent in the viewer by making the character as real as possible. I co-sign that benefit with one minor exception – great acting makes that connection.
Burstyn’s Pieces performance seems ordinary on the page, but she delivers it in an extraordinary manner. The performance feels so lived in, so real, that you’d swear Burstyn and Kirby were mother and daughter. Burstyn steals every scene she’s in with her delicate, yet incredibly forceful, way of trying to navigate the dark waters of Martha’s life.
Her greatest moment, of course, comes as Burstyn shares Elizabeth’s backstory in an attempt to force Martha to fight for survival. Elizabeth was a Holocaust-born child, one so severely malnourished that a doctor held her up by her feet and said she would die if she didn’t try to hold her head up. It’s an intense, powerful, tragic moment in a film full of them. Burstyn delivers that monologue with a career-best intensity. And much of it was ad-libbed. That’s how you know Ellen Burstyn is a legend.
When Burstyn’s Elizabeth starts showing signs of memory loss toward the end of the film, she’s playing nearly everyone’s grandmother, aging mother, or great aunt. She smiles at the momentary confusion, but the moment masks a deep-seated panic. And to us, it’s one of the most painful moments in a film filled with loss.
I realize it’s unlikely that Ellen Burstyn will receive a nomination. The precursors aren’t in her favor, and she realizes it too. Maybe it’s the lack of screen time. Maybe it’s the intense competition. Maybe the film is just a little to tragic for audiences to endure. Whatever comes to pass, Burstyn’s performance will remain a classic piece of star acting. One that holds connections, I suspect, to many Aunt Florences across the movie lover spectrum.
I, for one, am thrilled to have made that unexpected connection and grateful for the chance to spend even a few minutes with the memory of my beloved Aunt Florence again.
That’s what great acting can give you.
And that’s what Oscar nominations should reward.
