In this year's race for the Best Actress Academy Award, the nominees are holding their breaths until March 24. This year's nominees confirm Hollywood's recent trend toward films that, whether sentimental or depressing, shed a somber light on contemporary American life.
Despite the depressing characters on the Best Actress slate, the nominees -- Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Janet McTeer and Hilary Swank -- bring both talent and a unique passion to their particular performances.
In "Music of the Heart," Meryl Streep plays Roberta Guaspari, a stern but loveable single mother who teaches violin to hundreds of underprivileged kids in one of the toughest neighborhoods of New York City.
Although the film itself is long and overly sentimental, Streep's performance is praiseworthy. Turning a clichd role into a three-dimensional character, Streep elevates Roberta above soap opera status by making her both interesting and appealing.
Exemplifying her commitment to the role, Streep spent four to six hours a day for two months teaching herself to play the violin. She delivers a sincere performance that brings credibility to a film that would otherwise drown in sap.
Nonetheless, as fine an actress as she is, in our view Streep's performance doesn't jump out as an Oscar winner.
Demonstrating a similar dedication to her role, Janet McTeer, a 39-year-old British actress in her first starring screen role, convincingly hides her British accent under a Southern drawl as Mary Jo in "Tumbleweed."
Playing a narcissistic mother whose whims and trail of failed romances drive her adolescent daughter crazy, McTeer delivers a touching, funny and richly detailed performance.
No stranger to awards, McTeer won a Tony in 1997 for her performance as Nora in Ibsen's "A Doll's House."
Despite her convincing American accent and ability to convey the Southern feel of Mary Jo, we doubt that McTeer will be taking the Oscar home on March 24. But we suspect she will see her career on the big screen take leaps and bounds after this much-talked about performance.
Compared to McTeer, Julianne Moore is not a new face to the Academy. Playing Sarah Miles, a married woman who is susceptible to fleeting affairs with attractive men, Moore radiates an old-fashioned, "Casablanca"-esque aura in "The End of the Affair" that contrasts sharply to her more recent role in "Magnolia."
This film is about her passionate affair with Maurice Bendix (Ralph Fiennes) and then her mysterious abandonment of him. Bendix hires an investigator to find her, assuming she has moved on to another man.
The movie is filled with sappy love scenes and flowery language between Fiennes and Moore.
Moore manages to look radiantly beautiful and captivates the viewer with her lustful charm. Despite her perfect delivery of the classic World War II-era female heroine, the character is too clichd and rehashing of past films. In the end, she brings little to the table but just another pretty face.
Compared to the classic heroine played by Moore, Annette Bening deconstructs the contemporary female in "American Beauty." A phenomenal film, "American Beauty" hilariously exploits many depressing hushed truths of our everyday existence. At least one scene or character hits home with every viewer.
Bening forcefully portrays the role of crazed real estate agent, bored housewife, estranged mother, and self-help addict. Critic Robert Horton called Carolyn Burnham "the caffeinated Donna Reed, the queen of Pleasantville."
Bening exposes the grotesque traits of her character with such fervor and passion, that she almost goes overboard. Portraying her role with a tad too much exaggeration, she lacks the subtlety of co-actor Kevin Spacey's ridiculously funny performance.
In a more sobering role, Hilary Swank paints another depressing depiction of American reality. Swank (formerly of "Beverly Hills, 90210") plays the part of Teena Brandon turned Brandon Teena in the true crime story "Boys Don't Cry."
Living in Nebraska and unsatisfied with her life as a woman, Teena transforms herself into a raw, beer-chugging, cocky young man by donning a cowboy hat on her newly cropped head and ace bandages around her chest. She claims not to be a lesbian, but instead a man trapped in a woman's body.
This nonfiction story is tragic, beginning with Brandon's love affair with the fragile young Lana and ending with a brutal rape and murder. Although every second of the movie is painful to watch, Swank creates a moving and humane performance from a brutal tale.
Part of the horrifying allure of the story is Brandon's ability to sexually attract and captivate both men and women who are entirely oblivious to his/her secret. Swank does a superb job of creating this combination of sexual charisma and ambiguity.
The audience experiences the character's guilt and joy at the success of the deception and yet watches nervously as the approaching violence builds. With voyeuristic suspense, we see Swank's character dawdle on the edge of a dangerous abyss.
Swank deserves an Oscar for capturing all of Brandon's ambiguity: her femininity and masculinity, coldness and naivet, deceit and innocence. Evoking both sympathy and disgust from the viewer, her death leaves us less sad than empty.
It will be interesting to see if the Academy dares to award the worthy Swank for this risky, controversial role.
