Lone Scherfig‘s “An Education” is one of the best movies of the year and one of my personal favorites, too. Oscar nominations won’t be announced for months still, but most pundits have already projected a best picture nod for the film and a best actress nod for its young star, Carey Mulligan. What is less clear, though, is if/how the film’s male stars — the great character actors Peter Sarsgaard and Alfred Molina (neither of whom have ever been nominated before) — will be recognized. That largely depends on how its distributor, Sony Pictures Classics, decides to campaign for them.

At the moment, there appears to be an internal debate about whether to promote Sarsgaard for best actor or best supporting actor. To me, the answer is obvious: go for supporting! Here’s why…

It’s the only category in which he has a chance. Presumably, the studio’s primary goal is to accumulate the most nominations that it possibly can for its film. While separate campaigns in three different categories — best actor, best actress, and best supporting actor — might, at first glance, appear to be the easiest means to that end, the reality is that it’s not. I believe that any effort to get Sarsgaard a best actor nod would be a lost cause (I can already identify 10 bigger names and showier performances that would appeal to voters more), whereas an early positioning of him as a candidate for best supporting actor might well result in nominations for both him and Molina (since, like Entertainment Weekly‘s Dave Karger, I’m struggling to identify enough worthy performances to even fill the category).

It’s important to acknowledge the facts: virtually all recent best actor nominees have been A-list stars (George Clooney in “Michael Clayton,” Sean Penn in “Milk,” Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” etc.), with the occasional exception of an actors’ actor around whom an entire film is built (David Strathairn in “Good Night, and Good Luck”; Tommy Lee Jones in “In the Valley of Elah,” Richard Jenkins in “The Visitor,” etc.). Sarsgaard is neither. Could he really compete for a nomination — much less a win — with the likes of Clooney in “Up in the Air,” Daniel Day-Lewis in “Nine,” Morgan Freeman in “Invictus,” and/or Robert De Niro in “Everybody’s Fine,” to say nothing of Colin Firth in “A Single Man,” Viggo Mortensen in “The Road,” or Clive Owen in “The Boys Are Back,” among others? The answer is no.

I do, however, think that he would stand an excellent chance in the best supporting actor race, and not only because there is such little competition. Sarsgaard’s sizable part straddles the line between a co-lead and a supporting part — it could plausibly be labeled either, so let’s call him a “straddler” — which is precisely the sort that the Academy has increasingly rewarded during the past three decade, in both the male and female supporting categories, over the much smaller character roles that it used to celebrate (think Walter Brennan and Thelma Ritter).

Let’s face it, folks: these days, in the supporting categories, size matters! I like to call it “the tallest midget phenomenon”: one or at most two genuine character actors (like Michael Shannon in “Revolutionary Road” or Viola Davis in “Doubt”) get nominated; the other slots go to straddlers like Sarsgaard; and one of the latter sort — usually the one with the most screen time — ultimately wins. If you think I’m imaging this, consider the long list of straddlers who have done well in the supporting categories over the past three decades, particularly in the 2000′s…

• Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon” (1973) WON
• Robert De Niro in “The Godfather, Part II” (1974) WON
• Timothy Hutton in “Ordinary People” (1980) WON
• Jessica Lange in “Tootsie” (1982) WON
• Samuel L. Jackson in “Pulp Fiction” (1994)
• William H. Macy in “Fargo” (1996)
• Benicio Del Toro in “Traffic” (2000) WON
• Marcia Gay Harden in “Pollock” (2000) WON
• Ethan Hawke in “Training Day” (2001)
• Jennifer Connelly in “A Beautiful Mind” (2001) WON
• Catherine Zeta-Jones in “Chicago” (2002) WON
• Tim Robbins in “Mystic River” (2003) WON
• Thomas Haden Church in “Sideways” (2004)
• George Clooney in “Syriana” (2005) WON
• Jake Gyllenhaal in “Brokeback Mountain” (2005)
• Jennifer Hudson in “Dreamgirls” (2005) WON
• Cate Blanchett in “Notes on a Scandal” (2006)
• Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men” (2007) WON
• Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Doubt” (2008)
• Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight” (2008) WON

Concerned that a supporting push for Sarsgaard might push out Molina due to (a) a lack of space in the category and/or (b) the disparity in the sizes of their parts? Don’t be — I’d point you to (a) the lack of competition this year and/or (b) the 64 instances throughout the 81 years of the Oscars in which one film produced two or more nominees in the same category, 31 of which were in the supporting category and several of which featured one performance that was significantly larger than the other(s). Of just those bulleted above: O’Neal beat Madeline Kahn; De Niro beat Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg; Hutton beat Judd Hirsch; Lange beat Teri Garr; and Zeta-Jones beat Queen Latifah.

Would a supporting campaign for Sarsgaard attract negative attention? I don’t think so. “An Education” is Carey Mulligan’s movie; anyone who has seen it knows that much! The entire cast is very good, but she’s great — she’s in nearly every scene; she physically and emotionally morphs from a naive schoolgirl to a worldly-wise woman; and she makes the audience fall in love with her along the way. (Sarsgaard and Molina graciously acknowledged as much themselves following a screening in Toronto!) Therefore, most people would have no problem accepting the argument that every other performance in the film — including Sarsgaard’s — is supporting hers.

If the studio doesn’t push Sarsgaard for supporting, as is obviously their prerogative, he’ll go the way of Michael Sheen in “The Queen” and “Frost/Nixon” — nowhere. If they do, however, they’ll have the added comfort of knowing that he’s not the only straddler contending in the category this year: Matt Damon (“Invictus”) is the early favorite to win.

Photo: Alfred Molina and Peter Sarsgaard, foreground, in “An Education.” Courtesy: Sony Pictures Classics.