It might be near-sacrilege to consign Meryl Streep to runner-up, or to deny Wild’s Laura Dern of the Oscar title. But both Meryl and Dern’s nominations are more political than anything else. Streep’s 19th Oscar nomination looks too much like a bone thrown by AMPAS to the veterans of the award-winning world. Similarly, Dern, last nominated for Best Actress in 1992, probably secured her nomination as an acknowledgement of her 23-year-overdue comeback. Perhaps an even more obvious candidate is Emma Stone, who played the vivacious daughter Sam in Birdman. Stone’s adept transition from a more humor-oriented background to Birdman’s deeper emotional tones is most evident, ironically, in a vehement verbal attack against her father’s relevance as an actor. It’s easy to want her to win, but sheer favoritism and one emotional scene can’t outweigh Patricia Arquette’s skillful and decade-long involvement in Boyhood.
Part of the beauty of Arquette’s performance is her ability to maneuver between the real and the fictional. Throughout the movie, Arquette demonstrates her ability to weave together her personal narrative—including a marriage, childbirth, and divorce—and that of her character, single-mother Olivia. In many ways, Arquette merges those two tales. Over the course of the movie’s 12 years of filming, we witness both Arquette and Olivia aging on camera. As an actress, Arquette sacrifices herself for her role; as a character, Olivia sacrifices herself for her children. Patricia Arquette wins, in my book, because Boyhood charts more than a decade of devotion, 12 years of immersion in a role—a feat which none of the other nominees can match. To witness the real throwdown of supporting-acting prowess, tune in on Feb. 22 and watch as these gifted women scrap it out for the title.