Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

Although her career started on television in 1993 just barely a teenager, Michelle Williams came to prominence in a primary role on the teen drama Dawson’s Creek. Yet, her big screen career would soon shift her from TV personality to great Hollywood star, one of the finest actors working today. In a career that’s lasted just under three decades, and which is sure to endure well beyond that, Williams has amassed an impressive array of cinematic credits along with 4 Academy Award nominations, all four of which are included below in my favorite Williams performances.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Williams’ first Oscar nomination came for Ang Lee’s ode to love with this modern American western where two shepherds (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) meet and fall in love in the sometimes inhospitable Rocky Mountains. Lee won the Oscar for Best Directing, but the film lost its deserved Best Picture award to the forgettable and benevolently racist Crash, a travesty that will go down in Oscar history as one of the worst since Citzen Kane lost to How Green Was My Valley. At least Valley would have been worthy of the accolade if Kane hadn’t been in competition that year.

Williams, Ledger, Gyllenhaal, and Anne Hathaway are four of their generation’s finest actors even if Gyllenhaal’s track record before this picture had been spotty at best. Hathaway and Williams have small parts in the film, with Ledger and Gyllenhaal taking the lead. All of the actors did wonderful work under Lee’s skilled direction, but it was Ledger who outshined them all. This was Ledger’s most tender and complex role and he did tremendously. That he lost to Philip Seymour Hoffman in an inferior performance was grating, but expected.

Blue Valentine (2010)

In Derek Cianfrance’s second film, Michelle Williams stars alongside Ryan Gosling in a film about the rocky relationship between Williams’ aspiring doctor and Dean’s high school dropout. The film follows their relationship from its early stages into the future where his drinking causes their relationship to fracture. As the pair navigate a marriage that has gone sour, Williams searches for a way to escape a reality not dissimilar to her parents’ and Gosling attempts to keep the relationship going in spite of its flaws.

Cianfrance handles the narrative well, giving humanity and depth to his characters that Williams and Gosling both evoke brilliantly. The film was shot with no rehearsals and few takes, which makes the end result magnificent with Williams and Gosling both shining in their roles in a film that never treats them bitterly. Gosling’s character has more nuance thanks to his fractious personality, but Williams has the more challenging character play, one whose convictions stand not as a weapon with which to hurt the relationship, but as a barricade to protect her from the toxic masculinity that faces her, even when the toxicity is coming from a man who she once loved.

My Week with Marilyn (2011)

They say that mimicry is easy, but film history is filled with strong performances from actors playing real people who break down those larger-than-life figures into people with whom we can intimately relate. Television director Simon Curtis helps find the connective tissue that binds audience to character in this look into the life of Marilyn Monroe as she begins work on Laurence Olivier’s The Prince and the Showgirl. Williams stars as Marilyn with Kenneth Branagh doing his best Olivier impression while Eddie Redmayne plays a fictional part as an assistant on the set who helps keep Marilyn on the straight and narrow, but begins to fall in love with a woman who is slowly falling apart.

Williams evokes the late Monroe with care and compassion, showing the audience a side to the popular public figure they may not be familiar with. She plays her as a woman who puts on a mask for the fans, but whose fragile psyche begins crumbling outside the public view, plagued by substance abuse and a sometimes self-destructive approach to life. Her pillar of a figure is given flawed depth in a superb performance. That the film around her wasn’t better is disappointing, but hers was one of the greatest biographical portrayals we’ve seen in recent decades.

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

The film’s title comes from the name of a city in Massachusetts where star Casey Affleck’s character once lived with his wife (Michelle Williams) and three children. A tragic accident led to the death of his children while his attempted suicide further eroded his relationship and ultimately ended in divorce, forcing him to move away and lead an asocial life. When his brother (Kyle Chandler) suffers a heart attack, he’s summoned back to his hometown where he’s informed that his brother has set Affleck as his son’s (Lucas Hedges) legal guardian.

Affleck is one of the best actors of his generation and this film brought him a richly deserved Academy Award in spite of the allegations of sexual misconduct at the time, both of which were related to his stunt film I’m Still Here and for which he has subsequently apologized. Williams, for her part, delivers a scorching performance as his ex-wife who still blames him for their children’s deaths, his alcoholism the contributing factor. It’s a simple story told well, a job of which Lonergan is always capable.

The Greatest Showman (2017)

For all the celebration that has surrounded composer-lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, what they turned out in The Greatest Showman was the first and only time I’ve been suitably impressed with their work. The film may ostensibly be a biopic of the life of P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman), but it’s about so much more than that. In its purest form, the musical is about acceptance and tolerance. The film also stars Zac Efron, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, and Keala Settle. Williams’ role is somewhat small, but she nails her late-film song “Tightrope” about her precarious relationship with a showman whose flare has put a strain on their relationship.

Gorgeous sets, costumes, and makeup work dominate the film with all of the actors providing wonderful musical performances. Ferguson is the only one in the cast to be dubbed, replaced by Loren Allred who’s rendition of “Never Enough” is one of the film’s highlights. That Ferguson mimics her vocals flawlessly is a testament to Ferguson’s skill. Jackman is terrific as the consummate showman who might have exploited the people in his circus to start, but as history would show (and not the film), he proved late in life to be a tireless advocate for those he once made money off of. The best song of the show, though, is “This Is Me,” a rousing call to courage for all of the maligned, mistreated, and ostracized. Those of all races, genders, sexualities, and more. It’s an anthem of unrivaled passion and beauty.