At this weekend’s 95th Academy Awards ceremony, five men will compete for the “best actor” Oscar and five women will compete for “best actress.” This may not be the case in future Oscar ceremonies, however. Calls are increasing for the elimination of “exclusionary” gendered categories, in favor of generic “lead performer” or “best supporting performance” categories. Many awards shows have already made the move, including the Independent Spirit Awards, Brit Awards, Grammys and others.
Even if it’s inevitable the Oscars will one day move in that gender-denying direction, for now, the film industry’s most prestigious event still acknowledges the value of gendered categories. And what is that value? Why does it make sense to separate an award for “best actor” and “best actress”?
Part of why it makes sense is obvious. Movies aspire to reflect reality, and gender is a big part of reality. It wouldn’t have made sense to issue a gender-neutral casting call for the lead roles in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014) or Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood (2015), because those movies told gender-specific coming-of-age stories about boys and girls respectively. Michelle Yeoh’s fierce maternal character in Everything Everywhere All at Once couldn’t have been played by a man, any more than Colin Farrell’s or Brendan Gleeson’s characters in Banshees of Inisherin (a film about the particularities of male friendship) could have been played by women.
Gender is absolutely central to the most compelling and memorable characters in all narratives.
I’d argue that gender—the particular challenges, sacrifices, joys, heartaches, and responsibilities of being male or female—is one of the single greatest sources of drama and resonance in the arts. It’s absolutely central to the most compelling and memorable characters in all narratives, whether on the stage or the page or the screen. To test this claim, let’s look at the 10 performances that constitute the top acting prizes in this year’s Oscars and consider how central male or female identity is for each.
Best Actor
The five actors in this category excelled in performances that depicted flawed men facing a variety of struggles and burdens borne distinctly by men.
Austin Butler (Elvis)
Austin Butler earned praise for his uncanny impression of the iconic Elvis Presley—his look, his voice, his swiveling hips, and his charismatic presence. But for me, the most compelling—and tragic—aspect of Butler’s Elvis is the way he explores the tension of a husband and father torn between two goods: the good of vocation (music, concerts, “the work”) and the good of family (chiefly his wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie). Most men at some point experience this tension, and we don’t always manage it well. The work provides for the family, but a paycheck is no substitute for presence. Elvis gives his family houses and private jets. But he doesn’t give them himself, opting for fame and fortune over fidelity and family. One test of a man’s virtue is how willing he is to sacrifice self-interest for the sake of those he’s sworn to love and protect. Elvis often failed that test, as did several other male characters on this list.
Brendan Fraser (The Whale)
I’ve previously written about The Whale and Brendan Fraser’s portrayal of Charlie—a morbidly obese writing professor who deserted his wife and daughter to pursue a romantic relationship with a male former student. Needless to say, Fraser’s Charlie is burdened by his own failing of the “test” of a virtuous man. In breaking his marital vows and abandoning his daughter (who becomes understandably troubled and bitter as a result), Charlie chooses authenticity to self over sacrificial service to others. He opts for pleasure fulfillment over promise keeping. These failures end up tormenting him, leading him in a downward spiral of self-destructive despair before finally inspiring a few acts of selfless compassion. By the film’s end, he tries to make amends with his daughter, redeeming himself a bit as a father—if not as a husband.
Paul Mescal (Aftersun)
Similar to Butler’s Elvis and Fraser’s Charlie, Paul Mescal’s Calum fails the test of keeping promises to those closest to him (his wife and daughter). What Charlotte Wells captures so well in her poignant autobiographical film (about her own childhood experiences with an absentee dad) is the crucial importance of fatherly presence. The film depicts her memory of a summer vacation as an 11-year-old girl (played by Frankie Corio), spent with her father in the prime of his life. What happened to them after or before, we don’t know (except that it’s not pretty). But these memories of incarnational presence are bittersweet—capturing the health and joy of what could have been a permanent father-daughter bond but wasn’t. Mescal’s Calum is endearing yet mysterious. It’s clear he loves his daughter and tries hard to father her well. But it’s also clear he’s plagued by demons, unnamed addictions, and vices that—like for so many men in our fallen world—sabotage his good intentions.
Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin)
In the modern world, most men know well that it’s hard to maintain meaningful friendships with other men. The tenuousness of male camaraderie is on vivid display in The Banshees of Inisherin, a film set a century ago that nevertheless resonates with modern manhood. Colin Farrell’s lauded performance as Pádraic is charming, comical, and sad. When his best friend, Colm (Brendan Gleeson, nominated for best supporting actor), suddenly gives him the cold shoulder with no explanation other than “I just don’t like you no more,” the film’s lament over the broken bonds of male fellowship commences. Even if the conflict escalation gets absurd (involving severed fingers and firebombed houses, a sort of allegory for the Irish Civil War), it speaks to the real complexity of how men deal—or fail to deal—with emotions, relationships, and conflicts they don’t fully grasp.
Bill Nighy (Living)
It’s never too late to become a virtuous man. That’s the central theme of Living, an update of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 Japanese film Ikiru, this time set in 1950s London. Veteran actor Bill Nighy delivers a stunning, subtle performance as Mr. Williams, a career bureaucrat in London’s public works department. Melancholy and crotchety, the aging man trudges through life like a zombie, emotionally aloof and dead-eyed. That is, until he receives a terminal cancer diagnosis. Facing death, Mr. Williams desires to start living before it’s too late. After initially pursuing paths of self-serving pleasure, he comes to realize the most fulfilling life is the selfless one. True living is serving others—striving after things beyond your own pleasure. It’s beautiful to watch how this shift transforms Mr. Williams and those around him. We’re watching a once-floundering man morph into a gentleman, whose dignity comes in dignifying others and whose stature grows as he spends his life on others rather than wasting it on himself.
