Introduction
Argo won best film but shouldn't it have been Katheryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty?
Films that were nominated
Silver Linings Playbook Amour Django Unchained Lincoln Life of Pi Les Miserables Beasts of the Southern Wild Zero Dark Thirty Argo
The Winner - Argo
Argo is an American historical drama thriller, directed and starring Ben Affleck, adapted from a 1999 book by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency operative, Tony Mendez. It dramatizes the clever rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran, Iran, by an American team pretending to shoot a sci fi film during the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis. It is suspenseful, at times funny and has an emotional resonance, but really, it feels that Affleck is not being pushed too hard to make an enjoyable thriller. It's not action packed - more about comedic moments and politics. I remember many movie lovers were stunned that this won best film at the time. It is nevertheless very watchable and with genuine edge of your seat moments - but there's not a lot of satire to the comedy. The film was also criticized for being historically inaccurate. On the whole, it is an interesting piece of declassified secret history and feels like Hollywood show business to this reviewer. The film, stars Affleck as Mendez, and Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman in supporting roles and was released in the United States on October 12, 2012. It earned seven Oscar nominations and won three, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.
Why Zero Dark Thirty should have won
Zero Dark Thirty is a much deeper more serious, more consistent and more accomplished thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow. It dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, after the September 11 attacks. This massive search eventually leads to his compound in Pakistan and the military raid in which he was killed on May 2, 2011. Zero Dark Thirty doesn’t shy away from the toughest subject - that Americans used torture techniques throughout detainee interrogation and some prisoners were killed during it - but the film keeps a non-judgmental view on the torture and lets viewers make up their own minds. Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, a fictional CIA intelligence analyst, obsessive about locating Bin Laden. The first part of the film examines, methodically, how he was found, how Pakistan helped the Americans - how some of leads the USA took were duds that ended in disaster. The second part is the actual operation. The raid on the complex feels like it is shot in real time and is as tense as anything in cinema - the nervous, jittery American team make mistakes, crashing one of their helicopters into the compound. And revenge comes at a price - Chastain’s haunted eyes in a quiet final shot is as unnerving as any of the action scenes. The film premiered in Los Angeles on December 10, 2012, and had its wide release on January 11, 2013. It received critical acclaim for its acting, direction, screenplay and editing, and was a box office office success, grossing $132 million worldwide. It appeared on 95 critics' top ten lists of 2012. It was also nominated in five categories at the 85th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress for Chastain, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Editing, which it won in a tie with Skyfall. It earned Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress in a Motion Picture for Chastain, who won.
Honourable mentions must also go to Life of Pi but particularly French film, Armour, a moving story of true love between an elderly couple, Anne and Georges - retired music teachers with a daughter who lives abroad. Anne suffers a stroke that paralyses the right side of her body - George looks after her. Sweet, complex but simply told and beautiful.
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