At the previous edition of MAMI, audiences were wowed by Spike Lee’s Cannes grand prix winner
BlacKkKlansman starring John David Washington as Ron Stallworth, the first African-American police officer to infiltrate the Klu Klux Klan and Adam Driver as his fellow officer Flip Zimmerman– a role that got him multiple nominations.
Stolid, six foot plus Driver scored a hat trick of sorts at the 21st MAMI which screened three of his films : Marriage Story, The Report and The Dead Don't Die.
Driver lost to Mahershala Ali's turn as a classical pianist in The Green Book at the 2019 Oscar, Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA awards so Oscars 2020 may prove to be lucky for Driver.
His chances are bright in at least two of the films:
Marriage Story and The Report which saw full houses at MAMI.
Driver essays a loving father and theatre director whose marriage to an actor ( Scarlett Johansson) goes on the rocks in long time collaborator Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, a complex portrait of divorce which by the way, attacks a tenet of the Christian faith in the guise of a feminist diatribe against absentee fathers. Netflix has taken Marriage Story to numerous festivals, MAMI being the latest.
In Jim Jarmusch's zombie film, The Dead Don't Die, Driver acts as police chief Cliff ( Bill Murray) Robertson's second-in-command Ronald Petersen who is convinced that things are sure to end badly.
In Scott Z. Burns' The Report, Driver plays Daniel J Jones, a US Senate official who heads an investigation into the CIA's interrogation techniques in the war on terror after 9/11. Interestingly, Driver joined the US Marines after 9/11 after his stepfather, a Baptist minister, gave him a brochure for the Marines) As fate would have it, health reasons forced him to quit and graduate in acting at University.
Impressive as the villainous interplanetary warlord Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Driver today boasts of an impressive bio having worked with such directors as Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese,Steven Soderbergh and the Coen Brothers (Joel & Ethan) Yes, he deserves that Oscar after all those nominations.
