Proclaimed and repeated many times, but once more can’t hurt: Amanda Seyfried creates a layered and humanesque Marion Davies in David Fincher‘s Mank. Best performance and role of her life, and she’s been at this racket, remember, for the better part of 20 years. (Or since she was 15.) Seyfried has never had a role this substantial or interesting. This is it for her…right here, right now.

That awful feeling I was getting from Lily James in Ben Wheatley‘s regrettable Rebecca — that she’s not authentic, that she’s pretending poorly to be a naif in the mid ’30s world, that she clearly doesn’t belong in this realm and is more or less playing dress-up — is something I never got from Seyfried. No one did. She seems to really understand Davies, who was unfairly caricatured in Kane. The girlfriend of the great William Randolph Hearst feels like a droll, decent, compassionate human being. She gets herself, and Seyfried gets her.

So what’s happened to the long-expected Seyfried blitzkrieg? To the supposed inevitability, at least, of a Best Supporting Actress nom? As recently as 2.24 Variety‘s Clayton Davis predicted that Seyfried would be one of the five (along with The Father‘s Olivia Colman. The Mauritanian‘s Jodie Foster and Hillbilly Elegy‘s Glenn Close). Each and every critic has conveyed approval and Seyfried has been nominated by this and that critics group and peripheral org. But that big-wave, “here she comes!” feeling hasn’t quite manifested like I thought it would. Well, it has but without the right oomph.

From THR‘s Scott Feinberg: “Cher Comes Out for Mamma Mia Co-Star Amanda Seyfried’s Mank Campaign (Exclusive)”

All I can say to Academy members right now is “due respect but will you guys please do the right thing?”