The most likely Oscar winners in the categories of Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Actress in a Supporting Role are Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain and Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez, respectively. It’s hard to quarrel with their actual performances. Culkin, as the more outgoing but also rudderless in a pair of similar-aged cousins, is an utterly believable and electric as a live wire who at times seem to feel too deeply to function in the world; Saldaña is the one performer in Emilia Pérez who seems to really know what kind of movie she’s in and what she’s doing in it. Neither picture would be quite the same without them – in large part because they both having leading roles.

Yes, there are arguments to be made for placing them in this category. A Real Pain is really told from the Jesse Eisenberg character’s point of view, and Eisenberg does have a few more minutes of screen time. Saldaña is not the title character in Emilia Pérez, who may have more screen time in the back half of the film, as Saldaña’s character gradually becomes less central. Anyway, it’s not as if she’s the only one fudging the size of her role; her closest competition is probably Ariana Grande in Wicked, whose main claim to “supporting” status is not being Cynthia Erivo.

Indeed, these arguments are predicated on the bizarre idea that any given movie has, at most, one male lead and one female lead, if that, with everyone with even 30 seconds less screen time, whether co-lead or cameo, competing on the same vast field. This isn’t a brand-new phenomenon; there have always been Oscar debates about screen time and “category fraud.” It’s hard to blame Saldaña or Culkin in particular when recent “supporting” Oscar winners include Brad Pitt, the co-lead of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; Daniel Kaluuya, arguably the actual lead of Judas and the Black Messiah; and Viola Davis, the co-lead of Fences. Though sometimes a genuine supporting player like Laura Dern in Marriage Story comes through, the best thing an actor can do to win this category is simply be the star of the movie. It’s only natural that such a performance will look fuller and more complex than anyone running on a true supporting role – if any are even nominated.

This year, one movie has two such performances; naturally, it’s most likely to be rewarded for its lead. But as decent an impression of Bob Dylan as Timothée Chalamet does in A Complete Unknown, his work is supported – some might even say propped up – by Monica Barbaro, playing Joan Baez, and Edward Norton, playing Pete Seeger. Either one would make a fine winner, especially if the goal is to reward a genuine supporting performance.

It might seem as if Barbaro and Norton serve the same function in A Complete Unknown, and broadly they do: They’re both playing folk singers with more traditional ideas of how to give an audience what they want (in Baez’s case) and give the culture what it seemingly needs (in Seeger’s); they both butt up against Dylan’s obstinate desire to grow out of the folk tradition and follow his artistic muse. Their methodology in conveying this alienation, however, is neatly divided.

Barbaro spends a lot of her screen time singing, but this isn’t a performance that depends on the loveliness of her voice (though she does sound great). Rather, it depends on what she does while she’s singing – what she’s able to convey with her eyes as she regards her frequent duet (and sometime bedroom) partner Dylan, whose songs they sing and whose selfishness she comes to loathe. There are scenes where she has to convey a combination of that loathing, some sadness, and a genuine sense of love, all silently, while continuing to hit her notes perfectly for the crowd; a little too perfectly, by Dylan’s reckoning. Barbaro gives such a skillful performance that she’s able to show us exactly what Dylan means by this, allowing Baez a degree of careerist professionalism, while making her entirely sympathetic, even wise, for how she regards this flaky, arrogant visionary. Even when the movie gives her some unsubtle moments (“You’re kind of an asshole, Bob”), the control of her delivery smooths it out. She suggests both the whole other life she has outside of Dylan, and the unmistakable effect Dylan will have on it.

Norton, meanwhile, is more direct. One of his likely Oscar clips comes towards the end of the film, as Seeger pleads with Dylan to play a traditional, unplugged set at the Newport Folk Festival, rather than a group of new, full-electric songs; he uses a sweet if somewhat tortured metaphor about buckets of sand on a seesaw, about to reach a social tipping point. (It’s the most eloquent and heartfelt version of “play the hits!” you’re ever likely to hear.)  Beyond the specifics of impression, Norton turns his pleading, wheedling intensity into something more softly dadlike – and pure of heart, even when he’s calculating that Dylan is just the man who can put his movement over the top. He renders Seeger’s opposition as something noble and ideological, even if also potentially doomed.

Subtracting either performance from A Complete Unknown doesn’t completely doom the movie. At the same time, it’s hard to picture James Mangold’s film working nearly as well without these shaded portraits alongside the showier Chalamet work. Dylan is, by his nature, an elusive figure; Barbaro and Norton arguably do just as much as Chalamet to nail him down in a meaningful way. An Academy paying close attention to the “supporting role” designation would do well to vote for either of them. Unfortunately, there’s no sign that this creative accounting will stop here. Most likely, this category will continue to honor a whole lot of second leads, with genuine supporting players stuck waiting in the wings, quietly holding their movies together.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.