In the days after “Argo”
won best picture at the ceremony on Sunday, it’s been a parlor game
among Hollywood types to figure out why “Lincoln” lost. After all, it
had all the hallmarks of an Academy Award-dominating film: a venerated
director; a celebrated, erudite scriptwriter in the Pulitzer
Prize-winning Tony Kushner; a landmark role for Mr. Day-Lewis; good
reviews and even better box office; and, not least, millions to spend on
campaigning.
Lobbying voters is frowned on by the Academy and yet a necessity of the
monthslong award cycle. This season, insiders said, the team behind
“Lincoln” — executives at DreamWorks and Disney — overcampaigned,
leaving voters with the unpleasant feeling that they were being
force-fed a highly burnished history lesson. “It was a good movie, not
sliced bread,” one veteran awards watcher said. [...]
There may have been other reasons “Lincoln” fell by the wayside. Dimly
illuminated, to replicate the lighting of the period, and stuffed with
long passages of speechifying by waistcoated, bearded men, the film did
not play well on DVD screeners (nor, perhaps, did another historically
based competitor, “Zero Dark Thirty”). Cynics also say that Mr. Spielberg, as Hollywood’s reigning titan, was primed for a takedown
— envy being as motivating a force as greed in this industry — and that
voters were enthralled by the comeback story that Mr. Affleck
represented.
Somehow Mr. Affleck could not overcampaign, or at least, his combination
of movie-star charm and tabloid comeuppance won people over. Also, he
talked film references like an expert. Which, having won an Oscar at 25
(for writing “Good Will Hunting” with Matt Damon) after a career as a child actor, this college dropout turned director pretty much is.
The Carpetbagger explains: