'Michael Clayton' proves Oscar's love of ensembles

Jodie Foster, picking up her best actress Oscar for "The Silence of the Lambs," credited the actor whose murderous

Hannibal Lecter gave her the sparring partner of her career. "The reason I'm here ...," she said with gratitude to Anthony Hopkins, adding "quid pro quo, doctor."

Rod Steiger, receiving an Oscar

for his Mississippi sheriff in "In the Heat of the Night," thanked co-star Sidney Poitier "for the pleasure of his friendship, which gave me the knowledge and understanding of prejudice to enhance my performance."

Oscar-laureled Shirley MacLaine paid tribute to the "turbulent brilliance" of her "Terms of Endearment" daughter Debra Winger, while "Judgement at Nuremberg" winner Maximilian Schell acknowledged the film's formidable cast and "that great old man who has been nominated for the eighth time now, Spencer Tracy."

The winners were merely reconfirming what any thoughtful actor will tell you: that a performance is a partnership, the product of bonding, trust and collaborative give-and-take with fellow actors.

No great performance springs up in a vacuum. And yet it is in the nature of the motion picture academy, which has always been loathe to give out prizes for team effort, to reward actors as though they had been speaking their lines to a mirror.

In lieu of ensemble Oscars, the academy has often seen fit to throw multiple acting-prize statues at the same picture. "Mystic River" co-stars Sean Penn and Tim Robbins were both awarded for their tight-knit evocation of lifelong buddies, as were "The Piano's" mother-and-daughter duo Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin. So were Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Straight for "Network." But often, the system leaves the odd man out. While Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden were all nominated for "A Streetcar Named Desire," Brando, weirdly enough, was the only one to go home Oscar-less.

This year, the academy got it right at least once with "Michael Clayton" in nominating George Clooney along with his British scene-mates Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. Even so, plenty of essential performances of 2007 have been lost in the shuffle of nominating a film's lead actor, as if the membership were too blinded by the dazzle of a star turn to notice anyone else.

As prospector-turned-oil magnate Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's turn-of-the-century drama "There Will Be Blood," Daniel Day-Lewis camouflages his Irish roots beneath a Walter Huston-ish drawl, a broad-brimmed hat and a mustache as sprawling as the American West. The effect is seductive and escalatingly scary as the film inches toward its gloves-off climax.

Should Day-Lewis take the best actor prize Sunday night, he should tip his hat to Paul Dano. In the dual role of tent preacher Eli Sunday and his brother, Paul, the 23-year-old actor met the star's simmering volcano with a low-flame intensity no less dangerous for its stillness. Would Plainview have had quite the same juice had Dano not been recruited at the 11th hour to replace the actor originally cast as Eli?

And can anyone name the guy who plays Julie Christie's husband in "Away From Her"? One of Canada's most respected actors, Gordon Pinsent, plays the remorseful, newly estranged husband in Sarah Polley's literary title. As Grant Anderson, retired academic and 44-year partner to Christie's Alzheimer's-beset Fiona, Pinsent does much of the script's heavy lifting. While Fiona flakes out and turns up the heat with a fellow patient (played by Michael Murphy), Pinsent relays a whole palette of emotional colors and interior thoughts, without a touch of grandstanding. Had an Anthony Hopkins or Michael Caine assayed the role, with less panache, they would have automatically been a player in the best actor race.

Visceral Viggo

It is hard to imagine anyone else inhabiting the tattooed skin of Nikolai, the London-transplanted, Russian mafia driver in "Eastern Promises," as powerfully as Viggo Mortensen. Much has been made of Mortensen's nude bathhouse dogfight: the scene carries a visceral punch that doesn't diminish with repeated viewings. But Mortensen makes of Nikolai something much more than a buff jawbreaker; he invests each line with a wryness and fish-out-of-water sadness that speaks volumes about being an emigre swallowed up in a vast foreign city.

Good as Mortensen is, I disagree with Anthony Lane's contention in The New Yorker that he is the only actor in the film who conveys an authentic aura of Russian-ness. As the mafia boss Semyon and his loose cannon son Kirill, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassel are so inside their parts, I thought at first glance that director David Cronenberg had drafted them from the Moscow Art Theatre. They are rich, vibrant characterizations; with Mortensen, they create an indivisible, three-way tension of conflicting agendas that charges up the whole film.

Saying "oui" to the French

As a French actor ignored by the Oscars, Cassel is in good company this year. A bevy of France's finest are doing terrific work in service of Oscar nominee Marion Cotillard in "La Vie en Rose." The two with the most palpable impact on Cotillard's stunning portrayal of Edith Piaf are Sylvie Testud and Jean-Pierre Martins.

One of the edgier film personalities working in France today, Testud lends a ruddy, street-urchin patina to Momone, Piaf's unswervingly devoted girlfriend. As Piaf grows into success and refines her performing style, Momone evolves from blowzy carousing mate to soignée lesbian. Cotillard and Testud are perfectly in sync: two tough cats against the world.

As Piaf's lover, middleweight champion Marcel Cerdan, Martins is the quintessential farmboy hunk. Cotillard and Martins find a romantic groove that recharges the film halfway along; we can almost feel the heat beaming off the screen when Piaf and Cerdan go on a New York dinner date. By the time Piaf locks into manic denial over his demise in a memorable breakdown sequence, we totally get it. On the outside chance that Cotillard beats out the Christie juggernaut to claim the best actress prize, she should send Martins a big, fat merci beaucoup.

Leading candidates

Related topic galleries: Tilda Swinton, Shirley MacLaine, Anthony Hopkins, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, Peter Finch, Paul Thomas Anderson