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Quvenzhané Wallis gives a great stare, but is that Oscar-worthy?
Most child actors, however talented, are out of their depth in the race for
gold
By Mary Pols Special to MSN Movies
Quvenzhané Wallis was 5 when she was first cast in
"Beasts of the Southern Wild," age 6 when she
murmured Hushpuppy's best line -- "I want to be cohesive" -- and even three
whole years later, at age 9, she is still the youngest-ever nominee for an
Academy Award in the Best Actress category.
She is a natural in front of the camera, possessed of a fierce stare and the
kind of beautiful little face that draws the eye. Hushpuppy is unquestionably
the lead of director Benh Zeitlin's 93-minute parable of environmental
ruin and a heartbreaking figure, abandoned by her mother, awash in hunger and
poverty and looked after only by her angry, dying father as the waters rise
around them. At 6, Wallis was too young for artifice. She was too young to be
embarrassed by her costume of boys underwear, tank top and rubber boots, or,
really, anything.
"Beasts of the Southern Wild" itself is earnest, muddled, sometimes totally
pretentious, filled with confused-looking amateurs (oh, those wild-eyed drunks)
and yet, in a few key scenes near the end, possessed of nearly magical, dynamic
beauty. Almost all of the film's power comes from the image of the child, first
threatened, then empowered. The last time I can remember feeling this sad for a
child on-screen was when then-4-year-old Victoire Thivisol played a toddler whose mother
had just died in the 1996 French film "Ponette." It felt vaguely wrong then too.
The Academy made a mistake in nominating Wallis. Not a surprising one, since
to be bowled over by the capacity of youth to stand in front of a camera and
look the part while responding to orders and bribes is the group's most
oft-repeated nominating blunder. Wallis isn't even the youngest-ever acting
nominee -- Justin Henry of "Kramer vs. Kramer" was a supporting-actor nominee
when he was 8 -- although no youthful nominee was younger during their
actual performance (largely because of its indie status, "Beasts" took a while
to make it to the marketplace).
My first objection is the one I think most people will, at least on some
level, agree with. In favor of Wallis, Academy voters overlooked worthier
veterans like Rachel Weisz ("The Deep Blue Sea"), Marion Cotillard ("Rust and Bone") and Meryl Streep ("Hope Springs," which few saw, but she was her
usual wonderful, skilled self). It's an insult to their hard work, their process
of creating a character, to pay homage instead to a child in a spotlight. Others
might argue that Helen Mirren ("Hitchcock") and Keira Knightley ("Anna Karenina") were overlooked as well. I'd
advocate instead for a couple of underappreciated actresses who were terrific in
small movies, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a drunk in "Smashed" and Melanie Lynskey, who gave the best performance of
her career (outside of "Heavenly Creatures") in "Hello I Must be Going." Another youngster, the
wildly talented Elle Fanning, 14, did lovely, sad, challenging
work in Sally Potter's "Ginger & Rosa," and hers was a considered
performance, not a series of artful poses. But if the goal is to be shocking, I
guess 14 is a little old. No records would have been broken (Keisha Castle-Hughes was 13 when she was up for
Best Actress for "Whale Rider") and that's less exciting for
everyone, right? Meanwhile, on in the actor categories, Tom Holland, 16, who does a remarkable job playing
Naomi Watts' valiant son in "The Impossible" (weighty dialogue, physical
hardship, constant emotion), wasn't nominated.
My praise for the image Wallis projects speaks to how I see the work she's
done in "Beasts," as a series of photographic poses. Wallis gives a great,
defiant, almost menacing stare and a pretty good fearful face in the scenes
where Dwight Henry, as Hushpuppy's father, Wink, is cursing at her. But I don't
think of it as a performance. Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster were show business kids from the
start, appearing in commercials as infants or toddlers. They knew no other life
but the professional games they played in front of the cameras. Wallis was a kid
whose mother just brought her by for the audition on a lark. Here's what she
told The Hollywood Reporter about working with her director, Zeitlin: "He was
fun and kind of funny and fun to play with." Give that man an award for making
the character of Hushpuppy seem at all convincing anywhere but on paper. He
turned this series of artful shots, of captured snippets of emotion, into
something that looks like an intentional, planned-out performance.
