When the Golden Globe nominations were announced last week, there was one glaring omission from the Best Supporting Actor category: a nod for Milk. Actually, there were four glaring omissions, because Milk still does not have a definite forerunner among its quartet of campaigned-for supporting actors, which includes Josh Brolin, James Franco, Emile Hirsch and Diego Luna. Did the Hollywood Foreign Press Association truly snub the film, as has been suggested, or could the organization simply not decide which actor to nominate? Perhaps the two favorites, Brolin and Franco, cancelled each other out. If so, the Academy needs to ensure that such a thing doesn’t happen with its Oscar nominations. And the best way to do this is to get behind Diego Luna for Best Supporting Actor.
This will no doubt seem like a ridiculous suggestion this late in the game, particularly to the critics who fail to appreciate Luna’s performance. His character, Jack Lira, has been labeled underwritten and unnecessary –– neither of which is true –– and “annoying,” which is precisely how the real Lira was thought of anyway. Kirk Honeycutt at The Hollywood Reporter called Luna’s performance “looped,” Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe joked that the actor “appears to have wandered over from some drunken college production of Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education,” and A.O. Scott at The New York Times wrote that Lira is played “with an operatic verve that stops just short of camp,” which is a little more polite than the multiple reviews that actually straight-up call it camp. Then, there’s Slant critic Ed Gonzalez, who does the most damage, claiming the performance is “embarrassing, miscalculated.”
The easiest way to lash back at these criticisms is to accuse most reviewers as being biased against flamboyancy. Sure, Luna’s portrayal of Lira can be viewed as over the top, but that’s not the fault of the actor. And to otherwise negatively respond to the character as “camp” is to display an issue with such insecure personalities as Lira, who projects a boisterous over-identification with the flamboyancy of homosexuality as a sort of masochistic masquerade. The character of Lira is not so much underwritten as unknown and unwelcome, which was basically the reality of his context within Harvey Milk’s campaign. But then to consider the accuracy of Lira’s character and of Luna’s portrayal is to wrongly think that Milk is concrete in capturing the true story. Rather, Milk is more the familiar tale of any martyr who sacrifices his own happiness for the happiness of the masses, who damages his own relationships in order to make possible others’ relationships. For this, Lira is a necessary narrative device, both in terms of contrasting with Franco’s more reserved love-interest character and in terms of contrasting, as the single-save, with the larger civil rights goal at hand. In this role, Luna certainly goes above and beyond the call for serviceability in his portrait of jealous desperation and the politically dismissed individual.
Highlighting the critics’ praises for Luna would unfortunately amount to quoting mostly also-ran notices in which he’s included, by name or not, within celebrations of the whole supporting ensemble (including the one supporting actress contender, Alison Pill). Indeed, it is this recognition of the film’s ensemble that has probably allowed for so much of a split among the film’s kudos, and yet it’s one of Milk’s greater assets that there is such equality and consistency with regards to the characters and the acting. Sean Penn may be the obvious lead, and his performance may be spotlighted above the others as a result, but in group scenes Gus Van Sant places the titular character in a fairly even playing field with the rest, enough that Focus Features may just as well have included Joseph Cross, Victor Garber and other unrecognized cast members on its For Your Consideration posters for Milk.
In a perfect world they all could be nominated, and honored, as they will be when the film most assuredly wins the Outstanding Performance by a Cast award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. But the closest thing for the Academy to do in this fashion would be to name all four campaigned-for supporting actors from Milk. Considering a lack of sure things in the category other than Heath Ledger, who is certain to win the award posthumously, there would be little harm in having the other slots filled by Brolin, Franco, Hirsch and Luna. Plus, it would make Oscar history, as it would be the first time the Academy nominated four actors in this category (three films have had three actors nominated: On the Waterfront; The Godfather and The Godfather Part II). Another idea is to simply shrug away the three most celebrated contenders (Brolin, Franco and Hirsch, respectively #2, #6 and #10 on The Envelope’s Supporting Actor Buzzmeter) and pull out the underdog, the non-registering yet still deserving Luna.
The other alternative is to continue the divide, which will lead to a category as follows: Ledger (The Dark Knight); Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road); Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt); Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder); Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire). With no love for either Franco, who has been chosen by the Independent Spirit Awards and the Golden Satellite Awards, or Brolin, who has been picked by the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics. Both actors were actually jointly selected as nominees for the Broadcast Film Critics Association’s awards, but it’s difficult to imagine this compromise happening with the Academy’s voters, who may have a one-or-the-other attitude when considering whose year, Brolin’s or Franco’s, it really was. Both actors equally deserve the recognition for their collective 2008 performances, though that shouldn’t necessarily count towards a nomination for a single role, and both are sure to be cast in more Oscar-worthy parts in the future. Hirsch, likewise, is due for the honor after being ignored last year and will similarly continue to acquire juicy roles in the future. Luna, on the other hand, is less likely to get the kinds of roles that attract Oscar recognition, especially if his negative reviews from Milk follow him in his career. So, in a way, he’s the more deserving supporting actor in the bunch. Not only did he give as remarkable a performance as his fellow cast members, but also he’s probably the one who’ll most benefit from the honor. And the Oscars needn’t be so much a competition and marking of who is best; it ought to be a general celebration of great talent and also a push for further excellence from such talent.
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