“OPPENHEIMER” swept the board on Sunday (Monday, PH time) at the Oscars, Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, with seven awards including best picture and best director, crowning a triumphant year for filmmaker Christopher Nolan.
Nolan’s masterful drama about the father of the atomic bomb, half of last summer’s massive “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, also bagged acting prizes for lead Cillian Murphy and supporting actor Robert Downey Jr.
Nolan, a British-American filmmaker hailed as a generational talent, said that film as an art form still has room to grow.
“Movies are just a little bit over 100 years old. I mean, imagine being there 100 years into painting or theater,” he told the audience at the Dolby Theater. “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.”
The haul was not quite complete – “Oppenheimer” was nominated for 13 prizes, but with seven statuettes on the night it is still one of the most awarded films in Oscar history.
Downey was recognized for his stellar performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer’s political nemesis Lewis Strauss.
Nolan’s cerebral take on the man he has called “the most important person who ever lived” also snapped up prizes for editing, cinematography and best original score.
The other huge smash of 2023, Greta Gerwig’s pop feminist blockbuster “Barbie,” featured heavily throughout the gala in Los Angeles.
While the movie, which grossed $1.4 billion at the box office, only won one Oscar for best original song, the bubblegum fun it generated provided fodder for the whole evening.
Meanwhilw, in one of the few competitive awards of the evening, Emma Stone won best actress for her daring performance in the surreal, Frankenstein-esque “Poor Things,” which won three other technical prizes
Stone, who previously won an Academy Award for “La La Land,” paid tribute to the other women in her category, and the five women on stage who presented the category. (Agence France-Presse)
