Okay, fair enough. It won BECAUSE it was a triumph over adversity film, and as Ronnie pointed out, REDS and RAIDERS...were both superior films. It didn't hurt that there were religious overtones, either. The Academy just loves that shit.
CHARIOTS won really because of the split-ticket situation.
In other words, Many in the Academy wanted to vote for RAIDERS, but more didn't because it wasn't serious enough to win the prize.
REDS got feverent support from critics, but many others thought it was too controversial* (commie-story released in the Reagan Decade!) and a few others thought it was too much of a DOCTOR ZHIVAGO rip-off.
Then some people liked ON GOLDEN POND.
Those 3 basically cancelled each other out, and CHARIOTS won as a result.
Look at the 2002 awards when people expected Marshall (CHICAGO) or Scorsese (GANGS OF NEW YORK) to win the Best Director Oscar that year, but because Marshall's work didn't impress that many people, and people felt giving it to Scorsese for a movie not good enough is a sham...
So instead, the dark horse Roman Polanski won for THE PIANIST, and in retrospect, it was the right call.
*=Whats funny is, Beatty showed REDS to President Reagan in 1981, and he quite liked it, except the ending (Reagan was a sucker for happy endings.)
