Kate Winslet’s performance as a concentration camp guard in The Reader has been the subject of much debate over the past week, though little of the discussion has actually concerned her craft. The argument lies in whether or not this specific performance should be considered for the lead or supporting actress category. Furthermore, if Winslet ends up in the latter, will it be due to “category fraud?” That is not a legal term and this is not a legal issue, but it is an important topic for this year’s Oscars. The significance of the matter likely extends even to Winslet’s ability to sleep at night, as she may fear the high possibility of her becoming “the biggest loser among actresses in the history of the Academy Awards.”
Category fraud may be defined as an attempt to deceive Academy voters into believing a lead performance is supporting, or vice versa. Examples of category fraud seen in Oscar’s past may include recent supporting nominations given to Ethan Hawke, Jennifer Connelly and Cate Blanchett (for Training Day, A Beautiful Mind and Notes on a Scandal, respectively). Guy Lodge at In Contention and Dave Karger at Entertainment Weekly have both brought up the accusation regarding The Reader, not only for Winslet’s part but also for the Weinstein Co.’s general campaign for the film, which is pushing for supporting nominations all around for Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes and Lena Olin.
The problem for Lodge and Karger’s complaint is that category fraud can’t be applied to the supporting categories, because despite the Academy’s irritating penchant for category-defining rules for eligibility in other areas, there is really no precise distinction made regarding the separation of lead and supporting categories. This probably goes back to the origins of the supporting awards, which began in the mid-30s seemingly to appease the demands of non-A-list actors. Since that time, the supporting honors have often been considered secondary (for their first seven years, their winners were given a plaque rather than a statue) and, due to the constant recognition of children, comedic actors and other potentially fleeting talents, this pair of categories is sometimes seen as a joke.
It’s hard to even imagine how exactly the Academy could define lead versus supporting, if it actually wanted to. Going by star status is difficult, of course, though marquee billing has occasionally been a factor when differentiating performances in an ensemble piece. It is this reasoning that has some people preferring Winslet’s Reader performance as lead, because she’s the film’s highest-billed name. And yet there have been certain times when a fifth-billed actor like Maximilian Schell can be nominated for and even win the lead award (for another Holocaust court drama, Judgment at Nuremberg). Another idea might be to focus on character status. The lead category should be reserved specifically for the main character or protagonist. In the event of an ensemble, though, there may be multiple protagonists. So, for instance, one of this year’s supporting actor hopefuls, Robert Downey Jr., would technically be better suited for lead contention (for Tropic Thunder). Also, there are cases where multiple actors portray the main character, such as in Shine, Iris and even The Reader.
The only way to fairly make a distinction, then, is with performance length. It’s hard to believe the Academy didn’t decide this thirty years ago, except that they didn’t appear to care enough about the supporting honors to make the effort of timing each performance in every film made. Even to do this solely for those films expected to be Oscar contenders is an extraneously tiresome effort. But it would indeed solve a major issue concerning the awards. As far as I can tell, there is nowhere to find a complete list of Oscar nominees’ performance lengths. Beatrice Straight is known for holding the record for shortest Oscar-winning performance at 5 minutes, 40 seconds, in Network, but she and other short-timers like Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love), Ruby Dee (American Gangster), Sylvia Miles (Midnight Cowboy) and Anthony Quinn (Lust for Life) were nominated in the supporting category. The more interesting questions are what supporting nominee gave the longest performance and what lead nominee gave the shortest. Anthony Hopkins is considered to have given the shortest Oscar-winning lead performance at about 16 minutes, in The Silence of the Lambs, and this fact goes to show that length isn’t a concern for Academy voters.
Regardless of its importance to the race, though, where does Winslet’s performance in The Reader fall in terms of length? Steven Zeitchik at the Risky Biz Blog claims she only appears in roughly 50% of the film, which might seem incorrect if you’ve seen the film, because the actress’ performance does dominate the picture, enough to appear as if it’s longer. And that could be a problem with voters who might come away from the film remembering Winslet’s role as bigger. Adding heat to the fire, the International Press Academy just nominated Winslet for a Satellite Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama for The Reader. While not a well-respected organization or award (as In Contention points out, the IPA has bizarrely nominated two obvious adapted works, Elegy and Benjamin Button, for Best Original Screenplay), this news could nevertheless prove problematic for the actress’ campaigns. If some Academy voters similarly think to put the actress in the lead category for The Reader while other voters conform to the studios’ wishes by picking her for lead actress for Revolutionary Road, the two performances could cancel each other out (Academy rules say that only one of her performances may receive a nomination in a single category).
So, now the only solution may be for the actress herself to make the rounds with her peers and convince them of either a single performance to nominate (Lodge thinks she has a better shot this way) or a distinction between her two Oscar-worthy roles. Because as Winslet admitted to Vanity Fair, “you bet your fucking ass” she wants that Oscar, and with the Academy not caring which way it goes, it’s up to her to make it happen.
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