Welcome to the 2023 SiftPop.com Sifties!
This year, the SiftPop writers came together to nominate five performances for Best Performance. Unlike the Oscars and other major awards shows, we didn’t differentiate between lead and supporting performances or between actors and actresses. This is simply a countdown of the five best performances that we collectively saw!
For someone who has had a number of iconic performances, Robert Downey Jr. gives one for the ages as Lewis Strauss. He exhibits a masterclass blend of ambition, jealousy, and ruthlessness as the man who derailed J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Oppenheimer feels like a sort of debut for Strauss as a figure in history, as he is lost in the shuffle for his role in expanding atomic weapons post-World War II. Downey Jr. does an outstanding job, playing off Cillian Murphy’s performance as Oppenheimer to perfection. The downfall and subsequent fallout of their relationship helps provide narrative structure to a movie that otherwise would have been a generic biopic. Instead, Strauss anchors a B plot, and Downey Jr. gets to exhibit the acting chops that defined his career before he joined the MCU. As the frontrunner in a stacked Best Supporting Actor category, Downey Jr. is a strong foil to Murphy, while also telling a part of history that isn’t as well-known, but still exhibits similar unintended consequences to Oppenheimer regarding the dawn of the nuclear age.
Reuniting with director Alexander Payne for the first time in nearly 20 years, Paul Giamatti has perhaps never been better than in The Holdovers — a role Payne tailored toward the actor, and it shows. Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a jaded, hated, and perpetually agitated curmudgeon of an instructor at a boarding school, who is forced to chaperone the students with no place to go over the holiday break. On the surface, the role of the old-school teacher shaking his fist and his head at the students he doesn’t understand is one that’s been done repeatedly. However, there’s more to Hunham than that. Giamatti sells the complexity as his hard exterior softens over the course of the film. Whether acting alongside Dominic Sessa (making his screen debut) as one of his students, Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s head cook, or just using his facial expressions to sell a moment, Giamatti always knows what’s required in a given moment and how to rise to the occasion.
When faced with a year like 2023, with the amount of memorable performances in high quality films, how could one pick a best performer? What performance characteristics could possibly impact someone enough to sway them one direction over a dozen other equally talented people? For Lily Gladstone, it was operating as the emotional center in Martin Scorsese’s most recent film foray, Killers of the Flower Moon. As Mollie Burkhart, Gladstone is tasked with carrying not only the weight of the movie on her shoulders, but the weight of the entire Osage Nation as they have their story told on the big screen. This is no easy task, and yet, with the poise and talent of an actress far beyond her years, Gladstone crushes it. A Scorsese movie will always be a Scorsese movie at a certain point — there is an understood baseline quality we generally know will exist, regardless if the film ultimately resonates with us — but it is in details like Gladstone’s performance that the material is elevated to a higher status. Mollie Burkhart might simply end up being one of the most memorable characters from a Scorsese movie, and to even be considered in that conversation must earn her consideration for one of the year’s best performances.
Poor Things lets Emma Stone showcase her entire range in one performance as Bella Baxter, leaving a lasting impression. She starts off getting to play with a childlike wonder in the world that is charming and captivating, which creates an odd sense of nostalgia for the viewer. Stone’s performance makes us wish we could live as joyfully and free as she does, but we also get to see a full life cycle’s worth of maturation over the nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Bella keeps her free spirit intact, but becomes more sophisticated, resulting in one of the most intriguing and unique characters in recent memories. Poor Things is a visual treat with great themes, but ultimately is as only as good as the performances of the leads. And luckily for us, Stone gives us not only one of the best performances of the year, but the best of her career so far.
Cillian Murphy has given many great and iconic performances in the past, including in a few other Christopher Nolan. He anchored a six-season show in the popular and acclaimed Peaky Blinders, but he’d never been the lead of a movie with the aspirations that Oppenheimer has. And he was up to the task, fully transforming and embodying the role of the real-life figure. Plus, the transformation is different than someone like Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, as Oppenheimer didn’t have a pervasive public persona. That just makes Murphy’s performance all the more impressive, as he’s completely different than he’s been in other films, and different from how he presents himself to the public. He brings the internal struggle of the character, while also displaying what could be described as his shallowness as a person. It’s a tall task to bring this all to life believably in the first place, but to do so while leading one of the biggest movies of the year, from perhaps the most popular singular filmmaker, is a whole other level.
Make sure to check out the previous 2023 Sifties winners, and don’t forget to check back tomorrow for the winner of Best Movie!
You can also listen to the SiftPop writers’ top five movies of the year on the SiftPop Writers’ Room Podcast!