From the moment that Saving Private Ryan was released in July of 1998, Steven Spielberg was the favorite to win that year’s Best Director Oscar. Ryan scored that rare combination: Not only was the film popping up all over critics’ Top 10 lists, but it was also 1998′s box-office king, raking in $216.5 million domestically. Spielberg’s direction was no doubt integral to the film’s success. Ask anyone about Ryan, and you’re bound to hear about the sheer visceral power of its D-Day battle scene and the heart-wrenching impact of the film’s coda.
But despite the popularity of Spielberg’s win, since we’ve been revisiting all the major Oscar categories from 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years ago in our Recall the Gold survey of entertainment industry players and EW readers, we have to ask the question: Were fellow nominees John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line), Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful), and Peter Weir (The Truman Show) just as worthy to take home the golden statue?
Madden accomplished the tricky balancing act of making surprise Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love both a sexy historical romance and a droll comedy. But many voters probably dug the film’s astute writing more than its direction (the script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard won Best Original Screenplay). Then there was Terrence Malick, the reclusive director who made Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s, and then disappeared from filmmaking for 20 years until 1998′s mesmerizing The Thin Red Line. However, for every person who thought the film was a philosophical masterwork, there was another who considered it an indulgent bore — buttered popcorn doesn’t sit very well with three hours of narration about the destructive nature of mankind.
Whether or not Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful went well with artery-clogging snacks also depended on whom you talked to. For numerous voters, the WWII drama was a charming and compassionate testament to a father’s love for his son; others accused Benigni of trivializing the Holocaust. Plus, the Academy had the option of honoring Benigni in the Best Actor category, which they did instead. As for Weir, the director deserves credit for capturing a surprisingly multifaceted performance from Jim Carrey, an actor who up until that point was most admired for his ability to contort his body as if it were Silly Putty. Weir also crafted a science-fiction parable with arresting imagery and prophetic cultural relevance (the film forecasted America’s infatuation with reality TV). But The Truman Show failed to secure a Best Picture nomination, and no director since 1930 has been able to win a directing Oscar without his or her film also contending for the top prize.
So, PopWatchers, take out your Oscar pens and tell us which director you thought should have won in our poll below. If you need a reminder of each film, check out the clips after the jump. While you’re at it, if you haven’t already, vote in all the other polls from our ongoing walk down Oscar’s memory lane. Tomorrow, we’ll examine the 1993 Best Supporting Actress race, and you can check out coverage of this year’s awards contenders in Dave Karger’s Oscar Watch blog.
addCredit(“Eric Draper/AP”)
Roberto Benigni, Life is Beautiful
John Madden, Shakespeare in Love
Terrence Malick, The Thin Red Line
Steven Spielberg, Saving Private Ryan – (bloody violence NSFW)
Peter Weir, The Truman Show – (trailer)
Read next item:
U2, Elton John, and the Killers record Xmas songs for charity
This is ALMOST as easy a call as Peter Jackson winning Best Director in 2003. It HAS to be Spielberg.
The only other nominee I would even entertain is Weir.
These were all fantastic films, but do any of the others have the raw intensity of “Saving”? Nope.
have we recall’d julia roberts underserving 2000 Oscar for Erin Brockovich yet???
Paige, learn to do math. 2000 is not 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25 years ago from 2008.
I like Malick and Weir a lot but Spielberg did a beautiful job.
What a waste of time. Saving Private Ryan deserved everything it got. Those other movies are OVERRATED if anything.
This is pretty much a gimme…if only he could learn to get rid of the god awful “bookends” he attachs to these movies which actually hurts his finished product.
“Saving Private Ryan” is by far one of the, if not the, best war movies of the 20th Century. Taking away Steven’s OSCAR and replacing it with, let’s say, a “Shakes. in Love” win would be a travesty among travesties. Boo for you to assume otherwise!
The opening D-Day sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN is jaw-droppingly incredible… but after that, it’s a pretty bog-standard war film. (Plus, the framing device doesn’t actually work: the character revealed to be having the flashback did not witness the Normandy invasion.) Ultimately, I have no beef with Spielberg getting Best Director… but the Academy was 100% correct to give the Best Picture nod to the superior SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE over SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.
Giving Spielberg the Oscar for “Ryan” was a no-brainer. It was when “Shakespeare in Love,” won Best Picture, that I began to taste the bile that built up in the back of my throat. “Shakespeare in Love,” is clever and cute, but it never deserved best pic. If it was a better pic, then why didn’t the AFI select it as one of the 100 all time greatest? “Shakespeare” won because it was about actors, and since the bulk of the Academy voters are actors, they love movies about acting. That’s it in a nutshell. SPR was groundbreaking “Shakespeare in Love,” won an Oscar it truly never deserved.
Spielberg deserved the award. And “Private Ryan” was robbed of Best Picture for some reason. It is the only one of all the nominees that has any bit or is still shown annually on tv. It was also shown in schools.
I like “Shakespeare in Love” a lot, but Spielberg clearly deserved to win Best Director, if only for the amazing D-Day invasion sequence at the film’s beginning. “SPR” should also have won Best Picture but Harvey Weinstein’s innovative for the time Oscar-campaign led to the undeserving “Shakespeare in Love” winning. At least “SPR” was named by the AFI as one of the best 100 American films ever.
I like that Spielberg got the directing Oscar and “Shakespeare” the picture Oscar. Both are fantastic films and deserved the awards they won (Paltrow too, even though she hasn’t done much since). “Ryan” was a lot of spectacle, which is Spielberg’s forte, so it’s nice that he was recognized for it. And really, possibly only Weir deserved the award instead of him. Madden did a fantastic job, but looking back, you wonder how much of the movie’s kudos are attributable to him or actors. Or the atmosphere. Or the screenplay. Especially the screenplay! It was definitely the screenplay…
Malick for The Thin Red Line. The most beautifully devastating movie of all time.
But I doubt anyone else’ll see it that way.
It’s infuriating to think that someone would think that Spielberg DIDNT deserve this. It’s one of the most important and poignant movies of my generation. I have never been able to watch it more than once, but I will never forget the images it has ingrained in my mind. God Bless our Troops!
No question here: Spielberg is the greatest working director and deserved the award. I think the opening of ‘Saving Private Ryan’ is one of the best directed sequences in the history of film. Also, to continue my ‘Shakespeare in Love’ bashing, I must say, damn you Harvey Weinstein.