Film Feature: The Best Lead Performances of 2012

CHICAGO – I worked my way through the best supporting performances of 2012 [14] earlier today and I’m back with the much-stronger array of actors and actresses who challenged themselves with great leading performances in film this year. Both of these categories were incredibly difficult to whittle down to ten candidates (five runner-ups and five nominees). In many years of the past decade, my runner-ups in each category would be a solid top five. I wish I had more space to write about them all but these were the best of a very good year for acting.

The Best Actors of 2012

Five Runner-ups (in alphabetical order): Ben Affleck (“Argo”), Bradley Cooper (“Silver Linings Playbook”), John Hawkes (“The Sessions”), Jean-Louis Trintignant (“Amour”), and Christoph Waltz (“Django Unchained”).

Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
Photo credit: DreamWorks

We’ve heard the stories. He stayed in costume all the time. He texted with Sally Field in vernacular that would only be consistent with Abraham Lincoln. He made everyone call him Honest Abe. Well, that last one might not be true, but, whatever it took for arguably our best living actor to so completely embody one of the most famous Americans of all time, it worked. What’s so remarkable about one of the most acclaimed performances of all time and the work that will very likely earn Daniel Day-Lewis a VERY rare third Oscar (joining a very small club of three with Walter Brennan and Jack Nicholson) is how completely this great actor disappears mere minutes into Spielberg’s epic. We’re not looking at the method, we’re not looking at the actor, we’re totally and believably looking at Abraham Lincoln.

Hugh Jackman in Les Miserables
Photo credit: Universal

It’s the part he’s been waiting for for years. With his Tony Award-winning stage career often overshadowing some of his less-advisable film decisions, one wondered if Hugh Jackman would ever get that one role that would really show off his full range of talents or if his film career would merely be associated with Wolverine now and forever. Fortunately, from the very first scenes of “Les Miserables,” you know that Jackman has finally found that role that destroys everything else he’s ever done. He bites into the part of Jean Valjean with everything he’s got and completely gives it his emotional all. You feel his grief, his anger, and his passion through song. He’s not just singing, which is what most people do in musicals, he’s acting while he does it. And the way he pours every ounce of his physical and emotional energy into the role of his career has had some audiences cheering when the film is done.

Denis Lavant in Holy Motors
Photo credit: Indomina Group

Director Leos Carax knew he had a physically adept actor in Denis Lavant and that his lead role in the daring “Holy Motors” demanded an actor willing to give all that his body could give, but he reportedly expressed concern regarding whether or not Lavant could handle the emotional rollercoaster of fully sketching a dozen characters in one film. Carax quickly realized his concerns were unwarranted and the result is one of the most memorable and completely mesmerizing performances of 2012 with Lavant playing a man who drops in and out of various characters, ranging from a homeless woman on the street to a dying man to a beast from underground. He’s impossible to take your eyes off of in every moment, finding truth in both the small beats of less flashy chapters in Carax’s film and truly knocking the big ones out of the park. This category is arguably more crowded than ever when it comes to the Oscars, but I dream about Lavant making the Academy’s final five. There was arguably no more fearless performance all year and there was only one memorable turn in this category I liked just a tick better.

Denzel Washington in Flight
Photo credit: Paramount

Critics who argue that Denzel is just “being Denzel” in Robert Zemeckis’ incredibly accomplished drama simply aren’t looking at what’s on the screen. They’re bringing in preconceived notions and crafting pre-written reviews. The truth is that Washington is more convincing and risk-taking here than he has been in twenty years, finding the soul of a man who crashed a commuter plane and still hasn’t found his rock bottom. We walk a tightrope with Washington, unsure of whether or not we’re supposed to be rooting for Whitaker to bottom out or save himself. Unlike so many actors, Washington is willing to make his character unlikable. Whip Whitaker is kind of a dick. And yet Washington keeps us engaged in his story from beginning to end, never sure what we’re supposed to think of this guy, but riveted to his every move.

