What’s most notable about 2020’s slate of great performances is the element of surprise. Sure, most anybody betting on Frances McDormand being heaped with praise at year-end will likely win their bets. But 2020’s best films range so far in terms of their “stuff”—themes, style, genre, atmosphere—that it stands to reason the best performances should range, too, in terms of gravity and veterancy. The Playlist’s picks for 2020’s best performances oscillate from bubbly to brooding, effervescent to angry, calm to utterly petrified; the actors responsible for these performances range from newcomers to old stalwarts, talents developing their careers and legends at the peak of theirs.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has had more than its share of detrimental effects on the movies. Still, having spent the last 9 months sheltering at home, these performances, in their way, capture the rollercoastering span of feelings that make up the 2020 mood: Rage, shock, grief, bewilderment, and rarest of all, unbridled joy. This year has left us all traumatized to degrees, and each of these performances, in their own way, provides a lens for examining, and then coping with, the wounds left on us by death and isolation. (They’re also just a collection of great performances, if you’d rather think of it that way.)
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Read on for our list of the year’s 20 best performances, in no particular order for this list. – Andrew Crump
READ MORE: The Best Cinematography Of 2020
Click here to follow along with our various Best of 2020 lists.
Elisabeth Moss – “Shirley”
Josephine Decker’s adaptation of Susan Scarf Merrell’s heavily fictionalized glance at the life and times of Shirley Jackson around the time she wrote “Hangsaman” isn’t a horror movie. Still, Elisabeth Moss is so erratic and twitchy and frankly scary as hell that you’ll be excused for making the mistake. Moss keeps the famed author perpetually on edge, a bug-eyed genius and paranoid wreck on the lookout for slights, snubs, and good fodder for her insatiable writing appetite: There’s little real-life material she won’t use to spur her imagination and keep the words coming, at least as long as she doesn’t fall into the throes of her depression. Being a brilliant writer isn’t easy. Moss makes it look that way, while also making it look truly unflattering and, at times, frightening. Playing Shirley through her strong jawline for maximum imposing effect, Moss turns her into a movie monster unto herself. – AC
Riz Ahmed – “Sound Of Metal”
Imagine your livelihood depending almost entirely on one of your five human senses. Now imagine losing that sense and being cast back into the world deprived of your key to navigating it. Would you hold your head up high? Would you fold in on yourself? Would you pee your pants? As metal drummer Ruben, Riz Ahmed takes a cold shower and stares blankly at the wall, his character in “Sound of Metal” having just woken up deaf after a night playing a show with his girlfriend-cum-bandmate, Lou (Olivia Cooke). In one scene,, Ahmed translates stark horror and disbelief at his sudden change of fortune: Think of him less like a man and more as a pissed off hummingbird, still but in consternated motion at the same time. It’s top tier work from Ahmed, who conveys Ruben’s agitation and shattered selfhood in each scene and often with the same wild-eyed glance. – AC
Nicole Beharie – “Miss Juneteenth”
In Channing Godfrey People’s lovely experiential debut feature, Nicole Beharie’s character Turquoise Joines suffers neither fools nor foolishness gladly, having spent her adult life laboring endlessly to provide for her daughter Kai (Alexis Chikaeze) after birthing her far too young. If you were a hustling former teen mom trying to eke out a living in an economically strangled Black neighborhood under threat from gentrification, you would draw a hard line at taking other people’s crap, too. But Beharie gives Turquoise her grace alongside her fire, plus a healthy dose of vulnerability in the shape of uncertainty. Nothing in “Miss Juneteenth” comes easily, because “Miss Juneteenth” isn’t based in a world of easy acquisition and easy living. It’s a world of hardships, both minor and major. But Beharie moves through that unease with effortless dignity all the same.– AC
Frances McDormand – “Nomadland”
There’s almost nothing McDormand can’t turn into great drama at this point in her career, but watching her craft good performances in good movies is certainly preferable to watching her do the same in bad ones. We should all be grateful for her nose for the exceptional. After “The Rider,” of course, who wouldn’t want to work with Chloé Zhao? As a counterpoint, who wouldn’t want to work with McDormand? Here, she trades on her ornery mode, which depending on who you ask, is her best, for an exhausted naturalism, playing her character, Fern, as indomitable but incredibly tired at the same time. As Zhao gently crosses verite with romanticism, McDormand helps ground the former with a weary, nonplussed gaze, making every simple gesture feel big. The role is as deceptively simple as the way McDormand breathes life into it. – AC
Amanda Seyfried – “Mank”
Primed and ready to “take on the talkies,” Amanda Seyfried effortlessly embodies Old Hollywood stardom without overplaying the part. Pitch-perfectly cast in “Mank” as Charles Foster Kane’s – err… we mean William Randolph Heart’s – mistress, Marion Davies, it would have been easy for Seyfried to lean heavily into the heightened aspects of her character. It’s not hard to picture a performance that’s a straight-up parody of once-silent film actors, a la Jean Hagen in “Singin’ in the Rain;” yet, she manages to find a marvelous middle-ground, wearing the doe-eyed innocence of celebrity on her sleeve through infectiously bombastic cadence, also using such presence to mask a mindful wit, one sadly necessary in a world run by stuffy cigar clubs – a dinner party scene finding Davies reminding herself to bite her tongue, when starting to reveal she’s smarter than she should. Seen through the eyes of Gary Oldman’s titular curmudgeon, her character effectively comes to represent studios turning under-contract talent into products, his care defined through genuine, protective concern, rather than romantic allusion. Like the film’s coda, her performance captures the imperfect disparity between real-life figures and the illusions we project on our silver screens. – Andrew Bundy