Critic Nails Why Leo Shouldn't Win The Oscar For 'The Revenant'

By Petr Navovy | Miscellaneous | February 24, 2016 |

Some readers might know that I am not Leo’s biggest fan.

Anyway, I’m just gonna leave this eloquence from one of the best critics around Matt Zoller Seitz:

Acting is not an endurance test, though you wouldn’t know it from the yearly crop of Best Actor nominees. A win for Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Revenant” would only ratify the tendency to see acting greatness in terms of transformation and misery. In this value system, viewer remarks along the lines of, “I barely recognized him” and “My god, look at how much weight he lost!” and “Was that really him falling off that cliff?” take the place of more nuanced evaluations of the actor’s art. Acting becomes a stoic’s routine, a form of monk-like self-flagellation to prove devotion to one’s craft. Lose that weight. Eat that flesh. Take the punch to the face. Are you man enough?
It’s the most extreme possible variant of the tendency to mistake Most Acting for Best Acting.

DiCaprio at his best is so good that you don’t catch him acting, or you don’t think of what he’s doing as acting, even though it is. I imagine that part of the reason he’s played so many glum, violent, depressed sufferers during the last 15 years is because he’s bought into the idea that if you’re not losing or gaining weight, changing your appearance, spending long periods of time in extreme weather conditions and otherwise proving your mettle, then it’s not really acting—or, maybe just as bad, that it’s a sissy version of acting, all about clothes and makeup and hitting your marks.

[…] Leo should not get an Oscar because it would reinforce poor messages.