2) Flight
I think when we look back on 2012 it will be hard to believe there were so many great lead acting performances in a single year. Most years, work like Denzel Washington’s in Flight would have meant Oscar certainty, but then there was also Daniel Day-Lewis being inhabited by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln to compete with, not to mention Joaquin Phoenix working on another plane (so to speak?) in The Master and Hugh Jackman nailing Jean Valjean.
It may have been the most subtle and devastating performances of the year. Washington in the part of Captain Whip Whitaker paints a fairly tragic portrait of the disease of addiction, and the cycle of lies that must be maintained to keep that addiction from being made apparent to others. We see the old truism that the first step to recovery is admitting to having a problem, and Whip’s inability to be honest with himself and recognize his alcoholism snowballs into a web of lies he spins for everyone around him.
Washington makes every bit of this struggle abundantly obvious while preserving the sense that he, as Whip, truly believes he is passing as sober. The earnestness with which he depicts Whip’s feelings of defeat in the face of all his challenges, mixed in with overcompensating levels of confidence, is commonplace for Washington but nevertheless crucial to the movie.
Robert Zemeckis said that he had to change how he edited the film to make it match the unique rhythm of his lead. That’s a credit to an expert director’s flexibility, as well as to an actor who continues to surprise his audience after decades of solid work.