Best Performances of 2024 (So Far)
Who has the best performance of 2024, so far?
Upon becoming an adult and forming my own opinions, methods of processing art, and overall taste, I have begun to realize that the Academy Awards does not adequately represent my view of acting. It is a show that values acting that can sometimes be coldly detached, sometimes bogus in its clip-ready promotion. They’ve given out awards for racist characters with a stale coldness to them; they’ve given out awards for white savior characters who still exist to affirm the white power structure; biopics are also popular, despite the caricatural acting and prosthetics that tend to cloud those roles on many occasions. How can you tell what performances move you emotionally, or create a sort of new method of communication and worrisome swagger, if you’re constantly platforming roles that are synonymous with weight loss, biographical history, or accents? Acting is a limitless tangle of bodily contact, a certain way someone enters a frame, or a slight change to mood — either from whimsy or a sensitive issue that has upsettingly re-entered someone’s mindframe. Acting is line readings, the specific vocal tone Denzel speaks with when he is whispering something in a criminal’s ear in Man on Fire; acting is Meg Ryan showing a chauvinistic male friend how well she can fake an orgasm; acting is Leonardo DiCaprio’s hypermasculine speeches in The Wolf of Wall Street, when he moves like Dick Van Dyke and talks like Dave Portnoy in the same breath.
That said, acting, particularly acting in feature films, has never been more crucial as it is now, as Hollywood is unfortunately flirting with Artificial Intelligence. It is far too significant to be overlooked. With every year a superhero movie comes out and dominates the theater box office, it tinges me, if only because authentic art is something that ought to be protected, with stories that can highlight the corruption, the joy, the mania, and narcissism of American life. Art is information on what it’s like to be living at a point in time — whether in success or failure — and what it’s like to suffer in fear and poverty.
This year, we have had performances that are startling in its intensity; we’ve had a few that have ushered in a masculinity So, what are the best performances of 2024, a year where acting has newcomers, teenagers, established stars, television stars that are transcending towards the bigger screen?