Ben Affleck‘s win at tonight’s DGA Awards will be the last clean-up operation, the final vanquishing. Those die-hard Lincoln supporters, huddling by campfires, can hear the tramp-tramp of General Santa Anna’s army. Laurence Olivier to Tony Curtis: “The night passes slowly…doesn’t it, Antoninus?”
If you had told me during last September’s Telluride Film Festival that Argo would win the Best Picture Oscar like the army of Alexander the Great conquering Persia, and that Affleck would ride into the conquered city on a white horse with rose petals thrown at his feet, I would say “what…? It’s a satisfying, well-made film as far as it goes but come on…this can’t be the conquering film of 2012. It’s not artful or majesterial enough.” But it is. This is what it’s come to. This is who and what we are. And all because Affleck was snubbed as a Best Director nominee by the Academy.
