On Oppenheimer's Oscar Win(s)--and Poor Things Wins Too

As my remarks here going back to January indicate (and as was reaffirmed by more recent comment), I expected that Oppenheimer would claim Best Picture, and so it has. After all, as a highly stylized three-hour mid-century-set biopic the movie appears to be "natural" Oscar material--with the movie helped by how so many of its rivals could appear too "lightweight" (as with Alexander Payne's The Holdovers), too little-seen (almost all of them save for Greta Gerwig's Barbie), too foreign (as with Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall) for the Academy's taste. It also had on its side Christopher Nolan's powerful cheering section and the readiness of many in and out of it to see him as unjustly denied recognition in the past, adding the "his turn" element to the mix--with all this seemingly reaffirmed by the movie's progressing from one victory to another at the season's various awards ceremonies.

Still, if the film's taking Best Picture (and Best Director, and much else) could seem predictable given what we saw these past few months, I had previously thought Barbie the more likely winner given the Academy's greater openness to its themes (the kind of thing the Academy loves to honor) than those of Oppenheimer (the kind of thing that in so many recent years scared off the Academy).* The result is that there is still an element of upset here, affirmed by how not Gerwig's Barbie but Yorgos Lanthimos' Poor Things came in second, taking four statues home (including a second Best Actress win for Emma Stone, and Best Adapted Screenplay), as Barbie not only lost out on Best Director and Best Actress at even the nomination stage of things, and in the "major" categories in which it was nominated (Picture, Supporting Actor and Actress, Screenplay), but ended up with only one win (for "Best Original Song").

It does seem possible to take this as a sign of change, perhaps in multiple, era-changing ways. Scarcely a few days ago critic Bernd Reinhardt remarked Mati Diop's film Dahomey taking the Golden Bear at the year's Berlin Film Festival, suggested that it was "an indication that the dominant influence of identity politics in the cultural sector is losing ground."

Perhaps this turn of events at the Oscars is similarly indicative of the trend. Still, even if this is so we may feel ourselves in only a very, very, early stage of such a process.

* The film won a total of seven Oscars. Besides Best Picture and Best Director there were two acting prizes (Best Actor for Cillian Murphy and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr.), as well as prizes for Original Score (Ludwig Göransson), Cinematography (Hoyte van Hoytema) and Film Editing (Jennifer Lame) in what, if not a sweep, is not too far off from it either.