Oscars 2024: Why Paul Giamatti should win ‘Best Actor’
History has shown time and time again that after the illustrious prize for ‘Best Picture’, the award for ‘Best Leading Actor’ is one of the most hotly contested categories at the annual ego-rubbing Academy Awards. This year’s crop of Oscar nominees is no less competitive, with Cillian Murphy due to duke it out for the prize alongside the likes of Paul Giamatti, Bradley Cooper, Jeffrey Wright and Colman Domingo.
As is the way with the Oscars, most awards can be predetermined before the red carpet has even been unfurled, with the bookies tipping Murphy to take home the prize for his performance as the creator of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s biopic. Yet, it would be a gross mistake to simply disregard the other nominees in light of this ever-more likely fact, with Paul Giamatti arguably far more deserving of the significant award.
Playing the kind of academic who would have criticised the work of Oppenheimer with a sharp-witted quip, Giamatti is nominated for his work in Alexander Payne’s ill-timed Christmas drama The Holdovers. Set in Barton Academy, a fictional religious New England boarding school for boys, Payne’s tale is a warm parable about three unlikely souls pulled together to spend the festive period together.
Giamatti’s Paul Hunham, a classics professor, is the teacher who drew the short straw, finding himself having to look after the only pupil left stranded by his parents over the holidays, Angus Tully, played by the flawless newcomer Dominic Sessa. Joining them is fellow Oscar-nominee Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb, the school cook whose son was recently killed in action while fighting in the Vietnam War.
Playing the kind of gruff, stoic teacher that most of us will have been lucky enough to have come across at least once in our childhoods, Giamatti is utterly irresistible, with his hardened layers of nihilism steadily peeling from one scene to the next. Perfectly bottling the essence of David Hemingson’s script, Giamatti is hilarious as he is emotionally piercing, consistently able to judge the tone and tempo of any given scene.
Hunham is the lynchpin of the tale and one part of a formidable trinity of fleshed-out characters, but it isn’t until his own tense complexity is able to unfurl that he allows his surrounding holdovers to breathe with him. Randolph’s tender Mary sits on the periphery of the trio, while Sessa’s Tully forms a tight bond with Hunham as the pair allow the seasonal festivities to help their compassion blossom.
As the colour of Hunham’s personality steadily flourishes, each element of his life and being feels open to analysis. He is an open-book who feels as alive as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, bringing a nervous vigour to every conversation he partakes in. Not that differing cinematic performances should be compared, but Giamatti’s portrayal certainly exceeds that of Cillian Murphy, who is barely able to properly enlarge the life of his respective real-life figure.
As a contest of artistic comparison, there’s no doubt that Giamatti should take home the Oscar, crafting a character who is utterly delectable in his personality and rich in sheer cinematic expression. Quite simply, no other performance can compare to Giamatti, not Murphy’s faux-brooding portrayal nor Bradley Cooper’s admirable prosthetic-aided take on Leonard Bernstein.
