Alternate Best Actor 1999: Bob Hoskins in Felicia's Journey

Bob Hoskins did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Joe Hilditch in Felicia's Journey. 

As with almost any of Atom Egoyan's films I'd categorize as good (though a bit drawn out and suffers from being a bit top heavy when it comes to interesting characters), Felicia's Journey is a strange, though intriguing, bird of film about a older man who tries to "help" a young desperate pregnant woman, Felicia. 

Always hate coming onto a performance late as I finalize a year, as I really should've just taken the time for Bob Hoskins here, as this performance is unlike anything else that I'd seen from Hoskins. Now I've always been a fan of Hoskins's as an actor, with his potent bottled up presence, that almost seemed to hide a great emotional range. This found in his great performances in Mona Lisa and The Long Good Friday, as different kinds of volatile men, and of course his low key hilarious yet still emotional work in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. This though is something quite different from Hoskins's as his very presence has no traits of a working class, or once working class, bruiser. This man is something else. This is found right off in Hoskins's instantly curious and fascinating work. This in his more affected accent. This with a sort of odd politeness innate within his voice. For a lack of a better shortcut, Hoskins kind of plays this part as though he was Ian Holm playing this part, and that is high praise. This as Hoskins erases your mind of those other turns, in his gentler voice he brings here, but also his manner that matches the same. We see him as this commercial chef and as so there is a fanciful manner to this man that Hoskins creates, that grants us some sense of who he is, and keeps us quite intrigued in what he might be. 

We follow many scenes of Joe just living through the day, and there is something even in this within Hoskins's performance. There is a levity to it, though not in the sort of comedic sense. Rather Hoskins is way of movement here is almost a way of floating through a given scene. He doesn't quite interact as is the normal way, marking Joe with this strange kind of very odd kind of grace. Hoskins is rather mesmerizing just to watch be here, as you can't instantly decipher the man, and part of the fascination is watching Hoskins give us hints. This as we see him preparing a meal, while watching a TV chef (who we will later learn is his long dead mother), Hoskins's performance has a kind of violence in the preparation. When eating the meal, and watching the woman still, Hoskins's performance is one of sheer brilliance. This sort of boyish curiosity he brings in examining the meal, and a comfort as he bites as though he is a baby being fed by his mother. There is something unquestionably off-putting about it, but what I love is how enigmatic it is just the same. Hoskins doesn't immediately tells us exactly who Joe is exactly. He creates a mystery about the man, and really is the facet of the film that reels you into it. This as there's just something about Hoskins's performance that makes you want to learn more about this man, even if you may be concerned with that might exactly go. 

Now we see Joe as he begins to offer some advice to Felicia, and there is just something about that accent that Hoskins uses here. It is a masterstroke, as it is this incredible combination of comfort and discomfort at the same time. This as he speaks so gently that at quick glance, particularly if someone was need of help of any kind, it is with that of just a good intention if off man, but spending more time with it, there's just something not quite right about it. Felicia eventually more directly takes Joe's help as he begins to give her rides. Hoskins's performance is everything as he asks her questions with that small voice of his, seemingly comforting. When she mentions she's pregnant though, there is a smile, and change of tone of his expression that is most unnerving. Hoskins portraying Joe's "charity" to perhaps not be some simple kindness of a lonely man. There is a strange game though we see when Felicia reveals any vulnerability as Joe puts forth the utmost empathy it would seem. Again it is with perhaps a quirk, or something worse, that he offers his words of wisdom, but Hoskins himself doesn't portray this as facade exactly even. There is something more demented going on than just that. This as see a progression of other young desperate women that Joe's "helped" in the past. 

Hoskins's work here is outstanding, and part of why he is so fascinating to watch, is he presents a man who is in a strange world of his own at all times. This developed from his equally strange relationship with mother we see in flashback. Hoskins even in a moment of Joe just watching a clip of Salome, there is a man starting on some alternate wavelength of experience. When we see him speak to Felicia of his fake wife, Hoskins speaks with overtures of the good nature of parenthood, but even in this, he's kind of outside of the conversation even as he's speaking directly to her. Hoskins portraying a man who is always thinking within some other realm even when within this process that one would assume would be more symbiotic. It is in this that Hoskins alludes to what Joe really is doing with all this. This as he develops the sense of the man's mind where his interaction is always with a strange kind of detachment and self-obsession. When speaking of his fake wife, even killing her technically by saying she has died in hospital, his words turned as though he is almost speaking to himself still. This as he tells himself this story just as he is telling her. This performance is quite terrifying as Hoskins reveals Joe's nature as more sinister in each successive scene. This as we slowly come to realize that Joe is in fact a serial killer of these young women, and Hoskins paints a most unnerving portrait of the way this man goes about his ways.

 

 This as he brings Felicia along, with a cherub's smile and a country priest's voice. This though in moments bringing forth the nature of the hate that is simmering within him, that Hoskins evokes in wholly chilling moments as Joe becomes more determined with his current "charity".  When Joe goes about finally planning to kill her, Hoskins is so matter of fact in the movements, which is particularly off-putting as we see a man who likely has gone through this kind murder again and again. When he describes putting the girls to "sleep" as he's in the process of killing Felicia, suddenly that gentle voice of becomes something truly disturbing. The only point in which the man's world seems to completely break, as he attempts to wrap up his crime, two Christian missionaries come calling. Hoskins's incredible as he shows the final break in the man as he watches their presentation to him. Hoskins's voice loses any of its grace, his manner is not longer lost in its state. There is desperation, a fear, a man suddenly blunted by a random reality that penetrates his typical deranged state. Hoskins brilliantly internalizing the breakdown within the man almost in sheer disbelief when confronted with something then than his own delusions. Hoskins's performance presenting the greater degradation of the man's mind as he seems tp hold less and less into the delusion and in turn his psychosis is shown more overtly in every respect. His eyes filled with tears, his body wavering, and his voice quacking as his crimes are discovered. A man with no delusions left to cling to, therefore also no life to cling to. This is a fantastic work by Bob Hoskins that shows an even greater range than I already knew he had. A daring, and dynamic portrait of a most unusual and unhinged man.