Awards 2012: Making a Case for Rooney Mara

This years Best Actress race is about metamorphosis. All five women nominated for an award for their dramatic performances in 2011 underwent a physical and behavioral transformation to portray their characters, presenting sides of themselves moviegoers had never seen before. It’s going to be an incredibly difficult decision to call, and even though she’s up against veterans like Glenn Close, Tilda Swinton and Meryl Streep, I think that Rooney Mara’sbrooding turn as Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has a real shot at earning her top honors at the Golden Globes and Oscars ceremonies in 2012.

The challenge she faced in taking on the role is multifaceted. Not only did she have to play a tremendously popular character borne of a literary phenomenon (a task as difficult as any for an actor given the level of expectation and familiarity audiences have for the subject); she had to live up to Noomi Rapace’s definitive immortalization of Salander from the Swedish adaptations of Steig Larson’s Millennium Trilogy. Mara had to analyze all previous incarnations of the troubled hacker heroine and incorporate the necessary traits from each iteration into her own depiction while finding other unexplored qualities to use so that she could make her Lisbeth unique for the uninitiated and the well-acquainted alike. In summation it sounds simple, but when you’re dealing with a figure as complex as Salander, it’s a daunting task.

Beyond the difficulties of extracting the internal qualities of the character, the physical aspect of the job was undoubtedly most taxing for the 26-year-old actress. Mara, a beautiful but natural looking girl, had to drastically alter her appearance to embody Salander. She cut her hair and pierced her eyebrows, ears and nipples to give fans the Girl they knew and loved. She bared all through nearly half the film in love scenes with men and women, and dramatized one of the most traumatic experiences a lady can endure in a brutal and harrowing sequence the likes of which you cannot prepare for. She also learned to ride a motorcycle and kick ass, which she does plenty of in the film’s two-and-a-half hour runtime. Coupled with the emotional and psychological intensity of the character – which she communicates through body language, facial expressions and guttural shrieks that would make the Nazgul cringe – it’s perhaps the most fully realized representation of a fictional figure that filmgoers have seen in 2011.

But what’s the real accomplishment here? What has Mara’s performance offered that none of the other actresses’ work has rewarded audiences?

Individuality. Sure, Glenn Close’s role as Albert Nobbs is one-of-a-kind, but the character is hiding in his/her own skin. Mara, as Salander, is at peace with who and what she is (even though she’s often at war with others). 

Self-reliance. While The Help’s Viola Davis is determined as Aibileen Clark, her survival and success is dependent on the aid of others.

For all of these qualities, and others, I’ll be rooting for Rooney this season.