The 1999 Academy Awards

March 21, 1999: The date of the Academy's most egregious mistake.

On this day, the slick marketing of Shakespeare in Love swept the Best Picture Oscar out from under Saving Private Ryan, one of the most important films ever made. As it happened, you could feel the Academy fizzling into insignificance.

Saving Private Ryan didn't deserve to win; it needed to win. This is a film that goes beyond art, beyond creative merit. It's more than mere storytelling because it imbues understanding upon its audience. It delivers, in startling clarity, the danger and heroism exhibited in the battles of World War II.

Worthy Non-nominees Babe: Pig in the City The Big Lebowski A Bug's Like Bulworth The Celebration Dark City Late August, Early September Out of Sight Pi Primary Colors Run Lola Run Rushmore A Simple Plan The Truman Show Without Limits

Had director Steven Spielberg released only the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan he still would have deserved a Best Picture nomination. Within that half-hour, moviegoers untouched by war were thrown into the tension and chaos of a battlefield. Sitting in the theatre, I understood for the first time what my grandfather had confronted. He stormed five different beaches in five different invasions — all smaller in scale than the Normandy invasion represented in Ryan, but all filled with the same fear and massacre. Five times he'd risked his young life. Five times he'd beaten the odds.

Before seeing Ryan I considered World War II to be an important, yet distant, event in world history. It was a footnote in my mind's catalogue of battles, names and lessons learned. Ryan's opening sequence yanked those few trivial thoughts to the fore, showing me how important World War II was and propelling me to learn more.

I turned to my grandfather. Sitting at his kitchen table one evening, I asked question upon question — each answer bringing me deeper into his experiences and closer to understanding. He described what he had seen, where he had fought, and how, to this day, he remembers the horrible smell. During that three-hour conversation, I learned from a first-hand participant about the realities of war. Obscure notions I had about glory, heroism and the undying will to live were shaped and defined in those hours. When you learn that honor and sacrifice actually exist, life is filtered through a clearer lens. The clarity I found that evening never would have reached me without Saving Private Ryan.

So imagine how I felt when I saw the merry cast and crew of Shakespeare in Love celebrating their surprise Best Picture win. It was beyond comprehension. How could a flighty romp about a lovelorn playwright be superior to a film that brought real respect and real understanding into the real world? It was a disgrace. It was an injustice to all who had fought in World War II.

Equating "disgrace" and "injustice" with something like the Oscars may prompt many to dismiss my comments as mere rantings, but before you toss these thoughts aside, consider men like my grandfather. Think about the horrors they confronted and the sacrifices they made. Then realize that Saving Private Ryan is probably the closest we'll ever come to understanding what these soldiers experienced. Perhaps then you'll see that "injustice" is too timid a term for the mistake the Academy made.