Best Actress
The five actresses in this category excelled in performances that depicted flawed women facing a variety of struggles and burdens borne distinctly by women.
Cate Blanchett (Tár)
A sympathetic reading of Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is that she’s a woman achieving greatness in a male-dominated space, trying to be excellent on par with the very great conductors, without drawing attention to the incidental fact of her gender. Yet in downplaying her female identity—erasing it, even—Tár loses herself. She dresses and acts like men, dominates weaker women sexually, even calls herself the “father” of her daughter. Ironically, Lydia Tár is the sort of person who would argue for a gender-neutral Oscars. Still, as much as she downplays her biological sex, it clearly matters greatly to her, primarily as a foil—the ever-present quality she must shed and sublimate to achieve the success she wants. It’s tragic to watch the attempted erasure of one’s gender, and yet it speaks to a larger unhealthy dynamic in our androgynous age. Increasingly, our biological sex is viewed not as a gift to receive but as an obstacle to overcome and manipulate to our liking.
Ana de Armas (Blonde)
Andrew Dominik’s polarizing, NC-17-rated film about Marilyn Monroe (which I haven’t seen and do not recommend you watch) is purportedly less a factual biopic about the platinum icon than a commentary on the sexual objectification of women in pop culture. Dominik apparently wants to highlight the cruel gender politics that dehumanize women like Norma Jeane Baker, whose “Marilyn Monroe” pinup persona came to epitomize fantasy fodder for the male gaze. But how can a sexually explicit film like this decry the misogynistic sexual exploitation of women while engaging in the very practice it claims to critique? This sort of moral inconsistency is par for the course in Hollywood, where subjecting actors to humiliating nudity and depictions of sex has only increased in the wake of #MeToo. In any case, Ana de Armas’s performance as Monroe (which includes scenes of abortion and miscarriage) is obviously one where her female gender matters greatly. Monroe’s personhood as a woman is not incidental to her story; it’s fundamental.
Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie)
In the little-seen To Leslie, British actress Andrea Riseborough plays the titular character—a homeless alcoholic and single mother in Texas who once won the lottery but squandered it all on alcohol. Of all the sadnesses of her riches-to-rags story, the greatest is Leslie’s abandonment of her son, James, when he was just a boy. As burdened as she is by addiction and regret, Leslie truly wants to be better. “I wanna be a good momma again,” she says early in the film, and the rest of To Leslie plays out that hope. Similar to Bill Nighy’s performance in Living, the arc of Riseborough’s Leslie shows the beauty of someone taking responsibility for others and living in self-giving ways—perhaps for the first time in her life. In the film’s final scene, we catch only a glimmer of Leslie’s “good momma again” aspirations being realized—but it’s enough to encourage anyone who’s ever felt like a failed father or mother.
Michelle Williams (The Fabelmans)
Steven Spielberg tells his own origin story in The Fabelmans, and it centers on the complexities of his family, especially his parents. Michelle Williams steals the show as Mitzi, the artsy, free-spirited mother who encourages the young filmmaker’s artistic development. Central to the character is the notion of motherhood—with its attendant commitments and tensions—and how mothers are seen by their children. Through the lens of Spielberg, Williams’s Mitzi is a complicated mom. She’s spontaneous, fun, emotionally vibrant—never subdued in her expressions of love. But she’s also torn between her own pursuit of pleasure and the necessary self-denial required in motherhood and marriage. At one point, she tells her son, “You do what your heart says you have to, so you don’t owe anyone your life.” This is bad motherly advice. Good mothers don’t blanket endorse the iffy directives of their children’s hearts. They steward and shape those hearts with guardrails and the kindness of “no.”
Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
Perhaps the most virtuous of the female characters on this list (though not without her faults), Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn is the mother-warrior heart of a bonkers film that often feels more showy and superficial than it does thoughtful. Still, Evelyn is a commendable character who fights for her family, striving to reconcile with her husband Waymond and daughter Joy. What drives Evelyn is a fierce maternal instinct to protect her family from the forces of inertia that pull it apart. It’s lovely to watch her and Waymond work together to fight (sometimes with kung-fu moves) for their family, even if the film’s overarching ethics are somewhat contradictory (“nothing matters” but “please be kind”). As Taylor W. Cyr and Sarah Chew observed in their review for The Gospel Coalition, Evelyn’s concept of kindness—giving people what they perceive they need—isn’t always loving. Still, Evelyn is commendable in her willingness to sacrifice much in pursuit of her daughter.
Drama of Contrast
As we can see in this cursory look at the best actor and actress nominees, it’s absurd to downplay the importance of gender in something like acting. None of the above performances could have worked had it been written for, or acted by, the opposite gender. So much of the richness and texture of these performances comes precisely from the fact that each of us inhabits a gendered body—male or female biology—that presents us with some experiences of the world that cannot be experienced in the same way by the opposite sex.
So much of the richness and texture of these performances comes precisely from the fact that each of us inhabits a gendered body.
A gender-neutral society—in which everything from sports competitions to marriage arrangements to performing arts awards erases the reality of biological sex—is a worse society for many reasons. One reason is it’s simply less interesting and less beautiful. It’s taking the aesthetically pleasing contrast God gave us and replacing it with a monochromatic blandness. Gender neutrality may win “inclusion” points for including those claiming nonbinary identities, but it loses much more.
At the end of the day, our biological sex is a given thing—given in the sense that we can’t change it, and given in the sense of a gracious gift from God. How we steward this gift can be either ugly or beautiful, but as the acting performances above attest, it’s never boring.
The Gospel Coalition