DDL in LINCOLN or Oldman in DARKEST HOUR

Oldman, but never mind winning, neither should have been nominated. They're low Top 10 of their years for me.

Mr. Lincoln. Not even comparable.

DDL by miles.

People really overrate DDL in Lincoln, I mean it's a great performance and better than Oldman (who was also great) but it's close - a lot closer than people will say. Oldman does something DDL rarely does and that is capture the joy of performance - they want his Churchill to be smaller than life . People are suckers for DDL's schtick and Lincoln was the 2nd best of the nominees just like Oldman.......I mean, again it wins this comparison but not by much.

It's not an equal to his 5 best (My Left Foot, In The Name of The Father, GONY, TWBB, Phantom Thread).........it's more like The Boxer or something like that - it's minor great.

I think you're selling Day-Lewis's performance here mighty short. It's not at all a ponderous impersonation of Lincoln, where one would focus on playing this mythical man chiseled from marble or mountainside, which is what I feel Oldman winds up doing with his Churchill. Day-Lewis's Honest Abe is a far cry from his larger-than-life, Lincoln-loathing Bill the Butcher, but it is still no less powerful. I would argue that Lincoln is a forerunner of sorts to what he does in Phantom Thread in that he shows a remarkable generosity to his co-stars, giving ground to Sally Field and James Spader and Tommy Lee Jones as necessary. Never have we seen Day-Lewis this subdued and yet so volcanic in a performance, and yet he remains so utterly riveting with every Kentucky-lilted word. It also helps that he's working off of one of the best biopic scripts in recent memory.

Oldman's performance, in contrast, falls short because it doesn't feel like I'm watching Winston Churchill. The makeup appliances are rather slipshod at times, making him look less like Churchill and more like a bloated infant, and Oldman is constantly at war with making it feel convincing while focusing on his performance. Day-Lewis never had to contend with that. What makeup effects that were done were so largely minimal as to be borderline unnoticeable. He managed to make himself look as close to Lincoln as anyone else has done, and it helps he was physically suited to the role. Oldman, by contrast, looks nothing like Churchill, and so the effort to bridge that gap hampers him more than helps him. It also doesn't help his case that he's working off of one of the worst biopic scripts in recent memory, and so soon after a definitive Churchill performance in Lithgow's.

My personal system of judgment is, does the movie and performance make me care about the character? I have to say, I know very little about the real Lincoln, and the movie didn't arise the desire of knowing more. It was quite an effort to get through it, and ddl didn't make me care about the character either.
I understand that Lincoln is a legend for Americans, but I don't expect foreigners to get enthusiastic about a movie on the life of Camillo Benso conte di Cavour if I don't put life in it.
That said, I agree with pacinoyes about other performances from ddl. I was a young woman when My left foot and In the name of the father were released, and Day Lewis impressed me. I couldn't feel the emotional connection with Lincoln.

I liked Oldman even though the movie wasn't that good, but DDL was so much better.

That might just be Day-Lewis' best performance, and that's saying something. I don't think Oldman's work in Darkest Hour is any more meaningful than the stuff people used to have a good laugh over, it's just wrapped in a more serious packaging. Literally nothing special, nor anything we've not seen before. Compare it to the performance he finally landed his first nomination for and it pales in comparison.