Woman of the Year: Julianne Moore

There's a poisonous narrative snaking its way through the awards conversation this year: it's a weak year for actresses.  Always, there are plenty of great roles for men, and the Best Actor race is crowded.  But always, the same cannot be said for the Best Actress race.  Or so the story goes, year after year.  It's never true.  What is true is that Hollywood tends to gravitate towards stories of capital-G, capital-M Great Men, and our best actresses are often relegated to being the lowercase-a, lowercase-g, lowercase-w also-great women who stand behind their Great Men.  But that's only a slice of the film world.  A big, hulking, ubiquitous slice, but a slice nonetheless.

There are lots of great actresses doing lots of great work within the studio system, in foreign films, in indie fare, at festivals.  There are women blazing trails and railing against the typical roles that the fat cats of film want to squeeze them into, where they can be easily managed, understood, and admired.  There are women who give performances that no man could ever hope to give (just as the opposite is true), tapping into what makes them great, unique, feminine, masculine, whatever the role may call for.

What frustrates me about the idea that it's a weak year for a particular Oscar category (not that the Oscars actually matter, but they do, to a point) is that it takes away from the eventual nominees, and the eventual winner.  "Yeah, she won, but it was a weak year."  Bullshit.  This year, one of our best actresses is likely to "finally" win her Oscar, and even if it's a "weak year" for Oscar-type roles, she will be ascending the stairs to that stage, and writing her name in the Book of Oscar History, in the midst of a year full of amazing performances by women of all ages, races, ethnicities, etc. etc.

There's a concept of being "overdue" for an Oscar.  When someone is talented enough in their given filmmaking field, the movie-loving masses (and maybe the Academy?) begin to think that that person is owed an Oscar.  Some of the best filmmakers to ever live are Oscar-less, such as Hitchcock and basically Kubrick, who only won a statue for special effects.  But the clamor is loud in our age of social media, and perhaps no person currently working in film is considered more overdue than Julianne Moore.  Thankfully, if this is the year she finally takes home her trophy, it won't be because she simply needs one or should have one, but because she earned it with an incredible turn.

Moore is one of the most consistent actresses working today.  It's stunning to see how her career has never floundered over the decades; she can stand toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep and Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett as one of the best actresses consistently doing the best work to be seen on the big screen.  As she gets older, she only gets better, and somehow more beautiful, inhabiting every role she does with grace, rage, and emotion.  She makes the most out of the smallest part, never afraid to take the backseat but usually managing to steal her scenes nonetheless.  Just think about her turns in A Single Man and The Kids Are All Right.  She is vivacious, unafraid to go to dark, ugly places, and always magnetic.  You can't take your eyes off of her, and though her look doesn't usually change much from role to role, she's one of those actresses who disappears into whatever part she's playing.  She's a chameleon who doesn't need heavy make-up or wacky costumes or wigs; her sheer talent is enough to transport us, the lucky viewers watching her.

With her trio of performances this year, Moore demonstrates that she isn't anywhere close to slowing down.  She's at the top of her game, which is mind-boggling, considering how amazing she's always been.  Perhaps the best place to start for this year is with her raw turn in Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg's bizarre Hollywood satire that finds Moore playing an aging actress going wild under the stress of trying to maintain a career at an advanced age.  It's a bold, hilarious, gutting turn, one that earned Moore the Best Actress prize at Cannes and netted her a Golden Globe nomination, and rightfully so.

There's so much anxiety about the dearth of good roles for women of a certain age, and it's explored with so much pain and insight in Maps to the Stars, all carried on Moore's shoulders.  While the film becomes a bit too insider to be insightful as a whole, Moore's scenes are scathingly on point.  Her character has to fight for every opportunity, even a mere conversation with a particular director.  Beauty fades, and in Hollywood, men become grizzled and handsome while women become saggy and ugly.  Women are replaceable.  There are always hotter, newer models who can pretend to do the same things their older, more experienced predecessors do.  Maps to the Stars ironically uses one of the best, still-working, "older" actresses to make this point, and that Moore starred in this film the same year as her other two roles makes for a wonderfully meta real-life narrative.

Because with Still Alice, Moore is given the opportunity to give one of the defining performances of her career, one that's likely to get an Oscar.  As Alice, a woman diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, Moore is absolutely devastating.  Alice is the kind of role that Moore's Maps character is so desperate to play, a meaty role that has garnered admiration, celebration, and awards attention.  To say that Moore has never been better than she is in Still Alice is a risky statement, so full of top-notch performances is her career, but it's possible.

As Alice's grasp on language slips, as her memories fade, so much of her crumbling character must be shown through facial expressions, posture, body language, and Moore communicates with all of these naturally, hauntingly.  Few films have had such an emotional impact on me.  There are certain scenes I try not to think about (such as Alice's speech at the conference) to avoid spontaneously bursting into tears.  Still Alice gives Moore a prime chance to overact, to exert herself, to demand and Oscar, but she doesn't.  She plays the part with subtlety and dignity, showing that less really can be more.

Her final role of the year, and the one that tends to get lost in the conversation, is her turn as President Coin in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I.  It's easily the least showy of her turns, but one that deserves praise nonetheless.  Going toe-to-toe with great actors of different generations, including already-Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence (who will hopefully enjoy as long a career as Moore has) and her former PTA-collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman, Moore shows that she is at home in any role, in any film, of any budget.  From barely-released Maps to the Stars to prestigious limited release Still Alice to the latest in a blockbuster franchise, Moore commits fully, and does inspired work.

Her Coin is cold and calculating, a master manipulator and perhaps the most powerful character in the film.  It's an appropriate fit for Moore, who has dabbled in genre fare before (I'm the rare champion of Blindness, which features one of her best turns): here's an actress who doesn't bow to the male-driven Hollywood, who still does terrific work and leads movies, co-starring in the best female-driven franchise in film history.

After such a year, it's easy to wonder what Moore could do next to top it.  She's at the top of the box office, an awards darling, a Cannes winner, and an Oscar front-runner.  But if time has told us anything, it's that Moore just keeps getting better, and will likely continue to do so.  She's a star whose performances demand to be seen, because when you're watching her, you know you're watching the best.  And that's why Moore, in a landslide, is Such Moving Pictures' 2014 Woman of the Year.