8) Glory
Denzel Washington’s first Academy Award came after a breakout performance in the 1989 Civil War film Glory. It’s easy to see why, most of the time, the Chris Rock joke about the two scariest words to a black actor (it’s Chris Rock who does this one, right?) are “period piece.” This movie is a little different; yes, Denzel is playing an ex-slave with anger issues and probably PTSD and all sorts of stuff, but he gets to be a defiant soldier so it’s not all bad.
Most of the powerful moments in the film feature Washington’s character, usually somehow making Matthew Broderick aware of how hard it is for black people in Civil War America and how he should think about this whenever he decides to do anything.
The movie also brings me back to the central defining quality of Denzel Washington, and a greater point about the value of movie stars. So-called character actors are often celebrated for their ability to inhabit a role, to disappear into a character, and be unrecognizable from movie to movie. A film like Glory shows how impossible it is for a performer like Denzel to do that. He steals the show. Every time he’s in the background of a shot, even when Morgan Freeman is making a damn rousing speech, our eyes are drawn to Denzel’s character.
At least, that’s how it is for me. And judging from his roles in the 25 years since, that seems to be the case for most audiences and directors. This is a rare quality in actors, and while it’s highly valued, it feels too often underappreciated or taken for granted in film writing. He’s proven himself a talented artist behind the camera in movies like Antwone Fisher and The Great Debaters, but Denzel Washington‘s greatest work has to be when he’s a movie’s main man.