Best Performances of 2020
“Nothing moves but the shifting tides of salt in your body. Your vision blears. You carry your weather with you, the big blue whale, a skeletal darkness. You come back with X-ray vision. Your eyes have become a hunger. You come home with your mutant gifts to a house of bone. Everything you see now, all of it: bone."
There are many components that go into making movies, but the defacto face of cinema has always been actors. Taking what’s on the page and performing at the behest of the director, actors serve as the conduits for with which a film’s message is channeled. Though they are given their material, no one should be so naive to think they don’t have an impact on how a film’s message is received. The source material can only go so far after all, and that’s why actors have the uniquely difficult task of breathing life into a character and performing in such a way that makes the audience receptive to the feelings of strangers.
This year saw no shortage of performances that do just that. While it’s difficult to string a unifying theme between actors and their performances in a single year, what remains consistent, year over year, is that we get to see life on the screen in ways that help us better understand ourselves and others. It’s one way we become sympathetic to the world around us, and it’s the actors we have to thank for it. From rising talents to career bests, these are our favorite performances of 2020.
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Honorable Mentions
Delroy Lindo (Da 5 Bloods), Mariana Di Girolamo (Ema), Eliza Scalen (Babyteeth), The Cast of Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets), Ia Sukhitashvili (Beginning).
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Riz Ahmed as Ruben
Sound of Metal
Since Nightcrawler in 2014, Riz Ahmed has been slowly creeping into the cinematic zeitgeist as one of the best slept-on actors in the business. His career has largely been defined by stand-out supporting roles, but with Sound of Metal he finally gets the leading role his career has been building up to. Ahmed plays Ruben, a drummer in a two person band who loses his most prized possession: his hearing. As he attends a rehabilitation program for the deaf, he runs the gauntlet trying to adjust to life without sound, but finds himself unfortunately falling back into the same destructive behaviors of his past.
Displays of vulnerability are standard affairs for dramatic roles, even common place for awards season, but Ahmed nimbly traverses personal tragedy with frustration, anger, and resolve that conjures a constant sympathy, each phase of emotion playing like an addict trying to reinstate the past rather than accept the present. If there were a dramatic role this year that earned its Oscar play, this would be it.
—Greg Arietta
Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies
Mank
Marion Davies is perhaps commonly known as the stand in for Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane, which, unfortunately, does her no favors in how we remember Davies as an individual. While Kane would like you to believe she was a prisoner of her own relationship with William Randolph Hearst — stuck in Hearst's castle doing puzzles, supported financially by his opulence, and paraded out to fan his ego — her depiction in David Fincher’s Mank by Amanda Seyfried is anything but tragic.
Seyfried channels Davies’ persona with an ineffable radiancy. A Brooklyn accent paired with a say anything attitude makes her stand out among the elites of Hollywood’s rich and famous — you can take the girl out of New York, but you can’t take the New York out of the girl, I suppose. She’s emotive, lively, and delineates heavily from her misfortunes in Kane, aligning closer to the person people knew her as rather than the one people saw symbolically on screen. Seyfried’s supporting role is one of the many stand out elements of Mank, but it might just be near the top.
—Greg Arietta
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review on the film here.
Jessie Buckley as Young Woman
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Spoilers Follow for I’m Thinking of Ending Things
In a film that’s hard to pin down completely, Jessie Buckley provides much needed roots in Charlie Kauffman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. She sways with the film as it changes, keeping a tether to a reality that always is on the verge of breaking apart. Is she the poetry-hating girlfriend of Jake (Jesse Plemmons)? Or a verse-reciting composite? No name for her character? Not a problem. Buckley’s role may be imaginary, but it is nonetheless compelling. Although a third act focus shifts us away from her, the film is a dense puzzle most enthralling when Buckley is at the helm. You miss the actor who runs the gamut from mimicking famous New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael to explaining the cringeworthy elements of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” In all, it was simply thrilling to watch.
—Kevin Conner
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review on the film here.
Jim Cummings as John Marshall
The Wolf of Snow Hollow
In addition to writing and directing, Jim Cumming’s lead performance is the backbone of The Wolf of Snow Hollow. John Marshall is another take on a character type previously explored by Cummings in Thunder Road; an officer of the law who cannot seem to maintain any kind of order, especially in regards to his own behavior. He is profoundly disturbed by the carnage left by the beast stalking his town, but is so consumed by relapsing alcoholism and fresh, unprocessed grief that he has little hope of conducting a proper investigation. Cummings flings himself into the role at full speed, with a manic energy impossible to look away from. He continues to flaunt his comedy chops as he takes the very real world pains his character faces and has the confidence to infuse them with outright slapstick. Often the butt of the joke, he is able to explore the monstrous nature of toxic masculinity and uncontrollable anger without justifying the character’s actions. John is both despicable and pathetically endearing, snapping at anyone in his path, while simultaneously desperately dependent on other to keep him afloat. It’s as electrifying as Thunder Road, and perhaps even more fun to watch. Cummings’ broad talent makes him one of the most promising young filmmakers in the DIY indie scene, and this is undoubtedly just the start as he blazes his own path.
—Megan Bernovich
Frances McDormand As Fern
Nomadland
In a film as memorable and lasting as Nomadland, you’d be hard pressed to forget Frances McDormand as Fern. After losing her husband and job in the fallout of the Great Recession, Fern travels across America in a camper van picking up contract jobs as a means of financial support. Central to Fern’s character is finding something that can fill the void left by loss. Playing to this, McDormand builds outward facades that conceal existential struggle and grief, only allowing those inner turmoils to seep through during moments of dire hardship.
