Awards presented March 21, 1999
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
Shakespeare in Love. I love this movie. And ordinarily I would second the Academy's endorsement of a charming romance, with a lovely script (Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, who won) and fine performances (Joseph Fiennes, who should have been nominated, Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench, who were and won). But it has developed a reputation as one of the Academy's least-deserving winners because there was a clear favorite among moviegoers.
... when it should have gone to ...
Was Steven Spielberg shafted again? He did win his second best-director Oscar, and there's no doubt in my mind that he deserved it. I'd go so far as to say that there should have been riots if he had been denied it. But this extraordinary movie, which gave one a visceral sense of what it was like to go into combat, should have been named best picture. It also won for Janusz Kaminski's cinematography and for Michael Kahn's editing, as well as for sound and sound effects editing. Robert Rodat's screenplay lost (to
Shakespeare in Love), perhaps because of the artificiality of its frame story, in which the elderly Ryan returns to the cemetery in Normandy, an over-sentimental and rather preachy section, in glaring contrast to shattering reality of the wartime scenes. But the rest of
Saving Private Ryan does so many things so memorably that it's easy to forgive its lapses.
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