Alternate Best Supporting Actor 2017: Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Mom

Nawazuddin Siddiqui did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Detective Dayashankar Kapoor in Mom. 

Mom follows a college professor Devki (Sridevi) who seeks revenge for her step daughter after she is brutally sexually assaulted by a group of men. 

I will say Nawazuddin Siddiqui is an actor I reviewed three times before this and in each instance has been a disparate performance and character. Siddiqui physically in each instance looks very different, no more so than in this film as he appears as a mostly bald private detective with a style all his own, who happens to hear about the plight of Devki’s stepdaughter, being missing initially, who is eventually found near death. Unfortunately for Devki, due to the stepdaughter having been drinking her testimony is put into question and the four men are exonerated by the courts despite their obvious guilt leading Devki to take the law into her own hands. In order to do this more effectively she calls upon Siddiqui detective Kapoor to help her. Siddiqui’s initial appearance is well performed in establishing the idiosyncratic nature of his character. Siddiqui is once again very much doing his own thing and successfully in the way he holds himself as a purposeful peculiarity. Something that works as presents himself as a peculiarity, where Siddiqui specific eagerness to help he paints with the right ambiguity between someone who is genuine in his keen eyed interest as he almost looks like a dog waiting for a treat with his specifically curious eyes and particularly accentuated grin, that may denote almost an ambulance chaser version of a detective, or just a man who presents his genuine interest in helping in his own unusual way. Well it becomes the latter clearly when Devki utilizes his skills as a detective to track down and find different ways to seek revenge against each of the guilty men. Siddiqui continues his ambiguous but entertaining note, where basically what he does is offer some levity within the rather dark situation. He does so in a way that works just through his off-beat delivery that fits and works for this off-beat oddball character. So every time he comes in for some exposition or moment of maneuvering the revenge plan, Siddiqui comes at it with his own unique angle that fits this eccentric character. What Siddiqui does effectively is show sort of the growth and investment of Kapoor into the revenge that is beyond monetary benefits. Something we see when he keeps mentioning his mother, something that Siddiqui plays initially seemingly within the eccentricity of Kapoor, but as he continues to mention it his eyes effectively denote a real care and outright empathy where his mother represents what Devki is doing for her stepdaughter. Siddiqui utilizes just that much more investment, he doesn’t lose the eccentricity by revealing sincerity as the ambiguity leaves to show that his investment goes beyond monetary compensation. An element that is featured even more strongly in his final scene where he comes face to face with the most dangerous of the men. Siddiqui’s wonderful in this scene by playing the shades of a sense of dread, but with a bravery of a man who has no desire to suffer fools of this hideous man. His delivery of correcting the man about a correct pronunciation is pitch perfect because he manages to make it a joke to Kapoor but also with it this real belief in Devki as he spells out the man’s own doom. Siddiqui hitting his height in this moment that exemplifies his overall effectiveness in the role, that makes the comedic elements of the character speak to more than just the comedy, though it works straightforwardly as well, by funneling within a highly specific character that he makes believable, while also using it to allude to a greater depths to the real motivation of the man. It’s a strong performance that really other than Sridevi, manages the very tricky tone of the film to deliver another wholly engaging performance, that for Siddiqui is yet another performance that didn’t for a moment make me think of the other performances of his I’ve reviewed here.