“There is not a film performance this year more technically virtuosic than Alfre Woodard&rsquo

“There is not a film performance this year more technically virtuosic than Alfre Woodard’s awe-inspiring central turn as Bernadine, a hardened prison warden who has long repressed the psychic toll of executing over a dozen inmates throughout her career, in Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency. Using little more than her body, the most expressive and effective weapon in her arsenal, Woodard draws a haunting portrait of a woman quietly reevaluating the sum total of her life’s work, weighing her professional standing with the deep-seated guilt that pours out like a burst dam during the film’s climax, which plays out entirely on Woodard’s tormented face. In an earlier shot, following a heated argument with the lawyer (Richard Schiff) of the latest prisoner (the remarkable Aldis Hodge) that Bernadine is scheduled to put to death, Woodard does nothing but constrict her throat and gulp with alarming severity. It’s a small, perfectly suppressed movement that exposes a fissure in this supposedly ironclad figure, a single trace of the abysmal vulnerability that Bernadine herself declines to acknowledge. If acting awards were actually handed out on merit alone, the Oscar would already be in Woodard’s hands.” — Matthew EngMemorable Moments from Great Performances of 2019(Source: TribecaFilm.com) -- source link

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