Oscars 2024: ‘Oppenheimer’ matches 65-year-old record
Just when it looked as though Oppenheimer couldn’t possibly enjoy any more success at the Academy Awards, the biggest winner of the night matched a feat that hadn’t been accomplished in well over half a century.
Among the many prizes taken home by Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biographical drama were ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Supporting Actor’, which puts Oppenheimer on equal footing to the most heavily-rewarded film in Oscars history.
The last time a ‘Best Picture’-winning film also took home the trophies for both lead and supporting actor came all the way back in 1959’s Ben-Hur, the classic biblical epic directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the lead role.
Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr have matched Heston and Hugh Griffith in that regard, which is an esteemed company.
The winner of the night’s most illustrious prize winning the top two gongs available for male performers feels like the sort of thing that would happen quite a lot, but that evidently hasn’t been the case, seeing as it’s taken 65 years for Oppenheimer to replicate what was admittedly just one of Ben-Hur‘s many game-changing Oscars accolades.
Last year saw Everything Everywhere All at Once win ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Actress’, ‘Best Supporting Actor’, and ‘Best Supporting Actress’ so it came pretty close without toppling Ben-Hur from its perch of taking the major film prize and the two male acting statues, but even at that, the ‘Best Picture’ winner scooping two or more of the four main acting prizes isn’t something that comes around all that often.
If not broken, then records are made to be matched at the very least, and considering the legendary status Ben-Hur holds in not just cinema history but that of the Academy Awards, Oppenheimer is on a rare pedestal.
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