“You can stay with us.” “You’re welcome here.” “Let me help you.” All open arms extended to Fern with which McDormand shows serious deliberation, but ultimate refusal as she continues her search. Within the framework established by writer/director Chloe Zhao, McDormand’s performance feels like a soul completely hollowed out, longing for some sense of completion she once had but can’t seem to find no matter where she looks. This dynamic — this struggle — is where the heart of Nomadland’s message can be felt, and a third Oscar might be in the cards for McDormand after this performance.
—Greg Arietta
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review on the film here.
Paul Raci As Joe
Sound of Metal
When Paul Raci’s Joe meets Riz Ahmed’s Ruben, Raci immediately becomes a grounding force in Sound of Metal. Beyond the striking sound design and electrifying lead performance of Ahmed, lies the heart of SOM. Joe is a veteran running a home for deaf addicts with strict rules that he embodies. To Joe, you don’t “fix” being deaf, you accept it. Raci, who himself was raised by deaf parents, lumbers around with an air of having seen-it-all. You’re not putting one past him. He practices what he preaches, usually with a smile that conjures a ripple of crows feet around his easing expression. With so much of SOM aiming to throw you off-kilter, Raci provides the foundation for a connection to a deeper core.
—Kevin Conner
Paula Beer & Franz Rogowski as Undine & Christoph
Undine
As with last year, I like to highlight performances that are complimentary of one another, performances so essential to one another that they elevate the film as a whole. Though not exclusively relegated to romances, it just so happens that this year’s and last’s were. This year’s duo comes from Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski in Christian Petzold’s Undine. Beer plays the titular Undine, a museum tour guide who experiences a break up right at the start of the film. Caught in the throws of grieving love, she almost immediately meets Christoph, a professional diver played by Rogowski, and a relationship blooms from there.
What makes this relationship particularly hypnotic is how Petzold graphs the myth of the undine onto their relationship. After Undine’s breakup, she is fated to die if she does not kill her former lover, setting her new romance up for conflict. Undine does not tell you of this mythic fate — something I didn’t know about until after seeing the film and reading about it in Peter Debruge’s insightful Variety review — but it speaks to the dynamic of Beer and Rogowski that the film can be so alluring even without initial understanding. Beer plays Undine as someone who turns a corner on life, but knows her relationship is terminal, while Rogowski plays Christoph with an authentic tenderness that shows interest in Undine as a person, making their eventual fissure all the more heartbreaking. It’s a fantastical relationship, unforgettable for its mythic quality.
—Greg Arietta
Sidney Flanigan as Autumn
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
It’s hard to imagine Never Rarely Sometimes Always without the beating heart that Sidney Flanagan’s Autumn brings to it. Her reticent stares at unreliable healthcare workers, suspect male co-workers, and genuinely helpful counselors are captivating to watch. Through Autumn’s face, Eliza Hittman’s film about a girl getting an abortion isn’t focused on Autumn’s choice as much as the unrelenting obstacles that she faces after making the decision to terminate the pregnancy. Never Rarely Sometimes Always seems to communicate with pauses rather than words, glances rather than gestures. Autumn’s guard is almost always up, but glimpses of vulnerability echo for a split-second in her eyes. With this being Flanagan’s first performances, all signs point to more impressive roles to come.
—Kevin Conner
Steven Yeun as Jacob
Minari
The desire for a more prosperous tomorrow is carried in every action of Steven Yeun’s performance in Minari. Playing a Korean immigrant who moves his family to Arkansas to start a their own farm, Yeun embodies a father set on providing a better life for his wife and two children while proving his worth through success. His stern exteriority and distanced emotions convey a kind of stoicism that comes from a father who only knows how to show affection through his ability to provide, and in the face of uphill battles with numerous setbacks, an underlying desperation rises to the surface — a sentiment particularly felt in a scene that shows Yeun holding back tears as he realizes his pursuits have cost him. It’s a performance of person at battle with losing everything of meaning to him, and it’s a career best for Yeun.
—Greg Arietta
Mads Mikkelsen as Martin
Another Round
Maintaining a BAC of 0.05% during every waking hour sounds like an intoxicating and precarious challenge, but its one Mads Mikkelsen’s Martin takes on in Another Round. Slogging through his 40s and lacking the vigor of his youth, Martin along with three of his friends decide to test the validity of the Skårderud theory — the idea that humans are born with a BAC too low and raising it will lead in improved vitality in daily life — to distance themselves from the depressed realities of their failing home lives and stagnant careers.
Mikkelsen works on two ends of the dramatic spectrum for this performance. Sober, he’s dull, marked by matter-of-fact seriousness and an unenthused persona cultivated by the death of youth’s ambitions. Inebriated, he’s like a new man, exuding confidence and passion not present in Martin’s life for years. Within these polar states, Mikkelsen creates a character of juxtaposition that underscores just how fallible Martin is as a human being. A beer in hand is easier than solving life’s problems, so why not drink? It’s only after going too far that the error of his ways is made apparent, but by that time, Mikkelsen’s drunken stupor and veteran acting chops have already won us over.
—Greg Arietta
Cinema As We Know It’s Best of 2020 Lists
All our favorites from the worst livable year on record