Lincoln – Best Picture?

The production design is first rate and it’s obvious that no expense has been spared researching the details of life in 1865. One of the more interesting details that stuck with me was that Lincoln was utterly accessible. He travels with no security detail of any kind. Lincoln was the last true president of the people, it seems. Average citizens could simply show up at the White House and ask to speak to him about whatever local concerns they had. The film is an expertly crafted period piece that reminds us of all the things we now take for granted in a world brimming with electricity.

Lincoln’s world is a dark one often lit by candles and oil lamps, and largely bereft of color. There are numerous scenes conducted in near darkness save for the faces of the president and his trusted confidantes, illuminated like ghosts. People dress in black, Lincoln included, as if on the way to a funeral. Even when Lincoln ventures outside, the world is rendered in a sort of ashen gray. All of this detail works as an apt metaphor for the cloud of slavery hanging over the nation. Lincoln is surrounded by darkness and trying to lead America into the light.

As a society progresses it must necessarily look back on the earlier incarnations of itself with a mixture of amusement and sadness. It’s hard to imagine that slavery once existed to us, here and now, in the modern United States. But not only did it exist, it was also legal, approved of, a matter of dollars and cents, where the involuntary servitude of millions was a fact of daily life. It is hard to believe that people thought it was permissible to deny other people their most basic human freedoms, but it is a fact we would all do well to remember. Lincoln is about big ideas, about how societies legalize barbarism of the most savage kind, and turn a blind eye to atrocities when money is at stake. It shows us how human beings can be taught to believe any lie, no matter how outrageous, provided that the society at large is complicit in said lies. And it shows us the remarkable courage necessary to combat this ignorance. It’s powerful stuff.

Spielberg is, of course, one of the most famous and successful directors of all time – a beloved Hollywood staple. Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones have received numerous Oscar nominations between them, and there is the matter of Daniel Day Lewis to consider. Lewis is a beloved practitioner of the art of acting, and one of its most decorated veterans. He has been perfecting a variety of American accents in his films recently, the mid-western drawl of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood,  the “New Yawk”  of Scorsese’s The Gangs of New York, and now Lincoln represents the conclusion of his American trilogy. Look for the Academy to reward his performance and the film with multiple awards including Best Picture.

While Argo appears to have been gaining momentum in the Best Picture race following recent wins at both the Producer’s Guild Awards ( often a solid predictor for Best Picture) and the SAG awards, the film has a couple of huge forces working against it. The most obvious is that Affleck himself is not nominated in the Best Director category. While there have been splits through the years when films won Best Picture without their director also winning, in the modern era only Driving Miss Daisy has won Best Picture without it’s director being nominated at all. There is also the fact that Argo lacks Lincoln’s depth of talent and overall importance.

The Academy is probably ready to award Affleck the big prize, since he has been around for twenty years now and like Kevin Cosner, Mel Gibson, and Clint Eastwood, has proven himself to be a quality actor who is also adept behind the camera. Affleck is a triple threat, since he is also an accomplished writer, already having won an Oscar as co-writer of Good Will Hunting. I imagine Ben Affleck will be picking up a Best Picture award in the not too distant future, but it won’t be for Argo, nor should it be since head to head it’s not as good as Lincoln, plain and simple.

Lincoln is, of course, the odds on favorite with the Vegas line (click here to see the current odds) and that to me seems like a safe bet.

Tony Shea ( Editor-in-Chief, New York)

Tony Shea is based in New York, having recently moved from Los Angeles after more than a decade on the sunny coast. His short films have won numerous awards and screened at major festivals around the world including Comic-Con. As a musician, he is the lead singer for Los Angeles rock n’ roll band Candygram For Mongo (C4M) candygramformongo.com who has been a featured artist on Clear Channel Radio’s Discover New Music Program and whose songs have been heard on Battlestar Gallactica (Syfy Channel) and Unhitched (Fox) among other shows and films.

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