‘Oppenheimer’ dominated Oscars 2024 . Christopher Nolan’s biography of the creator of the atomic bomb, “Oppenheimer,” won Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, among six other honors.
Oscar Award-winning:
The film won numerous awards, including Best Director (Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.), Best Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema), Best Film Editing (Jennifer Lame), and Best Original Soundtrack (Ludwig Göransson).
“Movies are only a little over a century old,” Nolan remarked in his acceptance speech for best director. “Imagine being there for 100 years in painting or theatre. We have no idea where this fantastic journey will go. But knowing that you think I’m an important part of it means everything to me.”
Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in
With 13 nominations, “Oppenheimer,” a critical favourite and box-office smash, was the clear front-runner at this year’s Oscars. It has received best picture awards from the 81st Golden Globes and the Producers Guild of America. (The film was distributed by Universal Pictures, a subsidiary of NBC News’ parent company, NBCUniversal.)
The success of “Oppenheimer” cements Nolan’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s best filmmakers. With the success of the “Dark Knight” trilogy (2005–12), “Inception” (2010), and “Dunkirk” (2017), he had already established a name for himself among movie buffs and mainstream audiences alike.
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” the other half of the summertime sensation “Barbenheimer,” was in the best picture field when “Oppenheimer” won. The two blockbusters revitalised theatrical watching in the streaming era, grossing $2.4 billion globally; “Oppenheimer” accounted for more than $957 million.
Since Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” debuted in 2003, Nolan’s three-hour epic has been the most financially successful best picture winner. In the past few years, the Film Academy’s voters have given the Best Picture award to very small-scale movies such as “CODA,” “Nomadland,” “Moonlight,” and “Spotlight.”
This year’s other best film contenders were Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction,” Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” Celine Song’s “Past Lives,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things,” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”
“Oppenheimer” focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s story about creating nuclear weapons during World War II. The film also follows Oppenheimer’s contentious friendship with bureaucrat Lewis Strauss (Downey), who orchestrated a campaign to revoke Oppenheimer’s postwar safety clearance during the McCarthy era.
The script was written by Nolan and adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by historians Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Like the book, the movie portrays the physicist as a scientific genius who eventually became extremely troubled by his devastating invention.
Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Emily Blunt (in an Oscar-nominated supporting role), Jason Clarke, Rami Malek, Florence Pugh, and Kenneth Branagh are among the large ensemble cast members in the film. (The cast received top accolades at the 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards.)
Emma Stone won the Best Actor award for “Poor Things,” while Da’Vine Joy Randolph won the Best Supporting Actress award for “The Holdovers.”
