Since I haven't seen Florence Foster Jenkins (oops, just didn't get round to it) and Elle (not out in the UK yet), I'll only be able to comment on three of the nominees.
Emma Stone seems to be favourite for the award, and although it's a bit contradictory, she probably wouldn't make my top 5 for the year, but I also would be fine with her winning, as it's a trickier performance to pitch right than it seems at first sight. She really carries the movie, her comic timing is as usual completely on point, but she also has just the right emotional depth and intensity for the film, never overwhelming the lighter tone of the film, but also finding some real emotional punches, particularly before and during her big audition scene.
Having said that, I feel like Ruth Negga and Natalie Portman give the better performances. I wasn't completely taken with Joel Edgerton in Loving but Ruth Negga completely made up for that. It's a mostly quiet and unshowy but still emotionally impassioned performance, sweet and sad and strong, often at the same time, always expressive but never over-the-top. She portrays a Mildred Loving who is both believably an ordinary (in the best sense of the word) person but who quite believably can do the extraordinary when she needs to, and what she has to go through is very extraordinary and terrifying. But you always believe that Mildred can do this, and take her family along with her. Quiet strength is not the easiest thing to get across on camera, but Ruth Negga nails this.
However, in the absence of Viola Davis from this category, I think Natalie Portman for Jackie would be my preferred winner. At first, I was pretty alienated by her performance. The recreation of a stilted TV tour of the White House that Jackie Kennedy had done felt like an awkward impression. Yet, as the film went on and on, I completely forgot I was watching a performance and became more and more wrapped up in Jackie's unravelling psyche and careful rebuilding. Somehow Natalie Portman managed to show every little barrier Jackie puts up, every facade she builds, every tiny bit of control she tries to exercise and yet at the same time shows every little innermost feeling that Jackie is suffering. It's really quite an incredible technical performance, but also a very moving one that never lets you forget the horror that she has just suffered and the historical, life-changing importance of any slight move that she makes. It's not something I think I've seen from Natalie Portman before, but I hope she gets tonnes of opportunities to do as complex and multi-layered characters in the future.
In the Best Actor category, there are surely only two contenders. Andrew Garfield was fine in the mostly terrible Hacksaw Ridge, managing to do a decent interchange between wide-eyed naivety and fervent determination. Viggo Mortensen was also fine from what I remember of Captain Fantastic and clearly had fun with a quirky, emotionally varied part, but it didn't really stick with me. Ryan Gosling is also fine in La La Land, though his comic timing didn't always land as well as it has in other films, and he was definitely outshone by Emma Stone.
So it comes down to Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington, and if you'd have told me that I would see a better performance than Casey Affleck's by a male actor this awards season, I would have been incredibly dubious. It's a performance that really deserves all the plaudits it has been getting. Lee Chandler, his character, is not someone who ever seemingly says what's he's feeling. But Casey Affleck manages to get it all across with great depth. Lee has been both imprisoned by grief but has also imprisoned himself through guilt and grief many times over. It's not something he can really let on but it is something he is doing to himself continuously. And somehow the performance gets this over in the most emotionally devastating way. The conversation with Michelle Williams towards the end of the film, and the way Casey Affleck conveys both Lee's heartbreak and his absolute refusal to let anyone feel for him, is astonishing and haunting.
But I think Denzel Washington may have managed to conjure something even better as Troy Maxson. To me, he does pretty much everything Casey Affleck does, in communicating the multitude of swirling feelings that Troy is frequently fighting against and trying to hide from everyone and yet also manages to also deftly switch to much bigger emotional outbursts without the quieter, subtler work being lost. In fact, it enhances the quieter work to an even greater degree. Perhaps this is the benefit of having previously played the character for weeks on stage - it is an absolute masterclass of a performance. Troy is very much a ticking timebomb, but not one that is just going to go off in one big explosion. Instead, he is one that has been compressed into being by his experiences and generations of racism that is fizzing away, sending off little splinters into everyone around him. Although like Casey Affleck he benefits from a tremendous script, what he does with the material is brilliant. You can see the way every little piece of his life has burrowed into him, the racism past and present, his horrific early life, his strong moral code and his inability to quite live by it, on Denzel Washington's face at all time. It never has one simple effect or response. He is flickering all the time between rage and bitter resentment, hope and despair, friendship and soul-destroying uncertainty, and about a million other emotions all playing across Troy's face. He's both a charismatic person to spend time with and a tragic and horrible figure that you can never make your mind up about because you can see all the hundreds of layers things that have affected him and made him who he was, which makes you want to empathise with him, but at the same time you sense he knows the destruction he is causing and that he both wants to continue causing this destruction and is slightly helpless in doing so. Given the source material, in any decent actor's hands, Troy would surely have been fascinating. In Denzel Washington's he is like nothing else I have ever seen on screen. I sincerely hope he wins a very well deserved Best Actor Oscar tonight.
I've not got time to go into the Supporting categories in any depth. There is not a single less-than-excellent performance among them, though I'd argue that Dev Patel and Octavia Spencer should perhaps be in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories (though that would maybe be harsh on Octavia Spencer-s co-lead Taraji P Henson).
But a quick word for the two rightful favourites. Mahershala Ali has only a little screen time in an incredibly strong ensemble cast and no emotional outburst but does so much with Juan. The film is always honest with exactly who Juan is, yet Mahershala Ali makes him the exactly right amount of sympathetic without letting him off the hook for the lives he is helping ruin. He radiates both warmth and control and is also incredibly important in helping us understand the near silent young Chiron and understand why Chiron develops as the person he does. And all in a few scenes.
As for Viola Davis, her performance is utterly sensational, and possibly the best of all of those nominated this year. Even with a performance as good as Denzel Washington's, we would not be able to feel any empathy for Troy if Viola Davis did not show us the ways. Troy dominates every part of her life and yet she builds this incredibly beautiful and multi-dimensional character who is both utterly entwined with Troy and also massively complex as a separate person. When the bomb under their marriage detonates, the devastating emotional power that Viola Davis finds is heartbreaking and captivating and just digs right into your heart and refuses to leave. She is the most overwhelming favourite in all the categories and deservedly so.
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