CHARACTER INFUSED WITH QUALITIES

WELCOME TO THE OSCARS

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Mahershala Ali infuses characters with dignity and passive defiance.

Ali won the first of two Oscars in Best Supporting roles for his portrayal of a Miami drug dealer, Juan, in Moonlight (2016).

Juan mentors a young boy to choose for himself his own path through life.

Moonlight also won the Best Picture Oscar and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.

In Green Book (2018), Ali has all the style and grace of classical pianist, Dr. Don Shirley, but he must still hire Viggo Mortensen’s character as a body guard/driver for an eight week concert tour through the Midwest and the Deep South.

One stop of the tour is at a whites-only country club, but when Shirley is still refused equal status based on colour, he lets them know that the treatment is unacceptable.

Ali won a second Oscar for his role.

Green Book also won the Best Picture Oscar and Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

Ali also costarred that same year with Matthew McConaughey, Keri Russell and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in the American Civil War drama, Free State of Jones (2016).

McConaughy’s character deserts from the Confederate Army only to have to defend his community from the Confederate soldiers raiding farms.

Ali plays a runaway slave recruited into the rebellion as the Confederates lose to the Union, but then they win anyway by being given positions of authority at the end of the Civil War.

Ali put on a dignified suit to play Remy Danton, a Washington insider in the Netflix series, House of Cards (2013 – 2018). Danton does his best to keep his interests safe while chaos spins the rest of the political world out of control.

Ali’s characters are not in a position to rebel, but they instead tend to work within the present set of circumstances, succeeding as best they can, but not quite accepting the inequality and injustice all around.