30 Oscar losers that should have been Oscar winners
By Emily Scott
Saving Private Ryan losing to Shakespeare in Love– Best Picture (1999)
The Winner
Shakespeare in Love. A fictional account of Shakespeare’s romance with a fictional woman named Viola, which happened as he was writing Romeo and Juliet. Featuring Gwyneth of Goop fame, and Fiennes (not the Voldemort one, but his brother). A sweet period piece that plays around with cross-dressing, the marriage plot, and muses, as one does when one is Shakespeare.
The Loser
Saving Private Ryan, AKA the literal best war film ever made (don’t @ me). Spielberg and Hanks and a little baby Damon. Told the incredibly heart-wrenching story of a group of soldiers sent to find a private whose brothers had died, and send him home.
Why It Was Wrong
This category was stacked, to be sure. Saving Private Ryan, Life is Beautiful, Elizabeth, and The Thin Red Line were the other nominees. But pretty much everyone agreed that the frothy rom-com that is Shakespeare in Love had no place winning the golden statue. Sure, it’s a good movie. But Saving Private Ryan is an epic.
Popular theory is that, with three World War II movies nominated, the votes of the Academy members were split. In particular, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line had Academy voters who preferred war movies trying to decide which was their favorite depiction. The idea is that, after the votes split, Shakespeare in Love had the highest total and thus, came out on top.
Saving Private Ryan redefined what a war movie could be. The opening scene at the Battle of Normandy is worth of an Oscar in itself. But it’s the movie’s focus on individual soldiers, on their personal struggles, that sets it apart. The action sequences in the movie act to advance the story of these characters, not the other way around. While Shakespeare in Love was an imaginative and enjoyable movie, Saving Private Ryan stays with you well beyond that.