Nukes, nudes and Nolan … but staid Oscars fail to detonate
No film could match Oppenheimer’s nuclear power. Christopher Nolan’s biopic won seven awards, which made for a surprise-free ceremony.
No film at the Oscars could match Oppenheimer’s nuclear power.
Director Christopher Nolan’s biopic won seven of the 13 awards it was up for, including best picture and a long overdue best director win for Nolan.
While it’s hard to argue against the virtues of Oppenheimer, it made for a safe, staid and surprise-free ceremony. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that acting great Al Pacino delivered the most anticlimactic best picture winner announcement in Oscar history. “Best picture … uh, I have to go to the envelope for that. And I will. Here it comes. And my eyes see Oppenheimer?,” the 83-year-old announced, to hesitant applause.
Nolan, 53, has been nominated five times in the past for writing and directing — the first came in 2000 for Memento — but this evening saw the British director’s first-ever victory. Nolan, who is better at spouting facts than he is exhibiting emotion, used his best director speech to highlight that “Movies are just a little bit over 100 years old.”
“Imagine being there 100 years into painting or theatre. We don’t know where this incredible journey is going from here. But to know that you think that I’m a meaningful part of it means the world to me,” he said.
The film’s star Cillian Murphy won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal as the haunted physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. A first time nominee, the 47-year-old “proud Irishman” used his speech to thank his decades-long collaborators, Nolan and producer Emma Thomas. “It’s been the wildest, most exhilarating, most powerfully satisfying journey you’ve taken me on over the last 20 years,” Murphy said. “I owe you more than I can say.”
Straying from the self-effacing, extremely British Oppenheimer acceptance speeches was Robert Downey Jr., who bagged the best supporting actor trophy for his role as Oppenheimer’s government nemesis, Lewis Strauss, and used his speech to thank his “terrible childhood and the Academy … in that order.”
Nolan wasn’t the only 21st century auteur to win their first Oscar: the American director Wes Anderson, a four-time nominee, was finally recognised for his short film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. The 54-year-old The Grand Budapest Hotel director wasn’t there to accept his trophy, as host Jimmy Kimmel joked, he was probably busy “building a diorama out of corduroy.” Another missing winner was the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, whose final outing for Studio Ghibli, the challenging The Boy and The Heron, beat out favourite Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, in the best animated film category.
Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Barbie lost all but one of the eight awards it was nominated for. It won best song for the melancholy ballad ‘What Was I Made For,’ making pop star Billie Eilish, 22, the youngest person ever to have won two Oscars, having taken out best song in 2022 for her Bond theme ‘No Time to Die.’
And while team Barbie may have been this evening’s biggest loser, they seemed like the only A-listers who were having any fun. The film’s impossibly charismatic Ken, Ryan Gosling, shocked the starchy telecast with some much-needed vigour with his pomp performance of the film’s song ‘I’m Just Ken.’ Which saw the 43-year-old actor, decked out in a shockingly pink sparkly suit, with matching gloves and a cowboy hat, serenade his visibly embarrassed co-star Margot Robbie, rock out beside Guns N’ Roses’ Slash on the guitar, and force the crowd to sing-along.
The tightest race of the major categories was best actress, which saw Poor Things’s Emma Stone inch out Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone, and take out her second Oscar — her first was for 2016’s La La Land. The 35-year-old was visibly frazzled in accepting in her award, perhaps it was because she didn’t expect to win, or perhaps it was because her dress had split up the back: “I think it happened in I’m Just Ken,” she said.
What was supposed to be a face-off between Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s Barbie and Australia’s Tony McNamaraPoor Things for best adapted screenplay saw first-time screenwriter and director Cord Jefferson take home the prize for his ripsnorting satire American Fiction. Jefferson, the former editor of Gawker, used his acceptance speech to make a plea for the “risk-averse” movie industry to invest in more mid and low-budget films, “Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies. Or 50 $4 million movies.”
It is surprising that a film as challenging as Jonathan Glazer’s holocaust drama The Zone of Interest got a look-in from The Academy at all. The bruising film, based on Martin Amis’ novel about a German family living next to a Nazi camp, became the first British film to win best international feature, and also won best sound. In his speech Glazer, a first-time nominee, decried “the victims of dehumanisation,” in both Israel and Gaza. “We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” he said.
20 Days in Mariupol, Associated Press journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s film about the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, became the first ever Ukrainian film to win an Oscar, when it took out the prize for best documentary feature. “I wish I’d never made this film,” he said in his speech. “I wish I’d been able to exchange this for Russia never attacking Ukraine.”
There were no flowers for the Australian nominees, but there was a flashy new advertisement for the AUKUS pact. The 30-second advertisement aired in between award categories during the American telecast. So they’ll give us a nuclear submarine, but a trophy is too much to ask for?
The 2024 Oscar Winners
Best Picture
Oppenheimer
Best Director
Christopher Nolan - Oppenheimer
Best Actor
Cillian Murphy - Oppenheimer
Best Actress
Emma Stone - Poor Things
Best Supporting Actor
Robert Downey Jr. - Oppenheimer
Best Supporting Actress
Da’Vine Joy Randolph - The holdovers
Best Adapted Screenplay
American Fiction
Best Original Screenplay
Anatomy of a Fall
Best Visual Effects
Godzilla Minus One
Best Costume Design
Poor Things
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Poor Things
Best Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Best Production Design
Poor Things
Best Sound
The Zone of Interest
Best Film Editing
Oppenheimer
Best Original Score
Oppenheimer
Best Original Song
‘What Was I Made For’ - Barbie
Best Live-Action Short Film
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Best Documentary Short Film
The Last Repair Shop
Best Documentary Feature Film
20 Days in Mariupol
Best International Feature Film
The Zone of Interest
Best Animated Feature Film
The Boy and the Heron
Add your comment to this story
Why George Harrison’s only child long believed his dad was a gardener
It wasn’t until he was seven that the son of the Beatle realised his father was much more than a weekend strummer.
Powderfinger’s only real successor? Ball Park Music excels again
This Brisbane quintet has continued to pump out excellent albums at a regular clip, exploring more mature themes without ever losing its winning sensibility and penchant for a wry chorus lyric.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout