Another year goes by and here we go again. Roll out the red carpet; it’s time for the pampered elite to pat themselves on the back once more. Well done, everyone! Especially you, Baffleck. That beard you grew for Argo? – No wonder those pesky Iranian revolutionaries didn’t recognise you! On that note, I’d say it’s been a pretty good year for beards on all counts. From Daniel Day-Lewis’s chin-curtain, all the way to Hugh Jackman’s raggedy as hell fleece-like curler, we’ve had some astonishing facial hair on show. And let’s not forget that Osama Bin Laden himself, the absent villain of moody thriller Zero Dark Thirty, had absolutely cracking suburbs of the chin.

Apart from the beards, what other trends can we see? Well, last year was a very good year for nostalgia. Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris whisked us off into the world of early French cinema, with My Week with Marilyn mythologising Monroe to another extreme. But as Ronan Keating once sort of sang, they say it best when they say nothing at all – The Artist, by all means a refreshing Best Picture winner, is a silent reminder of the golden days. It’s a playful, toe-tapping nudge in the direction of Hollywood’s past.

And with the US’s modern history, it’s not difficult to see why there’s such fondness for the past. There’s been Reaganomics, the Bush eras, and more recently we’ve had the dreaded fiscal cliff (not to be confused with Cliff Richard’s new taxation-themed single), a handful more mass-shootings, as well as the distant hum of drone strikes. This year, Hollywood isn’t celebrating Hollywood, but rather the US itself.

Four of the five Golden Globes Best Picture nominees were explicitly dealing with US history, of which only Django Unchained doesn’t hold claims to factuality. All five, though, are about the triumph of American heroes. Take Lincoln, for example, a measured political romp that offers a neat historical reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. Skirting around the edges of the political mire, it mainly consists of wig-wearing white men calling each other nincompoops. Lincoln remains composed, stoic even, striking a chord in a time of deep uncertainty. It reminds American of its founding ideals on top of how far it has come, relatively speaking.

Then there’s the more politically ambiguous Zero Dark Thirty, a cold journalistic portrayal of the USA’s decade-long witch-hunt for Osama Bin Laden, carried by Jessica Chastain’s performance. Accused of colluding with the CIA by legitimising the torture of captives, it’s a divisive film. Yet it asks its audience to take it as given that Bin Laden must be killed; the question isn’t ‘should we kill him?’, but rather ‘where is he?’

However, neither Lincoln nor Zero Dark Thirty are as exultant as Ben Affleck’s Argo. At first an underdog, it has since swept the boards at the DGAs, BAFTAs and Golden Globes, and it’s looking likely that it will take home the coveted golden man as well. Argo is an escapist crowd pleaser, recreating history with embellishment. It’s a skewed look at the Iranian revolution’s hostage crisis that tip toes its way towards an ostentatious crescendo. Affleck allays America’s crisis of confidence with a resounding slam-dunk.

Dominic O’Key