Best Actress 2003: Naomi Watts in 21 Grams

Naomi Watts received her first Oscar nomination for playing Christina, a woman who loses her husband and her daughters in a car accident in 21 Grams.


21 Grams is a very depressing film that has it's good moments, but becomes a huge mess. It's so confusing and honestly very unbeliavable. And Naomi Watts performance is a mixed bag. In the beginning, she is perfect. She subtly and beautifully shows her grief and depression over the loss of her family and when the doctors tell her that her daughters are dead, Watts makes us feel her pain and her delivery is excellent. Watts also makes us feel her loneliness and how she seems to be sleepwalking thorough every day. She is also great in showing how she seems to open up more once she meets Paul (Sean Penn), who wants to talk to her because her husband donated his heart to him after he died. In the scene when Watts finds about this, she is very angry and here's when her performance starts going downhill. On one hand, you can see why she is so upset, but she plays the scene too over the top and rings it false. And in the scene before that when she tells him that he can't like her a lot if he barely knows her, Watts feels a bit forced and again false. The film starts becoming ridiculous and this affects Watts because it makes her seem uneven and again, a bit over the top.


Like Debra Winger in Shadowlands, Naomi Watts starts out great, but stumbles in the second half, by overracting and the fact that her film is crumbling around her. But a good effort anyway.