Why Does "Most" Acting Win All The Awards?

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]How much can we learn about a character just by watching them listen to music?

[00:00:03]Early on in the secret agent, there's a scene where Armando, played by Wagner Mora, does just that after settling into a new apartment. At this stage in the film, we don't know much about who this guy is or his backstory. So, we're looking for anything that might give us a clue. Let's look at what Mora gives us through this performance in this moment.

[00:00:22]Right after he sits down, it's like you can see a thought wash over him. We don't know what this is, but it obviously absorbs him. The way he seems to zone out and disappear from the room as if he's not even listening to the music makes me think he's remembering something. Whatever he's reflecting on, there's a weight to it that reveals some kind of sadness. Then, for a moment, just when the emotion seems like it might break through, it's as if he tries to push it away and pull himself out of the reflection, but he can't. Or maybe something else crosses his mind and he's lost again.

[00:00:56]Then this other thing appears. A flicker of happiness found in the midst of the heaviness. Finally mixed with the happiness, it looks like he's blinking away tears before he pulls himself together and breaks from this reflection. We won't learn the details of his backstory until much later. But this early piece of performance communicates the complicated weight of what this character is carrying, and more than that gives us a moment to connect the actual emotion of this character's story. What's particularly striking to me about this piece of performance is the conflict and nuance that is present. It's not a huge feat for an actor to sit by themselves and conjure an emotion, but to do so in a way that tells a larger story about what the character is going through besides just they're sad requires an actor that is particularly tapped into the emotional landscape of the character and the story. And who knows how to find a way within themselves to authentically express that? Even more impressively, who knows how to do that with such a level of restraint?

[00:01:59]If you look at the acting Oscar winners from this past year, you might notice a pattern.

[00:02:06]Shawn Penn's Lock Jaw is one of the most Looney Tunes performances I've seen in recent film. And I don't mean that as an insult. It's genuinely impressive to see someone craft such a cartoonish character with just the human body.

[00:02:17]Lockjaw is like the physical embodiment of pure seething rage, ready to burst at the seams at any moment. But it would be hard to say that this character is subtle.

[00:02:31]Then you have Jesse Buckley and Hamnet who is fully tapped into guttural emotion. It's a totally uninhibited performance that shamelessly embraces human emotion at its dramatic extremes.

[00:02:44]So, I had to walk all the way across town to get here.

[00:02:48]>> And of course, Amy Madigan in Weapons was almost unrecognizable, transforming herself into something both clownlike and garishly sinister.

[00:02:57]>> Who made the complaint?

[00:02:58]>> Perfectly walking the tight rope between goofy absurdity and something genuinely terrifying. And finally, you have Michael B. Jordan bringing emotional depth and nuance to not one but two characters in the same film. I liked all of these performances. I respect the craft involved in these roles. Have been fans of these actors work for years and don't think any of them are undeserving of the recognition they received. But it's often said that the Oscars tend to award most acting over best acting. And it's very hard not to see this year's winners as an affirmation of that bias.

[00:03:32]But I often find subtle layered performances just as compelling and sometimes more affecting than the big swings, transformations, or bold displays of emotion. For example, while Shaun Penn's Lock Jaw was entertainingly cartoonish and fresh, why do we judge it as necessarily more deserving of an award than Benio Del Toro's stoic and firm yet still warm sensei?

[00:03:55]>> Don't go dark on me, Bob. Doesn't it take just as much acting chops to craft this character who simultaneously makes sense within the absurdity of the Thomas Pinchin inflected world of one battle after another, yet who still feels like a livedin, fully realized human with a life and history that exists outside the film? Or how do we judge the quality of those two performances against the subtle intensity that Regina Hall brings to her performance in the film with very little screen time?

[00:04:25]>> Baby, don't be scared. For me personally, this scene was one of the most emotionally gripping in the film.

[00:04:31]>> Green Acres, Beverly Hill Bullies, and Hudville Junction.

[00:04:35]>> Hall's character shows up out of the blue to rescue Chase Infinity's character, who she hasn't met before.

[00:04:40]And it's a more complicated acting task than it might seem at face value. In one short exchange, they need to establish a sense of trust and do so in a way that makes it feel actually believable that this teenager would run away with this strange adult she's never met. And both actors meet the challenge more than adequately. The sense of urgency, trustworthiness, and warmth that Hall is able to express mostly with her voice in this scene more than sells it.

[00:05:03]>> I am here to help, but we have to leave here right away.

[00:05:07]Look, I knew your mom and your dad.

[00:05:11]>> And Infinity, whose acting in her first major role, matches her with very little dialogue. I found the scene to be moving both times I watched the film. And my impression of Hall's performance in this scene was so strong that when I was reflecting on it to make this video, I could have sworn we got a close look at her face in this scene, but we never do, which is all the more impressive.

