The choice of Casey Affleck or Denzel Washington for Best Actor will reveal a lot about Hollywood

ANALYSIS: Despite his finest performance, Leigh Paatsch explains how politics could mean Casey Affleck is pipped at the post to the Best Actor Oscar.

• Leigh Paatsch predicts the 2017 Oscar winners
• Best Oscar looks of the modern era
• What critics wont say about Oscar favourites
• Inside Casey and Ben Affleck’s sibling rivalry
• Hollywood megastars who photobomb on the red carpet

COULD we have the envelope please?

And the Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role should go to ... Casey Affleck for Manchester By the Sea.

However, it may very well not.

And if what is clearly the finest performance of any 2017 nominee, male or female, ultimately goes unrecognised by Oscars voters, it will be for reasons that have nothing to do with the exemplary calibre of Affleck’s work.

Affleck has quite rightly been considered the frontrunner for Best Actor Oscar honours since Hollywood’s annual awards assembly line first starting moving in November.

However, the strong wind that was once at his back is now a faint breeze.

Actor/producer Matt Damon, actor Casey Affleck and director Kenneth Lonergan at the Annual Academy Awards Nominee Luncheon in LA this month.

Late last month, Fences star Denzel Washington came from nowhere to beat Affleck at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. This is a crucial lead-up event that traditionally indicates the momentum of an Oscars nominee as the big night draws near.

An unforeseen two-horse race for the Best Actor Oscar will now go right down to the wire. In a year where there should be daylight between Affleck and the rest of the field.

So what exactly is hobbling Casey Affleck’s stride as he makes his final lunge at the Oscars finish line?

It all goes back to a pair of sexual harassment suits that were filed against Affleck in a US civil court in 2010.

Joaquin Phoenix (left) and Casey Affleck collaborated on the prank doco I’m Still Here. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

Two women who had worked in key creative roles on I’m Still Here — an ill-fated “prank” documentary directed by Affleck about his close friend Joaquin Phoenix — alleged Affleck behaved in an ickily inappropriate manner on a number of occasions during the shoot.

Though Affleck vehemently denied the charges when the news first broke, the actor later saw fit to pay undisclosed settlements to both of his accusers, producer Amanda White and cinematographer Magdalena Gorka.

Leigh Paatsch’s Oscar predictions

CLICK HERE

The case was dropped, and a few iron-clad confidentially agreements were placed over any holes the controversy might have put in Affleck’s reputation.

In any other era in showbusiness history, that would have been that for the I’m Still Here affair.

While the finer details of those suits against Affleck do not make for pleasant reading — and do certainly call into question his moral character on several fronts — Hollywood has consistently forgiven and forgotten far worse.

Director and actor Woody Allen, pictured with his Blue Jasmine leading lady, Cate Blanchett, has remained in demand despite several scandals. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) Picture: AP

Just ask anyone who has ever collaborated with filmmaker Woody Allen over the past 25 years. Or those who cheered when Roman Polanski took out 2002’s Best Director Oscar for The Pianist.

However, in the current cultural climate that has swept the United States, the stains of past transgressions, proven or otherwise, are no longer fading away so easily.

Once the trophies really started rattling aboard Affleck’s Manchester By the Sea bandwagon late last year, a number of American media outlets began revisiting his less-than-convincing handling of the I’m Still Here allegations.

All of the sudden, the folksy narrative that Manchester By the Sea’s publicity strategists had carefully designed to accompany Affleck all the way to the Oscars — the quiet achiever finally stepping out of the shadow of his big movie-star brother Ben — was no longer what Academy voters wanted to hear.

Actors Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams at the 32nd Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Picture: Getty

On the few awkward occasions that Affleck has deigned to acknowledge the size of the ethical elephant that has stomped into the room, he has generally grumbled something about how people can say anything they like about anybody these days.

A far cry from Affleck’s strident stance on the matter back in 2010, where he spoke loud and often of “desperate, fabricated claims” and “extortion tactics.”

(If anything, Affleck might have been better to stick with that aggressive line of attack all along. Especially now that the words “fake news” form the most powerful weapon of mass rebuttal the world has ever seen.)

Therefore this year’s Best Actor Oscar category could boil down to choices that have little to do with comparing the relative virtues of the nominees’ work, and everything to do with the personal virtues of the nominees themselves.

“Upstanding citizen” Denzel Washington is real chance at beating Casey Affleck to the Best Actor Oscar for his role in Fences. (David Lee/Paramount Pictures via AP)

If Denzel Washington wins, it will be primarily because of the long-held perception he is a good, upstanding citizen. His performance in Fences is strong, but lacks both the nuanced range and focus displayed by Affleck.

As a result, the Oscars — and Hollywood as a whole — will take a serious credibility hit for being unable to separate the art from the artist.

After decades of telling us it was all about merit, the Academy Awards will now be seen as a mere popularity contest.

Which is not to say a win for Casey Affleck — deserving as it is — will be a real win for Hollywood either.

In the eyes of some, this will amount to a continuation of a dubious double-standard the movie business has never bothered to address.

As long as some bucks get made, it doesn’t really matter which backs get slapped.

Originally published as The choice of Casey Affleck or Denzel Washington for Best Actor will reveal a lot about Hollywood