Ahead of the Academy Awards, Jonathan Freedland celebrates Steven Spielberg’s timely tale of press freedomFor a man who is the world’s most successful film-maker, Steven Spielberg has a remarkably thin record at the Oscars.
Of course, this points to the perennial Spielberg debate: is his accomplishment chiefly commercial, measured in box-office receipts, rather than artistic? Are his films bankable and crowdpleasing rather than great? Among those who take the former view, the fact that a director first nominated by the Academy 40 years ago – for Close Encounters of the Third Kind – has only won the best picture prize once (for Schindler’s List), is a critical piece of evidence.
Sure, he has been nominated often and been named best director twice (for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan), but in a career as long and lucrative as his, those look like relatively slim pickings.In truth, that
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