'Albert Nobbs': A miserable love letter to the Academy
Glenn Close. Patrick Redmon / Roadside Attractions
5:21 pm Jan. 27, 2012
It wasn't the least bit surprising to see that Albert Nobbs was recently nominated for two Oscars, regardless of which categories it was nominated for. It’s classic awards-season bait, exhibiting many of the worst impulses of so-called prestige pictures that are designed to appeal to Academy voters.
To be fair, the sincerity of director Rodrigo Garcia (Mother and Child, Nine Lives) and star Glenn Close (excuse me, six-time Oscar-nominated star Glenn Close) is unquestionable. But the way they tell the story of a Victorian woman who poses as a man in order to make money as a butler amounts to a dutiful compilation of trite soap operatics. Their title character is intended to convey lots of things; Nobbs is a symbol of progressivism, and sign of enlightenment in a dark time. But they forgot to make her compelling.
The crux of Albert Nobbs' drama is simple: To get ahead in life, women need to compromise their identities and work within the confines of male-dominated society. In Ireland during the 1910s, it was impossible for a woman to make a living doing the same work that men did. And even when a woman like Albert tries to get around the system, the game is rigged against her.
Albert (Close) unfailingly keeps track of how much money she makes, and the little she spends, in a ledger she keeps hidden along with her savings. She's taken aback when she meets Hubert Page (Janet McTeer), a house painter who is also actually a woman posing as a man. Albert only realizes this after Hubert snickers and outs herself by baring her breasts.
There are a number of different ways Albert could have been made to see that Hubert is like her. Revealing that secret in such a brusque manner suggests that the taboo of cross-dressing is Garcia’s real main concern in this scene. The way that McTeer smirks while showing off her breasts is meant to be an empowering burlesque between friends. It’s a way of saying, “Recognize these?” without actually saying anything at all.
Hubert reveals to Albert just how lost she's become while pretending to be a man: Albert hasn't been able to keep her personal dreams of independence from being subsumed by her need to pass as a man. She saves up money to start her own general-goods store and is only a few months away from following through on that goal. Still, the juxtaposition of Albert's painstakingly demure demeanor with Hubert’s relatively uncouth behavior makes it seem as if Albert is supposed to be understood as being unfulfilled and subsequently unbalanced because of her aspiration to make a better life for herself.
Hubert doesn’t want things to change and is comfortable living hand-to-mouth, but Albert is not. Hubert is the woman Albert might have been if only she were more willing to keep her head down and simply get on with improving her own life.
The film's representation of Albert's proto-feminist mentality is inextricably bound up with her unstable, secretive behavior. Nobbs is supposed to have a childish disposition (Close has said as much during interviews) but is shown to be emotionally stunted. When she’s stressed, she mutters to herself and anxiously tries to account for what she should do next. She often looks like she’s forcibly tamping down her emotions, as if they were about to well up from behind Close’s eyes. If there were an Oscar category for Best Imitation of a Kitty Cat Clock, Close would be a serious contender.
Close’s title character has her ambition rewarded with cruelty during the film’s climactic encounter, which involves he getting cuffed on the ear by an abusive rich man. This is an incredibly loaded confrontation: Albert is standing up for a woman whom the man in question is physically assaulting. This is when Nobbs finally sticks her neck out.
It’s a critical moment in Albert's character arc, and one that is meant to show that Hubert has taught her a lesson by example. But by then it's too late for her, or something.
One gets the feeling that Albert's story is, ultimately, only important to Garcia as a means of showing how women who stand up for themselves are immediately put in their place. It's a completely valid point, and the flawed power dynamic between men and women is no less relevant a theme today than it was in Albert Nobbs' time. But however noble the sentiment is that they're meant to convey, Albert's travails simply don't add up to a rewarding movie. At least not from the viewer's standpoint.
If Garcia’s film wins either of the two Oscars for which it’s nominated (for the performances of Close and McTeer), it will say more about the predictability of the Academy than anything else.
