Lisa Gay Hamilton in Honeydripper (2007) - Supporting Actress Watch

Well, that was a Supporting Actress Sunday to remember. Between the profile, the smackdown, the could and the should poll, as well as the broadcast itself -- 'twas a perfect storm of Tilda. But for all the wonderment of Oscar getting the Supporting Actressness so right this year, it's almost fitting that the one screening I caught this week trained my attention on a 2007 film that flew almost entirely under StinkyLulu's radar. Released in NY & LA on December 28 (making it, I s'pose, ineligible for 2008 award consideration), this poignant revisioning of one of cinema's most hackneyed genres also contains StinkyLulu's first glimpse of brilliant actressing at the edges in 2008, in the form of the radiant work of...

...Lisa Gay Hamilton in Honeydripper (2007).

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Lisa Gay Hamilton plays Delilah Purvis, a hard-working woman in 1950's Alabama. She's the patiently devoted wife (to Danny Glover's PineTop, proprietor of a struggling juke joint); the protective mother (to Yaya DaCosta's -- yeah yeah, that Yaya -- China Doll, a delicate beauty with a heart condition); and the attentive domestic (of Mary Steenburgen's Amanda Winship, a sad wealthy white woman). Yet amidst this bundle of stock character tropes, Hamilton's Delilah is also a complex person with an independent inner life: she's a woman with a discomfiting past, who's anxious about the present and frankly fearful about the future.

Most conspicuously, the film's title refers to the name of PineTop's juke joint, but it seems to me that the title also cues the tone and style of John Sayles's confident filmmaking. Honeydripper is a movie that takes its sweet time to honor its complicated characters as they discover their ability to trust in miracles. Sure, Honeydripper moves slowwwwwwly, its internecine map of distinctive characters sauntering an easy weave with little concern for the film's wisp of a plot. Yes, Honeydripper is also densely sweet. With anyone but Sayles at the helm, this piece would likely make most sense on the Hallmark channel. And it might be easy to fault this film for not moving with a Frank Oz-ian subtlety or with a Chris Columbus-ian nuance. Yet, under Sayles's assured hand, there emerges an artisanal richness in the sweet, a soulful pungency to the slow, which transforms Honeydripper's treacle into something nearly transcendent. Indeed, Honeydripper elevates the formulaic, feel-good music narrative to the realm of a quiet sublime. In Honeydripper, music operates with redemptive power -- as a catalyst for valuing memory, history, futurity, community, and self. And no one character is as attuned to this fact more than Hamilton's Delilah.
When we meet her, Delilah is clinging to life by her fingernails. Outwardly, she's holding it all together -- helping her husband, saving money for her daughter to go to beauty school, working as a domestic in the mayor's home. Yet, inwardly, Delilah's experiencing a crisis of faith. She's literally "between churches" and dutifully attending revival meetings in the sincere hope that she'll hear the call of the spirit. A former nightclub singer, Hamilton's Delilah carries a weight from her past that we never see (is it something to do with the night PineTop supposedly killed a man? is it something to do with China Doll's real father?). But just as we never see Delilah sing, so too do we never see the actual contours of Delilah's past pain. In her meticulously human performance, Hamilton holds Delilah's pent up fears and pains with tender care, allowing us witness their reality while never asking our sympathy. And thereby breaking our heart all the more effectively...
Even more, Delilah's crisis of faith anchors the film's actual climax -- an emotional endoskeleton for the narrative's exoskeleton. As the anxious preparations are underway for the big Saturday night that will either make or break the future of PineTop's Honeydripper club, Hamilton's Delilah is hard at work, cooking in the kitchen, when she discovers that PineTop has raided her secret stash of savings. In a desperate rage, Hamilton's Delilah tears from the kitchen, confronts PineTop about how he's stolen China Doll's future, before she quits the whole thing to go to the revival's last meeting. In a gorgeous sequence of scenes, Sayles permits Hamilton to show the depth of Delilah's determination to find God in the church, as she grimly steps forward to accept salvation. What Sayles and Hamilton craft in this sequence is an elegant portrait of Delilah's spiritual integrity -- she believes in God, and genuinely wants God in her heart, but she can't seem to hear God in her life. As Delilah steps into the aisle, Hamilton -- with a blend of steely determination and vulnerable tenderness -- wordlessly conveys the depth of Delilah's crisis of faith, that it's not her resistance to God, but her resistance to affirming a false testimony with which she struggles.
Of course, this being a feel-good genre picture, Delilah finds her connection to God in a place she might have never have known to look had she not chosen to follow her heart. And with Hamilton's confident, bold performance, Delilah's journey enriches Honeydripper's exuberant, magical finale in ways that open the redemptive power of music for all the film's characters. Lisa Gay Hamilton remains one of the most reliably exceptional actresses working today (though not, to my mind, frequently enough). And her performance in Honeydripper presents an especial opportunity to patiently savor the transcendent marvels of actressing at the edges.

