Alternate Best Actor 2011: Results

10. Jakub Gierszal in Suicide Room - Gierszal gives an inconsistent yet still effective portrayal of the descent into a suicidal despair.

Best Scene: The end

9. Michael Smiley in Kill List - Smiley delivers a heartfelt portrayal somehow of a hitman dealing with his friend's increasing instability.

Best Scene: Comforting the son. 

8. Michael Fassbender in Jane Eyre - Fassbender's work is an affecting enough portrayal of man escaping his repression and pain through the love of another.

Best Scene: Rochester admits his love to Jane. 

7. Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In - Banderas creates an interesting portrayal of sadistic mind that slowly begins to love his victim.

Best Scene: Ledgard admires his "creation".

6. Daniel Henshall in Snowtown - Henshall crafts a disturbing depiction of a serial killer who casually manipulates those around him to support his violent hatred.

Best Scene: John handles the "town hall". 

5. Jake Gyllenhaal in Source Code - Gyllenhall gives a winning turn as he manages to keep pace with the film, meeting every single demand of his character, and amplifying the film's emotional resonance in turn.

Best Scene: Stevens has a perfect eight minutes.

4. Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus - Fiennes offers a striking portrayal of a vicious yet vulnerable portrait of a man defined by war.

Best Scene: Caius meets with his family. 

3. Peter Mullan in Tyrannosaur - Mullan creates a moving depiction of a hard man finding some sort of redemption through a kind yet troubled woman.

Best Scene: Joseph confronts Hannah.

2. Woody Harrelson in Rampart - Harrelson, despite the many weaknesses of his film, manages to deliver a nuanced and wholly compelling portrayal of police officer whose brutality seems to be enabled by the system he works in.

Best Scene: Dave's daughters bring him clothes. 

1. Matthias Schoenaerts in Bullhead Good Predictions RatedRStar, Psifonian, Michael McCarthy, Calvin, GM, and Luke. Schoenaerts offers a outstanding performance as a man beneath the perceived brute. He not only gives understanding to his behavior in so few words, but offers a heartbreaking portrait of his struggle with severe detachment due to the horrible injuries he suffered as a child.

Best Scene: Jacky fails to find the words.

Updated Overall

Next Year: 2011 Supporting

Alternate Best Actor 2011: Jakub Gierszal in Suicide Room

Jakub Gierszal did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Dominik Santorski in Suicide Room.

Suicide Room is a curious film about a teenager falling into a terrible depression and a strange online community after his world collapses due to a brief homosexual encounter.

Jakub Gierszal's performance begins in as an unassuming enough portrayal of just a pretty standard teenager. He comes from a privilege due to his successful parents, and seems to be popular enough in school. His parents though are shown to be somewhat detached, more interested in their careers in general, and Dominik seems to have just a slight twinge of discontent in him though in a fairly standard way. Gierszal's performance works well in these early scenes in just being just about an average teenager. He brings just a bit of moodiness, and even a bit of ego, that possibly could easily stem given his parent's wealth, that Gierszal makes very natural. This is worth nothing because although the behavior is unlikable, Gierszal makes it at least somewhat less so by making the behavior genuine. Gierszal's performance is unassuming in the right way in that he makes Dominik just as he should be no more no less.

Everything seems fine for Dominik, despite a sudden fascination with a video of someone slicing their arm with razor, and Gierszal's portrayal confidence of this comfort that helps Dominik go along with the dare that begins his downward spiral. The dare being to kiss one of his male classmates, which he does. This in itself does very little, though Gierszal is good at just realizing kind of thrill of the act for Dominik. That thrill which goes a bit far when another encounter with the same young man, goes a bit further accidentally for Dominik. The act though quickly leads to Dominik being widely ridiculed online, and we get the first breakdown scene by Gierszal. It is unfortunately his worst scene in terms of his performance. The scene itself requires an extreme reaction to echo Dominik's vulnerability, but Gierszal goes in the wrong direction with. He goes too in the theatrical direction with his waving of his arms, and his screams that are basically too clean. It feels like an actor's breakdown which is ill-fitting for the film, and the character.

Dominik's early attempts to deal with his life lead him to a depression, which is well portrayed by Gierszal in the margins of his performance. He creates the very real sense of someone just having a weight of despair around them at all times that keep him at a distance. Dominik in some way to combat his problem begins to act out by basically being more "emo", and having lapses of strangeness, such as when kisses a statue. The sense behind these actions seem to be to reflect Dominik's growing unease, however Gierszal never quite attaches that to these individual moments. In fact that seem rather calm, and not too calm that it would still be unnerving. Well eventually Dominik completely closes off by becoming part of a strange online community that seem obsessed by suicide. He becomes obsessed with the chat room of sorts, and the film often becomes basically an animated feature  at times by depicting the virtual reality of the room.

These scenes don't add up to much, though they depict Dominik falling into a world of his own to avoid the one on the outside. In the few moments where we do see him visually, Gierszal does well in portraying the contentment of this escape of sorts, while also portraying the intense nervousness whenever his parents attempt to take him away from it. His parents eventually force him away from it all, but the son still attempts to connect to it by taking a box of potentially deadly pills to meet with a girl he had met in the chat room. It seems that they do meet up and Gierszal is moving in portraying finally a true happiness with another real human being. This is brutally shown to be false vision as the actual last scene we are given is after Dominik has swollen the pills, and is dying. Unlike his previous meltdown, Gierzal excels in revealing the terrible details of Dominik's end with his delivery of broken pleads while showing the physical pain as he collapses from the pills. Gierszal's work is inconsistent though still effective in revealing the unpleasant decay that ends in suicide.

Alternate Best Actor 2011

And the Nominees Were Not:

Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In

Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus

Woody Harrelson in Rampart

Michael Smiley in Kill List  

Jakub Gierszal in Suicide Room

Predict Those Five, Or These Five, Or Both

Matthias Schoenaerts in Bullhead

Peter Mullan in Tyrannosaur  

Daniel Henshall in Snowtown

Michael Fassbender in Jane Eyre

Jake Gyllenhaal in Source Code