Oscars 2024: Best Actress Comes Down to Understated vs. Overstated

How to solve a problem like Best Actress?

A good friend recently watched Poor Things and found it “too weird to enjoy on any level.” At the top of the list of problems was the baby brain in an adult body having all kinds of sex from Day One.  For some people, this is glorious. For others, like Yours Truly, it is uncomfortable. I will admit that I am open-minded to just about anything on film. The more subversive, the better. There is one line I draw – okay, two – and Yorgos Lanthimos blows through both of them. The first is his peculiar fetish with animal abuse in all of his films. And the second is, at least with Poor Things, sex that flirts with children’s brains.

It doesn’t make a person a prude to be weirded out by that. And it doesn’t make a person a pervert if they loved her performance. She’s so good in the movie you are laughing at everything she does. And eventually, her performance becomes sweet by the end.

But.

If the idea is that all toddlers and children are sex crazed from the beginning, well, that’s not been my experience raising my own kid and being around lots of toddlers. It probably is a part of normal development, but not to the extent we see it expressed in Poor Things. That looks more like how a child who has been molested would behave if they’ve been sexualized from an early age to see it as the most important thing. This behavior doesn’t naturally occur in most kids unless some adult has hastened their development.

At any rate, once you’re taken out of the story to think about it, there is no chance you’ll be carried away by the end. Many have walked out of this movie, as is reported on Rotten Tomatoes. They weren’t prepared for it to be so focused on sexuality because that isn’t shown in the trailer.

Emma Stone’s performance in Poor Things is the kind of performance that usually wins Oscars; however, it’s OVERSTATED. Her performance is extreme, exaggerated, and funny. She’s very good at these kinds of performances, as we saw in Birdman and La La Land. The camera loves her, especially when she is let loose to be as inventive and strange as possible. This might be her best ever work as an actress. It certainly shows she’s willing to go to strange and dark places, especially with her performance in The Curse (the best show on television, IMO).

Voting for her in this movie will mean you weren’t weirded out by it. And many will be. How many, who knows. Had Godwin wired Bella to be a sex toy (like Pris in Bladerunner), that would have made sense to me. In that case, sex would be the most important thing about her, at least at first. A brain — a female brain, at least — doesn’t start with sex. It starts with curiosity — not about sex so much, but about how the world works. When she was learning to walk and talk, my daughter pointed at everything: what’s that? She would say. What’s that? What’s that? On and on it went. I never saw her grabbing fruit and trying to have sex with it. I think that probably comes a lot later, like after puberty. Regardless, it’s a question of who will vote for her performance and who won’t. She has an advantage in that her performance is overstated, and she nails it.

On the flipside is Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon. Her performance, it’s safe to say, is understated. But she represents the eyes of the Osage people who are almost traveling back in time to watch the whole ugly affair unfold.

As a former script reader writes:

In my case what the movie means comes down to the truth of the woman Lily Gladstone plays: Lily Gladstone’s performance embodies the Osage legacy. She turned an underwritten part into a natural force, like the thunderstorm in the picture. The words she said could never have matched the magic her silence evokes.

He’s not the biggest fan of the film overall, but if there is one thing almost everyone says coming out of the film, Lily Gladstone is fantastic in the role. I could not find a single review, even the bad reviews, that did not praise Gladstone’s work. It isn’t the performance — it’s the juxtaposition of an understated performance against an overstated one with Emma Stone. But just as the weird sex in Poor Things is a potential problem for Stone, understated is a potential problem for Gladstone. I don’t agree with the hive mind that wanted to put her performance in supporting. That would have added insult to injury and opened everyone up to attacks. She is the center of the film, so running her in supporting would have been something they would have done 20 years ago that people now would shame them for.

There is no question that it would be a very big deal for the Academy to have a photo of Lily Gladstone winning the Oscar to put in their museum next to, say, Sacheen Littlefeather. It would also be a big deal for not just the Osage people (my god, it’s the LEAST WE CAN DO) but to Native Americans who have long been drifting in the background of films throughout Hollywood history. Obviously, the Oscars and the industry should stop trying to right the wrongs of society because that strategy is destroying them. But in this case, an exception must be made because of the history.

It isn’t that awarding Lily Gladstone can change the past or improve Hollywood’s image. It’s more a matter of how the voters will feel casting their vote. Does marking her name on their ballots drive them toward making the kind of change that will make them look better? I think, for some, that mentality still exists. There is a lot of affection in the industry for Martin Scorsese overall — and for Gladstone, if this picture from the Oscars luncheon is any indication:

And finally, that brings us to Annette Bening, who might be the “porridge is just right” pick with no obstacles or caveats in her way. She’s never won an Oscar before and this is her fifth nomination. There is no “baggage” attached to her win. There is nothing but good will in her performance. It’s not sad or weird or uncomfortable. She’s dynamically and forcefully front and center in the movie. She is just a nuts and bolts actress out there doing the work. Take this scene where Diana Nyad reaches shore:

Now compare it to the video footage of the real event:

The skills displayed by Bening and Jodie Foster, who plays Bonnie, are equally impressive. Both these veterans clearly spent time studying the two women they portray to authentically bring their story to life. This is old-school acting by two of the best in the business. One has won two Lead Actress Oscars, and the other has never yet won. Bening’s performance stands firmly in the overstated brand of acting, and she is overdue. The only thing she doesn’t have this year is a Best Picture nomination, which the other actresses do. A win for either of them is a win for the film.

Finally, it must be said that Sandra Hüller is a long-shot dark horse to win here, especially with all the recently initiated international voters in the Academy, and hers is another overstated performance. Her performance is what makes Anatomy of a Fall so good. She’s also outstanding in The Zone of Interest, though not nominated. Her performances in these two films are so different, that it may help her potentially take the win, especially in a split race.

Carey Mulligan will have to settle for being happy to be there, even if she quietly gave the best performance of the year. She is one of those actresses who is always so consistently good it’s hard to find that one great performance for which she should have won, much like Annette Bening.

So, let’s turn the question over to you, Oscarwatchers. Which of these actresses is going to win?

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