I’m writing this post as part of the Supporting Actress Blogathon over at StinkyLulu, where writers rally behind their favorite supporting actresses and explain why they deserve Oscar Nominations.

And let me tell you, if there were a march on Washington for not-quite-leading ladies, I would be there with a huge poster that read “DIANNE WIEST NOW!” Or maybe “DYIN’ FOR DIANNE!” Or even “DIANNE WIEST FOR PRESIDENT!” But that might confuse things.

My point is that in the movie Rabbit Hole, which follows a couple that’s learning to cope with the grief of losing their son, Wiest casts a spell so delicate that you barely know she’s using magic.

As Nat, the mother to Nicole Kidman’s Becca, she offers a vision of what grief becomes. She also lost a child, you see, many years ago, and every time Becca flies into a rage or breaks down in sobs, you see Wiest swallowing a storm of her own. With a tight smile or purposeful placement of her hands in her lap, she conveys her own sense of loss, her desperate love for her living children, her enormous sympathy… all of it.

Or at least, that’s what I see in her performanc. Often, Wiest just sits quietly, pulsing with focused energy, and I get to interpret her feelings. Very few actors can fill their stillness with so much presence.

When Nat speaks, Wiest is just as impressive. For instance, in one of the best-written, best-performed scenes of the year, Nat and Becca stand in Becca’s basement, and Becca asks when the ache goes away. Never, Nat says. Grief is like a brick in your pocket, and when you reach in for something else, you brush your hand against it and say, “Oh. That.”

I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the central image in what she says, and Wiest evokes it with weariness, resignation, and even a little mirth. Watching that scene, I got the sense that she was laughing at how impossible it all was… because what else could she do? Again, though, that’s what I took from the scene. Wiest’s work and David Lindsay-Abaire’s script tell us enough to make us feel, but withhold enough to let us wonder.

How perfect that this ambiguity is created by a supporting character: Nat is there, after all, to help us reflect on the central turmoil in Becca and her husband’s lives. By allowing us to ask so many questions and feel so many things, she gives context and depth to their narrative.

Despite all this, however, Rabbit Hole is being largely ignored by award voters. (Only Nicole Kidman–very deserving—seems like a candidate for an Oscar nod.) I won’t be surprised if Wiest’s name isn’t called on nomination day, but it should be. Yes, she already has two Oscars for Hannah and Her Sisters and Bullets Over Broadway, not to mention a third nomination for Parenthood, but she’s earned another invitation to the Big Dance.