# Saving Private Ryan and the Oscars **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 20, 2005, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893 "2005-11-20T06:36:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/21 "2005-11-20T16:16:21Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Because **Shakespear in Love** was a far better movie. Actually no, it wasn’t. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/22 "2005-11-20T16:18:44Z")
> [@lissener](#): > > _Saving Private Ryan_ is nothing but the baldest prowar propaganda. If it had won Best Picture, my cynicism about the Oscars would have deepened just that much more. :rolleyes: Sorry, but that is just ludicrous. SPR was “prowar propoganda?” For one thing, just about everyone in the west was pro-our involvement in WWII. Second, after seeing the ABJECT HORROR of the D-Day scenes, how can you call it “pro-war propoganda?” That’s just incredibly, incredibly silly of you. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/23 "2005-11-20T16:22:01Z")
I think the answer to “How in the Hell did it lose the Best Picture Oscar to Shakespeare in Love?” is a simple one. The acting branch of the Academy is by far the largest percentage-wise of the various disciplines. And _SiL_ is a valentine to the acting community. It enshrines the process of acting as a difficult, often thankless, but ultimately ennobling one. For the actors in the Academy, that probably resonated more than the visceral abstractions of “War is Horrible”. Also, don’t forget that **The Thin Red Line** was also up for multiple Oscars that year, including Picture, so the “War is Horrible” vote was likely split a bit. Although **Elizabeth** was also up for Best Picture that year, its similarities to _SiL_ end with the period setting. One’s an intelligent comedy, the other a political thriller in historical trappings. Given the choices available, I’d say the right film won. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/24 "2005-11-20T16:26:06Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > That said, I’m not sure if Judi Dench deserved _her_ Oscar, considering how little screen time she had. At least she didn’t overplay the role, and the temptation must have been high. I read that Judi Dench herself was astonished that she won for that role. I think the Academy was actually rewarding her for past work that \*should \* have won, as sometimes happens. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/25 "2005-11-20T16:32:39Z")
I think Dench benefitted from two things: (1) She steals every scene she’s in. Given the quality of the cast around her, this is no small achievement. She’s also throughout the film so it feels like she has more screen time than she actually does–less than 10 minutes in actuality, IIRC; and (2) She was not up against very stiff competition. Her main threat, Kathy Bates, already had an Oscar. Two others (Brenda Blethyn, Rachel Griffiths) were from obscure British films many Academy members may have missed, and the last (Lynn Redgrave) was seriously overshadowed by her nominated co-star Ian McKellen. If anyone was going to remember _G&M_, it would be for his performance, not hers. Plus, Dench lost Best Actress to Helen Hunt(!) the previous year. Dench is also likely to get her [5th nomination](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413015/) this year, once again for lead. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/26 "2005-11-20T16:37:19Z")
The loss to Helen Hunt the previous year was exactly what I was thinking of. The Academy kind of owed J.D. one. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/27 "2005-11-20T16:39:46Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > Actually no, it wasn’t. Yes, yes it was. SPR doesn’t suck you in…it just sucks. Tripe and manipulation, pure and simple. Just like every other Spielberg movie in the last 20 years. Sorry, but the man is a hack. A very talented hack, but he wouldn’t know an original thought if it clubbed him over the head with a tire iron. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/28 "2005-11-20T16:41:30Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Yes, yes it was. No, no it wasn’t. I won’t respond to the rest of your post, as it was nothing but anti-Spielberg drivel that didn’t approach within ten miles of objectivity or fact. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/29 "2005-11-20T16:47:27Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > No, no it wasn’t. I won’t respond to the rest of your post, as it was nothing but anti-Spielberg drivel that didn’t approach within ten miles of objectivity or fact. This is how religious wars start! 😃 Luckily for us, they make enough movies by enough different directors that everybody can have their own opinions without bloodshed. Much. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/30 "2005-11-20T17:02:41Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > There’s very little doubt, if you watch the movies honestly and without any preconceived auteur theory opinions about the directors, that “Saving Private Ryan” is a more technically impressive film - it’s one of the most technically impressive war films ever made. It’s also vastly more emotionally involving than “Shakespeare in Love,” and the subject matter is a bit more serious. Tom Hanks’s understated performance is terrific. Few movies have ever presented the audience with such a visceral and honest look at the horror of combat. THAT was the point of the movie, and it did it awfully well. Maybe for the first 20 minutes or so and then it could have ended. After that pretty bad. For starters, an 8-man squad doesn’t fight its way several miles through enemy held territory. To fire a weapon under such circumstances is disasterous. For another thing, Hanks needed to start with four more men so that he could have sent that constant complainer back under arrest with a three man escort and have the fourth as a replacement. ---