A great deal of it is trickery. In "Beasts," Wallis had about 40 lines to
read in voice-over narration. Her delivery is flat the lines feel very read,
rather than felt but fortunately for Zeitlin it's effective because that
flatness provides a counter to the volatility on-screen. She has 57 lines that
she speaks with the camera on her, 44 of which have five words or less (three
are repetitions of the sentence "I am the man"). Seven are simply pleas for
"Daddy" with no more than two other words mixed in. Another six are just
requests or greetings to "Mamma" with, at most, three other words mixed in. Her
longest speech is three short sentences together. When you hear Wallis telling
Jay Leno or The Hollywood Reporter about how she
was coaxed into additional takes with pizza parties (or the threat of their
cancellation) is to understand her true level of emotional engagement in the
movie. "They said if you can't go any more, then we are going to cancel the
pizza party," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "I'm like, no, I'm getting up!"
This is not a criticism of Wallis; it is a criticism of the working conditions
under which one gets a 6-year-old to play a lead role in a movie. She was 6. She
was normal. Moviemaking isn't normal. The expectations of this notoriously
fickle, ageist industry aren't normal either. What other business decides it is
a good idea to put a child in the running for its biggest, most pressure-heavy
award?
Just ask Jodie Foster, 50, whose acceptance speech for a
lifetime achievement award at this year's Golden Globes was as bittersweet,
strange and angry as any awards show speech in history. "Trust me," said the
grimacing Foster, whose first Oscar nomination was at 14, for "Taxi Driver." "Forty-seven years in the film
business is a long time." In terms of underage nominees, she and Anna Paquin stand as the industry's biggest
success stories. Both have proved that those early, uncannily good performances
were not just flukes. But for every Foster or Paquin there are three or four
more whose greatest moments in front of the cameras were their Oscar-nominated
performances, like Justin Henry, Mary Badham of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and Haley Joel Osment of "The Sixth Sense."
Then there is Quinn Cummings, who gave a captivating,
Oscar-nominated performance as Marsha Mason's character's daughter in 1977's "The Goodbye Girl" -- just the kind of wise
child turn that would fit right in in a Wes Anderson film. She went on to appear on the
television drama "Family," a prototype "Parenthood." Retired from acting, Cummings has published two
books, one a memoir about her life in the business, the other a chronicle of
homeschooling. She also posts regularly on a wonderfully no-frills blog, where
there is no mention of her Oscar-nominated past. Just last week, before Wallis
was Oscar-nominated, Cummings wrote about having a Disney television scout
approach her young daughter at the mall and invite her to an audition. She
writes about how much she loved what happened between the words "action" and
"cut" but what a small part of acting that actually was: "The other 90
percent -- the uncertainty, the powerlessness, the unhealthy fixation on
weight and appearance -- erodes even the most resilient adult and I wasn't
walking around the mall with an adult." Cummings wrote that she smiled at the
talent scout and told her, "Thank you, but no." I wonder if, in another three or
four decades, Wallis would do the same?
I'll eat one of Zeitlin's fetid catfish props if she wins Best Actress.
Coming off the dramatic Golden Globes, Jessica Chastain has the momentum,
even over comedy winner Jennifer Lawrence. Don't count the
well-loved Naomi Watts out or even the oldest nominee ever,
the fantastic Emmanuelle Riva of "Amour." I hope Wallis goes on to have whatever
kind of career she wants (she has already filmed a small role in "Shame" director Steve McQueen's next film, "Twelve Years a Slave"). In the meantime, here's an
idea for the Academy: Back when Shirley Temple was 6, in 1935, they gave her a
special juvenile Oscar as recognition of her spectacular performance at the box
office. It wasn't a Best Actress award. She didn't have to duke it out with Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert or Miriam Hopkins. It was an award for being
spectacularly good and spectacularly young in Hollywood. Why not bring back that
award?
Mary Pols is a Maine-based journalist. She reviews movies for Time.com
and was for many years a film critic for the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland
Tribune and Contra Costa Times. She is also the author of a memoir,
"Accidentally on Purpose," published in 2008 by Ecco/ Harper Collins. When she's
inspired, usually by something weird, she blogs about it at www.maryfpols.com.
Good old USA, obsessed with age, females, and anything that even hints of sex. I keep hearing "she (mostly) is too young to be.." (Insert choices) An Olympic gymnast; concert pianist; model; entertainer; ballerina; etc. BUT when a boy at those same ages becomes something suddenly he is a child protegee/has a great future/gifted/awesome/called by God, ad infinitum. It's just more of the misogynistic mindset of narrow minded idiots that women/girls are not supposed to excel at anything other than male imposed traditional female roles.
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