They call the annual parade of prizes for art “award season.” It lasts for months and reliably culminates in somebody standing on a stage saying “thank you” (or sometimes “no thank you”). Meanwhile, we at home might understand that we’re looking at a winner, but almost never do we know why they’ve won. Lots of hardware, no citation. So, since its inception, The New York Times Magazine’s Great Performers issue has tried to be enlightening about what makes certain good acting stand out.
This year, we went in a different, deeper, slightly weirder direction by identifying a specific aspect of a piece of acting (a gesture, a facial expression, a back; how good somebody’s performance was in a car, on a phone, in a group). On its own, that one element might be a singular achievement, but it also helps explain why the rest of a performance is so impossible to forget.
Here are some highlights.
Best Acting Above the Nose: Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”
If a middle-aged actor has ignored the call to seek facial rejuvenation — if his entire face still works — special attention will be paid. Even then, who but Giamatti could use his face to travel from indignity to indignation with a mere narrowing of the eyes, from resting to rage? Paul Hunham, the fallen prep-school teacher he plays in “The Holdovers,” slouches his way through the film, his quiver stocked with embitterment and tweedy hauteur. The movie puts Hunham’s distasteful, explosive qualities to moral, altruistic ends, and you can measure the emotional magnitude of his righteousness by the creases, lines and squiggles that striate Giamatti’s forehead. What he’s after is richer than plain fury. Yes, he can give you Vesuvius. But here, in the most deeply inhabited, most sharply etched use to which that brow has yet been put, Giamatti has also located Lake Placid and charts a course toward it.
Best Acting on a Landline: Matt Damon, Viola Davis and Chris Messina, “Air”
The kick of a memorable phone sequence comes from the pleasure an actor has obviously found in the yakking. “Air” is set in 1984, when the landline still ruled telecom. Damon spends the movie neck-cradling a handset and, if Messina is howling at him on the other end, holding it at a comical distance and grimacing. Messina is playing Michael Jordan’s ulcerous agent; Damon’s character works for Nike. Messina screams into his phone’s transmitter as if Damon were trapped deep inside. When Damon is on the phone with Davis (playing Jordan’s mother), he holds it very close to his head, as if her voice were pain relief. Davis’s grip implies delicacy and, because every phone call in “Air” is a negotiation, full commitment to the firmness of her terms.