**Author:** ![fessie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@fessie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fessie)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/31 "2005-11-20T17:07:34Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > Maybe for the first 20 minutes or so and then it could have ended. Agreed. BTW, who’s John Wayne? ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/32 "2005-11-20T17:12:29Z")
> [@phungi](#): > > …the unnecessary attempt to appeal to their emotions… I am shocked (shocked!) to hear of a movie director appealing to emotion! Thank goodness the folks who brought us _Shakespeare in Love_ were above that sort of thing. Nope. No brazen appeals to emotion in that picture at all. (And of course, Shakespeare himself would have never thought of such a thing either.) Look, I actually think _Shakespeare in Love_ was an excellent film and deserved the Oscar over _Saving Private Ryan_, but you’re going to have to come up with a better criticism of SPR than the one you’ve offered. (What is an “unnecessary” appeal to emotion, anyway? I think the bookend scenes of SPR are excellent, and serve their purpose well – to remind us that those who fought the war still walk among us, and still carry the emotional scars of the experience.) In my own view it’s just a shame that these two fine films, and for that matter the also-excellent film _Elizabeth_, came out in the same year. Any one of the three would have beaten the pants off of _Titanic_ or _Gladiator_ or _A Beautiful Mind_, in my opinion. Just poor timing, really. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/33 "2005-11-20T17:23:39Z")
> [@fessie](#): > > BTW, who’s John Wayne? I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that. He richly merits being forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![Brynda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e79b87/32.png) [@Brynda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brynda)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/34 "2005-11-20T17:27:10Z")
I saw and enjoyed both movies the way God intended–in the movie theater. If you saw one at home and the other in the theater, you can’t compare them, not fairly, anyway. That said, while I loved them both, my vote goes to SIL for a more clever plot and fantastic dialogue. It was simply the more creative movie. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/35 "2005-11-20T17:35:57Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that. He richly merits being forgotten. :rolleyes: Amazing how this topic brings out all the nutty opinions. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/36 "2005-11-20T17:50:28Z")
I’m another person who wasn’t that impressed by _Saving Private Ryan_ - the Normandy beach scenes in the beginning were amazing. But after that it was a pretty standard war movie - a small squad of men on a mission to rescue one man. The same story has been used a hundred times before and _Saving Private Ryan_ didn’t add anything new to it. That said, I haven’t seen _Shakespeare in Love_, so I can’t compare the merits of the two films. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/37 "2005-11-20T18:02:05Z")
I personally think SPR lost because of the handheld camera shots. When people are getting motion sickness from a movie and have to sprint to the head halfway through it, that’s not a good thing. I enjoyed SPR greatly. At least the parts that I could watch. I had to wait to see the ending when it came out on DVD, and even then it still made me queasy from the motion sickness. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/38 "2005-11-20T18:25:15Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > I personally think SPR lost because of the handheld camera shots. When people are getting motion sickness from a movie and have to sprint to the head halfway through it, that’s not a good thing. I enjoyed SPR greatly. At least the parts that I could watch. I had to wait to see the ending when it came out on DVD, and even then it still made me queasy from the motion sickness. Those handheld shots won Janusz Kaminski his 2nd Oscar, so there were obviously enough people in the Academy who thought the cinematography was more than just nausea-inducing. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/39 "2005-11-20T18:37:22Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > Maybe for the first 20 minutes or so and then it could have ended. After that pretty bad. For starters, an 8-man squad doesn’t fight its way several miles through enemy held territory. To fire a weapon under such circumstances is disasterous. For another thing, Hanks needed to start with four more men so that he could have sent that constant complainer back under arrest with a three man escort and have the fourth as a replacement. As I said later on in the very same post you quoted, SPR does have some significant script problems, the unlikelihood of a rifle squad traipsing about the countryside that soon after D-day being one of them. The problem could have been solved any number of ways - just make it two months after D-Day, when the front is more opened up, and that alone would make the scenario likelier. I don’t have that much problem with Edward Burns’s character though; if they’d all been compliant little soldier boys it would have been boring. Besides, I was in the Army. Every eighth guy is a whiner. Obviously the various political explanations for why one movie got the Oscar over the other are probably more likely than any technical examination of the two films, but I’m just saying that I don’t see how, honestly, you can make a call. They have different strengths, because they’re different kinds of movies. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893/40 "2005-11-20T19:05:38Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > :rolleyes: Sorry, but that is just ludicrous. SPR was “prowar propoganda?” For one thing, just about everyone in the west was pro-our involvement in WWII. Second, after seeing the ABJECT HORROR of the D-Day scenes, how can you call it “pro-war propoganda?” That’s just incredibly, incredibly silly of you. First of all, the final sequence renders the entire rest of the movie propaganda. The first 98% = “war is hell.” The final 2% = “but MAN is it worth it!” The greater the hell portrayed, the more heroic the warrior. Besides which, it’s pretty rare that you can call right or wrong on the interpretation of a movie. But as far as that’s possible, turns out this time YOU’RE wrong. One of the all-reruns cable channels (TNT? USA? I fergit) recently showed SPR like 3 times in a row. All the ads finished with the announcement that the presentation of the film would be SPONSORED BY THE U.S. ARMY. Now I don’t know how you could come any closer to an objectively irrefutable definition of propaganda. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/saving-private-ryan-and-the-oscars/331893.md?page=3)