Moving Pictures: Lincoln was better than Argo

It is ridiculous and even pathetic that the fun caper movie “Argo” should have beaten out “Lincoln” for best picture.

Was “Lincoln” just too patriotic for the Academy’s voters? They seem to have been smoking a lot more grass this year than usual.

At least Daniel Day-Lewis was recognized with his richly deserved third Oscar for what ranks with George C. Scott’s “Patton” and Sir Ben Kingsley’s “Gandhi” as one of the greatest most extraordinary biographical recreations on film ever made.

But it was still beyond shameful that “Lincoln’s” director Steven Spielberg, best supporting actress nominee Sally Field and scriptwriter Tony Kushner did not bring home gold statuettes too.

Now, one’s grief and outrage at these egregious miscarriages of justice should not be taken to excess. Spielberg is the definitive American movie-maker of the past half century. The eternally underrated Ms. Field already has two Oscars to call her own and knocks it out of the ballpark whenever she’s given a truly impossible role to tackle. And Kushner is certainly our preeminent playwright by a marathon’s length.

None of them needed the award, and none of their extraordinarily full, wealthy and successful lives will be blighted by not getting it. They just simply deserved it. Their work was head and shoulders above all the nominees who beat them. It is as simple as that.

Martin Sieff

Martin Sieff is an editor at Sputnik, the Russian-owned news organization. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East (2008), Gathering Storm (2014) and Cycles of Change: The Three Great Eras of American History and the Coming Crisis that will Lead to the Fourth (2014). Follow Martin on: @MartinSieff