Joaquin Phoenix in The Master
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

Phoenix is reportedly on the outs with the Academy for comments he’s made about their awards and it could cost him a nomination. But, please, Academy members, please judge the performance, not the man. Nothing in film in 2012 was as original or unexpected as Joaquin Phoenix’s characterization of a man just this side of primitive coming back to civilization. The best movie performances often share one difficult-to-attain characteristic — they don’t just feature an actor making the “right” decisions, but rather they feature an actor making the decisions that none of his peers would have even considered. So much of what Phoenix does in “The Master” is jarringly unique. He’s on edge constantly, looking as if he could implode or explode at any given moment. He’s a ticking bomb of a man and it’s the unpredictability that Phoenix brings to the film that makes him so memorable.

The Best Actresses of 2012

Five Runner-ups (in alphabetical order): Emayatzy Corinealdi (“Middle of Nowhere”), Marion Cotillard (“Rust and Bone”), Ann Dowd (“Compliance”), Quvenzhane Wallis (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”), and Michelle Williams (“Take This Waltz”).

Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

How quickly must actors and actresses jump when their agents call with a David O. Russell screenplay? The writer/director won two Oscars for stars of his last film — Christian Bale and Melissa Leo — and he could do the same again this year for Robert De Niro and the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence, an actress who has quickly risen to that “she makes everything better” status of stars. Even in junk like “House at the End of the Street,” Lawrence brings something special and, when she gets as meaty a part as Tiffany in “Silver Linings Playbook,” she destroys it. To say she holds her own with more veteran actors like De Niro and Bradley Cooper would be an understatement. She steals nearly every scene she’s in, perfectly capturing a unique balance between confrontation and vulnerability. Tiffany is the kind of girl who will tell you to f**k off and then hug you to say she’s sorry. It’s a tough balance that few actresses could have pulled off with this degree of accomplishment.

Emmanuelle Riva in Amour
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

There are scenes in Michael Haneke’s emotionally devastating “Amour” that feel like moments we shouldn’t be watching. There’s so much truth and pain on display in the story of the last days of an elderly couple’s existence that it’s like we’re invading someone’s privacy. Achieving that complete lack of artifice is much more difficult than it looks. Taking a film production and making it feel like we’re not watching characters but rather just witnessing reality, especially when it’s a reality that is this heartbreaking, isn’t as easy as it sounds. Riva portrays the diminishing mental and physical capabilities of a once-strong woman in ways that serve as a realistic reminder to us all — this could easily be you or your loved one someday. It’s the truth that makes the reminder so emotionally resonant.

Naomi Watts in The Impossible
Photo credit: Summit

Speaking of truth, as an actress, Naomi Watts is incapable of being false and so, when she’s wandering square miles of debris with her son after a devastating tsunami, you feel actual concern for her well-being. She’s one of those actresses who makes it easy to forget that there are air-conditioned trailers and catering tables on the other side of the camera because she’s always so completely in the moment, even when the moment is as physically and emotionally demanding as it is in “The Impossible.”

Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea
Photo credit: Music Box Films

Was there a more perfect portrayal of depression in 2012 that Rachel Weisz’s embodiment of doomed love in Terence Davies’ “The Deep Blue Sea”? Hester Collyer is a woman trapped between two impossible relationships and Weisz brings a fatalism to the character that’s incredibly complex. Hester knows her love affair will end badly, but she can’t stop herself. She can’t NOT be in love. Many actors and actresses have tried to capture this inevitability that happens in real life, but it typically comes off as forced melodrama. Not with Rachel Weisz, an actress who really makes us believe that some people dive into the wrong water even when they know they’ll drown.

Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
Photo credit: Sony

Like so many great performances, Jessica Chastain’s work in “Zero Dark Thirty” is just as remarkable for what it’s not as for what it is. One can easily picture a few dozen actresses in this role who could have taken it in one of two directions — the tough-as-nails agent who gets her way no matter what or the rising star who learns the ropes from her fellow agents but “never forgets she’s a woman.” Chastain and Kathryn Bigelow make no easy decisions with Maya, fully developing a woman with both tough and vulnerable sides. Maya has doubts but she also has conviction. Maya learns over the arc of “ZDT”, but Chastain never over-plays her development, making it genuine instead of melodramatic. And the final shot is such a defining one for this performance in the way it captures what we’re looking for in every great movie — the emotional truth a character tries to hide.

[15]	By BRIAN TALLERICO [16] Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com [15]