Archie Panjabi in A Mighty Heart (2007) - Supporting Actress Watch

For a long while, StinkyLulu's been inclined to think of Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart as the "Angie does brownface" movie. The whole docudramatic premise -- a "ripped from the headlines" story of a woman waiting to hear that her missing husband's been brutally murdered -- seemed possibly well-intentioned but just, oh, tacky and self-important. (Sorta like StinkyLulu's baseline opinion of Angelina Jolie, but that's another post, for another time.) So 'magine Lu's surprise when it turned out that Winterbottom's film version of Mariane Pearl's memoir proved to be a startlingly effective movie. And, much to StinkyLulu's delight, the film worked not in spite of Angelina Jolie's central performance but precisely because of the way the film utilized a top-notch supporting ensemble to maneuver the distractions of Jolie's celebrity. (Not to mention those lips!) As a result, Jolie's performance as Mariane Pearl is simple and, at times, genuinely affecting.

But more interesting are the supporting performances, especially a stark, enigmatic performance by Irfan Khan (as Captain, the Pakistani police official leading the investigation of Daniel Pearl's disappearance) and a noteworthy turn by Archie Panjabi as Daniel Pearl's longtime friend and colleague, the Indian Muslim feminist Asra Q. Nomani. Of course, Khan's Captain is given a pile of plot to muck through, and Khan's measured intensity here blends with an emotional generosity (the kind he gave this year's The Namesake) in all kinds of scenes. Panjabi's Asra, on the other hand, is given next to nothing to do -- except answer phones, print photos, shuffle papers, and write on the whiteboard. But Panjabi, too, even in this helpmeet of a part, delivers a formidable performance as a woman cruelly disregarded as her life, too, is tossed into complete upheaval with Danny Pearl's disappearance.

Panjabi's work (literally, her actressing at the edges) is crucial to Winterbottom's construction of this film. It seems that Winterbottom -- charged with making a movie about a missing man starring one of the most conspicuously polarizing contemporary celebrities -- determined to tell this story through oblique angles. Winterbottom rarely shoots Jolie's Mariane straight on, opting instead to capture Jolie's face in profile or at 3/4 angles. Indeed, the child of the houseservants (whose playful gestures echo and mirror the action around her) might just have more close-ups than Jolie. And this seems to be Winterbottom's point. Winterbottom's movie is not about Mariane or Daniel -- but about the experience of being in the midst of an unknowable terror storm, where the actions of everyone around you become charged with potential meaning, significance, import.

And Panjabi's Asra is perhaps the most essential presence in this cinematic storm -- the only one in the room we know to trust unconditionally, the one to whom we look for hints, for cues, for explanations. With every glimpse and glance, Panjabi's performance presents a precise portrait of a complicated woman negotiating uncharted territory. Hers is the kind of performance that will likely never receive much notice, let alone a nomination, largely because the role itself seems so peripheral (as Nomani herself has scathingly alleged). But Winterbottom seems to know what he's doing, and he clearly knows what he has in Panjabi's performance. His careful attention to Panjabi's presence on the scene (as well as Khan's, and Denis O'Hare's, and pretty much every cast member's) provides a reminder that Daniel Pearl's disappearance, his absence, consolidated a meaningful and powerful community.

Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart is perhaps the most evocative cinematic treatment of traumatic loss I've ever encountered (not to mention one of the strangest surprises of 2007). And Archie Panjabi's work -- her actressing at the edges -- helps lay the emotional foundation for the film's complexity and its impact.