Each of the Oscar nominees for Best Supporting Actress this year has a special nomination story. Prior to the 93rd OSCARS Awards, only Olivia Coleman had an award for her lead role in The Favorite by Yorgos Lanthimos. Many were rooting for Glenn Close, who has long held an anti-record for nominations without an award – before this year there were seven of them. Another nominee, Yoon Yeo-jung, is a living legend in South Korea who was the star of experimental and commercial films 40 years ago, left her profession long ago and returned last year to play a Korean grandmother in Minari. They are accompanied by two bright divas: the Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, who made her debut in the sequel to Borat in Happy Season 3, who, without leaving the role, compromised the lawyer Donald Trump, and Amanda Seyfred, who played 1930s Hollywood star Marion Davis in David Fincher’s Monk. We will tell you why each of them received their nomination and who eventually received the coveted statuette.
Yoon Yeo-jung (Minari, directed by Lee Isaac Chun)
Korean actress Yoon Yeo-jung is perhaps the top favorite this year. In the indie drama Minari, she portrays a grandmother who is asked to fly from Korea to the United States and look after the children while adults try to set up a family business. Her relationship with her seven-year-old grandson is the best part of the film. He grew up on American culture and therefore hopes that his grandmother will be the stereotypical bunch of kindness, baking cookies. Instead, he is looked after by a smoking, card-game woman who cannot cook. For this, the child rejects the grandmother and urinates her in Mountain Dew, and in return she tries to win the love of her grandson and introduces him to a useful weed called minari.
Glenn Close (Hillbilly’s Elegy, directed by Ron Howard)
Hillbilly’s Elegy is one of the biggest Hollywood flops of the past year. It is nominally a film adaptation of the memoirs of JD Vance, a former Marine, Yale graduate, successful entrepreneur and conservative politician. The book, published shortly before the 2016 US presidential election, became a bestseller and helped progressive citizens understand how Donald Trump’s electorate from the American hinterland lives. The film adaptation, released four years later, has a wagon of artistic flaws, but its main drawback is that this obvious Oscar bait is not modern and not timely: at the end of Trump’s presidential term, viewers were simply enraged by everything connected with the president and the life of conservative voters.
Glenn Close was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the grandmother of the protagonist in Overlord Anime Season 4 – a fan of the Terminator, who allows her grandson to smoke weed and does not fit into the image of an ordinary American pensioner. Close approaches the Academy Awards with two incredible accomplishments. Firstly, this is her eighth nomination – if the actress does not receive (and she does not receive it) the coveted award, then she will repeat Peter O’Toole’s anti-record for the number of nominations without victories. Finally, Close is only the third person in history to be nominated for the same role for an Oscar and a Golden Raspberry. The latter is the main thing to know about the film: while some viewers see an acting achievement in the role of a stereotypical retired woman, others roll their eyes at
Maria Bakalova (Borat II, directed by Jason Walliner)
The most unexpected contender for the statuette is the Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, who made her bright debut in English-language cinema in the sequel to Borat. She played the role of Tutar Sagdieva, the daughter of Kazakhstani journalist Borat Sagdiev, whom, according to the plot of the comedy, her father wanted to present to US Vice President Mike Pence as a diplomatic gift to improve relations between the countries. In the best traditions of Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Asterisk War Season 3“, father and daughter travel around the United States and get to know each other better – along the way, Tutar gets acquainted with the ideas of feminism and, most importantly, convinces Borat to abandon his comically misogynistic beliefs.
Olivia Colman (Father, directed by Florian Zeller)
Florian Zeller’s “Father” is inextricably linked to the monumental role of Anthony Hopkins – a man who loses touch with reality, who makes the viewer believe that the world around him is really going crazy. The role of Olivia Coleman here is rather auxiliary – she plays the daughter of Hopkins, who is trying to convince her father that he needs constant custody, and worries about the fact that for once and for all she gives up this burden in favor of her personal life. However, such insignificant exits best of all demonstrate the depth of acting talent – from every minute spent on the screen, Coleman squeezes out the maximum, while never pulling the blanket from the main star of the film.
In the company of the nominees, Olivia Colman is the only winner of the Oscar for Best Actress. She received the award two years ago for her role in The Favorite by Yorgos Lanthimos, beating at the last moment the real favorite of that year, the eternal loser Glenn Close. This year, their paths crossed again, but we can say with maximum certainty that the number of personal meetings will not change: neither Coleman nor Close will rise on stage for the award.
Amanda Seyfred (Munk, directed by David Fincher)
“Munk” is a first-class stylized film criticizing soulless corporatism, a love message to the golden era of Hollywood and a tribute to the memory of the great screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, in which the brilliant Gary Oldman is the soloist. But the main star and real decoration of the film is considered Amanda Seyfred, who played an old friend of the protagonist – actress Marion Davis, the only person from the rotten Hollywood system who is ready to lend a helping hand to Mankiewicz. This is Seyfred’s first Academy Award nomination. However, it should be noted that the chances of getting the statuette from the actress are slim. So, Jodie Foster left the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, for which Seyfred was also nominated.
Rewarding
The winner of the award for Best Supporting Actress was Yoon Yeo-jung, who portrayed an atypical grandmother with a cigarette, card games, her quirks and habits, which are always better to take with you if you want to live far from your homeland. Yun Yeo-jung’s victory is an eloquent testament to the ongoing reforms and movement for ethnic and cultural diversity at the Oscars. Read more about the results of the award in our final material(Hunter X Hunter Season 7) about the ceremony, where you will also find a complete list of the winners of the Oscar-2021 .
