For a few years now (or perhaps longer, I don’t know) Variety has invited celebrities to write about their “favorite” performances from the current year as part of the trade’s award season coverage. This year, however, Entertainment Weekly is also getting in on the act and this morning Sasha Stone from AwardsDaily.com brought up the latest stumping for Naomi Watts for her performance in Juan Antonio Bayona‘s The Impossible, which has so far been nominated for a Golden Globe, SAG award and Critics’ Choice award. If Mark Ruffalo, Reese Witherspoon and Angelina Jolie have anything to do about it, she’ll add an Oscar nomination to that list.
My fascination for the intensity shown Watts is similar to Sasha’s in that we just don’t quite get it. I won’t speak for Sasha, but this isn’t me saying Watts is bad in the film, in fact she does just fine. What’s curious, though, is that for the majority of the film she’s either screaming as she attempts to save her children and nurses a badly injured leg in the midst of the 2004 tsunami that hit the coast of Thailand, or she’s blinking in and out of consciousness in the hospital.
Some have wondered why I’ve kept Watts out of my top five in the Best Actress race, believing it was a bias against the film, which I did not particularly enjoy, when in fact it has more to do with the fact I just don’t believe it’s a performance that stands above the others that are likely to be considered. But this alarming support from some top tier celebrities and the hyperbole that accompanies it just might be enough to throw someone like Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone) or Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) out of the top five.
The celebrity endorsements began on November 18 when Angelina Jolie held a private event for her friend and Impossible star Ewan McGregor by screening the film for 30 guests and offering drinks at the Soho Hotel. Jolie’s focus was largely on McGregor as she was quoted saying, “Ewan, I’ve known you for years and you’re one of my favorite actors. But I watched this and I didn’t recognize you. It’s strange; to say it’s one of the best performances of the year doesn’t really give it credit. It doesn’t feel like a performance; it comes from such an honest place.”
Whether the focus was on McGregor or not, Jolie’s support of the film was duly noted in several outlets and Watts certainly stands to benefit.
Next, on December 18, in the online pages of Entertainment Weekly, a letter Reese Witherspoon apparently sent to Watts was published in which she says The Impossible is “one of the best films I have ever seen in my life” and that she “could not speak for 24 hours after seeing the film.” Now that is a reaction to a film. Not being able to speak for a whole day? That has never happened to me.
Witherspoon compares Watts’ “brutal physical performance” to the Oscar-winning performances of Meryl Streep‘s in Sophie’s Choice and Sally Field‘s in Norma Rae before adding, “If I have anything to do with it (and I will literally tap dance on Sunset Boulevard for you!), you will be holding every beautiful statue that exists by the end of February.”
Then, today, Mark Ruffalo has a piece in Variety where he chooses to focus on the early moments in the film and how Watts’ character is struggling with leaving her career behind for her family. Ruffalo calls her performance “great and nearly impossible acting” and adds, “The scene with Naomi and her son (a fantastic Tom Holland) trying to survive in the torrents of the 2004 Thailand tsunami are heartbreaking, and we are swept up into the emotional honesty of a woman coming to terms with the loss of her children and family.”
As I said, this is hardly a new phenomenon. Parties, events, filmmaker Q&As and screenings set up to shed some influential light on Oscar contenders are par for the course. The timing on the Watts campaign — two open letters in two days — simply caught my attention and Stone’s curiosity as to whether or not there may be more to it than these celebs simply responding to the performance was equally intriguing.
Watts currently sits at #6 on my Best Actress charts and I’m not sure I’ll be able to decide whether Wallis, Cotillard or Riva are ejected from the top five, but given three high-profile celebrity endorsements, Golden Globe, SAG and Critics’ Choice nominations, it may be hard to keep Watts out of that top five. Especially if Witherspoon is going to be tap dancing on Sunset Boulevard.
What will be even more interesting is if The Impossible somehow creeps up and scores multiple nominations at this year’s Oscars when very little has been said of the film following its premiere in Toronto, though it certainly has made a splash overseas where it has made over $56 million so far, $52 million coming from Spain alone.
The Impossible lands stateside on December 21. You can read my full review from the Toronto Film Festival right here.
