From TV vets Steve Carell and Andre Braugher to stellar movie stars Mia Goth and Anna Diop, here are the best on-screen performances of 2022.
“You must actually stand before the public and God and obliterate yourself.” Thus, in one of TÁR’s greatest and most thematically controversial scenes, Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár proposes how performers and practitioners of the arts, despite everything, put their identities in the service of a greater good: the art itself artists themselves.
Things are certainly not going so well in her favor for an artist of Lydia Tár’s rank, sure, and while we don’t necessarily endorse her statement, it could be applied to this year’s best performers on screen – they’re in front of a specific audience (that movie or TV audiences) and they wiped themselves out (hoping for a performance good enough to move people).
Each year of exceptional film and television production brings with it another batch of indelible accomplishments, many of which become synonymous with the film or series itself. 2022 was no exception; Even with more TV than ever before and viewers reevaluating their relationship with theaters, names stood out even before enthusiastic viewers tuned in or bought tickets.
Take Amanda Seyfried’s role in The Dropout as convicted con artist Elizabeth Holmes, a fictional portrayal of a very non-fictional person who is brought to, well, fictional living life. Michelle Yeoh’s multiverse-spanning twist in Everything Everywhere All at Once reminded us that life is a shifting series of vignettes we trudge through, hopefully with something soul-affirming at the other end. Kayvan Novak’s work on What We Do in the Shadows showed us once again that you don’t have to be a vampire lore lover to appreciate the ingenious work of a vampire. Zahn McClarnon told us that a Native American spin on a Philip Marlowe type was long overdue and realized on a series like Dark Winds, and that such a show could still find unique film noir niches that fit on any size screen can enjoy.
“What about Beethoven? Are you into him?” While the haughty, classically obsessed Tár posed such a question with such animosity that it made you turn away, one didn’t have to be a classical music fan to appreciate what Blanchett did in “TÁR” did, a performance to rival almost anyone in film that year.
From hushed meditations to full-bodied staging, these actors left it all on screen and made an undeniable impression on audiences. Statues aside, they gave the best performances of the year, some even of their careers. Here are the year’s most popular IndieWire gigs, across every screen.
Jude Dry, David Ehrlich, Kate Erbland, Ali Foreman, Steve Greene, Kristen Lopez, Erin Strecker, Ben Travers, Brian Welk, and Christian Zilko also contributed to this list.
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