[00:05:33]>> Her work throughout the film is a masterclass in packing a punch with very little time on screen. But I do get why the bigger, showier performances tend to get more nominations and win more awards. In an environment where all of us, Academy voters included, are overwhelmed with media that's competing for our attention. It's often the bigger, bolder performances that tend to catch our attention and stick in our minds. On top of that, it's not as if an Oscar win is determined by some objective standard of quality, something that's not even really possible with art. Instead, it has as much to do with crafting a marketing campaign that tells a story about why this person deserves a win at this moment. And the performances where the work the actor put in is more apparently obvious tend to feed those narratives. At the end of the day, I'm not upset at the big showy performances.

[00:06:19]I just love subtle performance. And since I've talked about this before, I know a lot of you do as well. So, I want to continue taking an opportunity to do what the Oscars don't and highlight some of the work that's a little more understated and less showy, but which in my opinion is just as deserving of recognition. I've already talked about what Wagner does in this scene from The Secret Agent, but there's another moment a little later that is maybe one of my favorite bits of performance from all of 2025. It plays best within the context of the film, but it's another incredible example of a moment that without doing much suggests a very rich, layered, and complicated emotional past for these characters.

[00:07:09]The quality of Mora's performance in The Secret Agent is in good company. The movie as a whole is a masterclass in great subtle performances. Luciano Sheroli as Henrik Gerate, who's sort of the arch villain of the film, feels every bit as menacing to me as any other villain we saw last year. Subtler villain can be difficult, but Sharoli pulls off the kind of blatant contempt and hostility that's lightly shrouded within corporate austerity and professionalism that really helps you understand the righteous anger that drives Armando into the situation that kicks off the film. Most of the hype surrounding performance in centers ended up on Michael B. Jordan, who's incredibly talented and deserves recognition. But the performances in the film that I found most magnetic were the supporting roles from WMI Musaku and Delroy Lindo. Both of these actors do something with these roles that I've always found a little magical. They just seem to show up on the screen as the character, feeling like the character's always been a part of this world. And I'm not sure exactly how actors pull this off. I think it's often a combination of great casting and a bunch of small, almost imperceptible choices that end up giving the character a very livedin feel. Lindo especially feels like he just is this guy.

[00:08:23]>> You ain't paying no $20 a night.

[00:08:26]You paying $20 maybe tonight, >> which is an incredible testament to his ability. But I think the seeming effortlessness with which he accomplishes this performance undersells the talent on display here. I'm sure people are sick of me talking about sentimental value at this point, but I can't talk about subtle performance without mentioning the performances from Renate Rinsa and Stellan Scarsgard. Both these actors face a particular challenge with these characters in that much of what is creating the tension and conflict in the film is their shared inability to really open up and express how they feel. You might think that playing a character that's less emotionally expressive might be an easier task, but you don't want the audience to think or feel that the characters aren't actually feeling emotion. You still need to show the audience the layers of emotion that are alive within this character, all while showing the audience that they're trying to repress and hide these emotions beneath the surface. There are bigger, more dramatic moments that I could point to in this film as examples of what makes these performances great. But instead, I want to highlight a few of the very tiny moments we see throughout the film. Like with Mora's performance in The Secret Agent, we often get a sense of the conflict that these characters are experiencing internally.

[00:09:50]>> In moments like this, it's as if we literally see Nora wanting to say more, but holding back as these momentary flickers of emotion happen on her face.

[00:10:04]When Borg looks at a room, we can feel the weighty significance of that room even before we know anything about it.

[00:10:10]And when he turns and catches sight of Nora across the house, the briefest smile tries to peek through the sadness weighing him down. Later, he asks if she's okay.

[00:10:24]And we can see suddenly she's posturing in an almost unnoticeable but kind of stiff way that seems to indicate a defensive shield the character is putting up. And in this scene, which happens not long after she's stormed out of a meeting with her father, >> the way she adjusts and slightly stiffens her posture when her father enters gives away her concern about how seeing him is going to go. In the brief exchange that follows, we can see both of them check in with each other as if to say, "Are we good?" Well, they refuse to acknowledge the situation whatsoever explicitly in the dialogue.

[00:11:01]>> "Hi, Papa.

[00:11:05]>> Hi."

[00:11:09]>> Something, their relationship, their baggage, their trauma, whatever it is, prevents them from being able to just talk openly and outright about these things. So most of their emotional relationship in this film and the dramatic conflict between them is communicated through these small pieces of subtext in their reactions, postures, a look or how they say a line.

[00:11:34]Whether it's the smallest flicker in an eye or the gentle heave of a sigh, this type of performance has always held a special place for me in cinema because it's something the medium can do that not many others can. When you can make a character larger than life on the screen, when you can turn their face into an entire landscape and slow the story down long enough for the audience to really be able to examine that landscape, true subtlety and performance can become large enough for us to read in a way that isn't present in many other forms and often, if we're being honest, isn't even present in our own lives. It's rare we get such a close, intimate, unflinching look at people's emotional landscapes and reactions.

[00:12:23]And that's something cinema has a unique opportunity to provide. It doesn't mean it's the best type of performance, but it means it's one I value highly. I think the bigger, more showy performances are great and entertaining, but there's something special about the subtle performances for me, and I hope filmmakers and actors continue to do the work of providing them, even if they're not as likely to win awards.

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