the year that was (4/5): top 10 performances of 2011.
the looseness of the category- and hierarchy-free format for last year’s performances recap, we felt, worked. so without further ado:
emily browning, sleeping beauty.
stripping down to let nude, wrinkly old men touch you is enough to deserve any actress a firm commendation, yet it was just as often that which emily browning didn’t show us that nestled its way under the skin. delivering an intentionally cold sleepwalk of a performance, it was browning’s careful restraint that ensured that wall-shattering jolt of her awakening, a moment of release to quite literally crack open the film’s stoic design. – judah
zoé héran, tomboy.
bringing not only the subtle internal conflicts of her character dilemma, but that specific boyhood swagger of her masquerade with it, zoé héran’s testing role-within-a-role cut to the heart of a rather complex crisis of identity without any hints of showiness. that she hasn’t even hit adolescence yet should make glenn close fucking ashamed of herself. – judah
peyman moaadi, nader & simin, a separation.
for a film that actually has no bad guys, the closest thing we had to a moral compass in farhadi’s exceptional a separation was peyman moaadi’s titular nader. it’s clear he’s a genuine man, a caring son and a loving father. but that he’s all these while still carrying a fierce conviction, resolute will and truly human frailties made for a complex, rounded, dimensional protagonist the likes of which american cinema barely has time between histrionics to see. attribute as much as you like to the taut, insightful screenplay, but moaadi brought it. – jansen
carey mulligan, shame.
perennial cinemetrics favourite carey mulligan stepped out of her shaky-upper lip vulnerability to bring us new shades of her range of performance as the broken sissy in shame. she’s a firecracker waiting to be lit by a misplaced utterance, a dashed damsell in despair and consummate professional at maintaining the aura of intrigue for her audience: and more often than not, it’s her brother [michael fassbender] she ends up performing for. – jansen
elisabeth olsen, martha marcy may marlene.
elisabeth olsen’s four-types-of-crazy turn as a shaken ex-cult member was even more types of good, bringing palpable bouts of paranoia, perplexity and despair to the surface of her slippery psyche. such is the film-affirming quality of her performance that i’ll mourn the unfortunate exclusion of martha marcy from our upcoming ‘top ten films’ list for weeks [and weeks] to come. – judah
brad pitt, the tree of life.
in comparison to his winking caricature in 2009’s inglorious basterds, hollywood’s biggest star dialled in the chin-jutting (only just) as mr. o’brien in the superlatively confounding and polarising the tree of life. what pitt dialled up was subtlety and nuance befitting a role (and in terrence malick, a director) happy to allow him to be merely a supporting player, and not the big cheese. the result was one of the most real portrayals of tough love ever commited to screen; pitt’s competing parental urges being in large part the reason such a specific familial drama felt so raw and right. – jansen
lucas pittaway, snowtown.
at the heart of this year’s greatest cinematic trauma was the immensely tragic, vicarious debut of newcomer lucas pittaway, an untrained local who somehow roped a role that will probably put him off acting forever. as stomach-churning as the film’s content undoubtedly is, it reverberates on a deep-seated emotional level because of pittaway, and the kind of naturalism you can’t be taught. – judah
christopher plummer, beginners.
old-mate plummer’s career-capping, crested portrayal of mike mills’ bittersweet paternal memories was the culmination of a sticky set of arcs, yet each handled with a genuine sensitivity and grace. on the cusp of death, hal found assurance in the way he finally chose to live, and all of the complex, contrasting emotions associated with that revelation were all webbed onscreen, effortlessly embedded in plummer’s formidable presence. – judah
corey stoll, midnight in paris.
ernst hemingway, for most of us, remains a figment of imagination: a figure of lore who was this mad genius of machismo and fine language. that with the aid of woody allen’s pen corey stoll managed to tap precisely into that imaginary of a legend made for one of the more memorable supporting turns of the year: funny, referential, charismatic. this is capital H Hemingway, but given the whimsy tone of the picture, no other conversion could be more apt. – jansen
tilda swinton, we need to talk about kevin.
we’re beginning to sound like a broken record on the swints, for sure, but no other actress can delve into the difficult and not appear as if an oscar would complete her quite like she. her eva’s inner torment is perpetually engraved on her shellshocked face, and director lynne ramsay ensures that through her we can read visually the socio-cultural and, frankly, existential dilemma she daily faces as mother of the kid that makes hitler look like a kid. – jansen
