Wednesday 2 February 2011

Best Supporting Actor 1984: Adolph Caesar in A Soldier's Story

Adolph Caesar received his only Oscar nomination for portraying Sergeant Waters in A Soldier's Story.

A Soldier's Story is an effective murder mystery about an African American officer investigating the death of a hated Sergeant.

Adolph Caesar portrays Sergeant Waters who is the murdered man at the center of the investigation, this is not a spoiler by the way it happens in the first scene of the film. Waters is shown in flash backs to be a fairly cruel Sergeant who mistreats his men, and strangely sort of has a superiority, and inferiority complex. Waters believes himself to be better than other black men ones from the south, but he also still believes that he has to act a certain way, and that all blacks have to act a certain way to be seen better by Whites. Caesar shows both of these complexes well, and finds the right balance between the two to grant a reality to Waters's behavior.

Caesar portrays the cruelty of his character well, in a proper strict systematic fashion. Caesar has the right intensity in his performance. Caesar is particularly good in moments in which he speaks of his thoughts on race. Caesar makes Waters' racism very realistic, and he shows it something that Waters had been taught to be his father. Waters' performance is interesting an effective performance, that shows almost an systematic racism developed within the character. Caesar makes Waters a complex man with his somewhat short amount of time, his presence makes a strong impact in a film despite his character dying in the first few minutes of the film. Leaving sort of his stain on all of it, and offering the most compelling character in the narrative.

3 comments:

joe burns said...

Surprised this wasn't higher, I haven't seen it yet though.



Will you Best Actor 2010 after this? I'd love to see 2009 done soon.

Louis Morgan said...

Another reason I did not do 2010 is because I have not found Biutiful yet. So I cannot do that until I find it. I will keep 2009 in mind for the future though, although I have planned out my next few years already.

Anonymous said...

Hmm, I wasn't quite impressed, but it's been so many years since I've seen this.