Oscars 2024: ‘Oppenheimer’ wins ‘Best Picture’
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has won the Oscar for ‘Best Picture’, beating out the likes of Alexander Payne’s Holdovers, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
Taking to the stage, Nolan was gushing with praise for the cast and crew who helped bring his biopic about the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb, to life. The win marks the first taste of Oscar success for the British filmmaker, who had previously been nominated for such films as Dunkirk, Inception and Memento, his earliest major feature film.
Featuring Cillian Murphy in the lead role, who also took home the night’s illustrious prize for ‘Best Leading Actor’, the film delves into the career of the scientist who helped the American military construct and detonate the atomic bomb during the Second World War. A cinematic epic with a mighty ensemble cast, the likes of Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh joined Murphy.
Speaking about the movie in our full-length review, we said: “Re-creating The Trinity Test without the use of CGI is a cinematic marvel in its own right, but equally impressive is the intensity of each of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s shots, beautifully capturing each pore of Murphy et al.’s face in glorious 70mm IMAX film. Even without the usual set pieces of The Dark Knight and Interstellar, Ludwig Göransson’s score can still shine in moments of drama, if not action”.
Continuing, we added: “Nolan consistently delivers in whatever project he takes on; he knows his vision and style and creates a positive, intimate environment for his actors to provide their best work. But with Oppenheimer, he hasn’t just delivered an entertaining, thought-provoking movie as he had done with his previous efforts, but a thoroughly important one that informs even the most sheltered of us about the global situation we find ourselves in today”.
Nolan’s film joins a long list of esteemed ‘Best Picture’ winners, including Everything, Everywhere All at Once, Coda and Nomadland.
Is Oppenheimer actually worth watching?
Cinema, just like every other artistic medium, is entirely subjective, but if you consider the Academy Awards to be a good gauge of quality, then Christopher Nolan’s ‘Best Picture’ winner will certainly be worth watching. While such greats as Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest and Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers were close to glory and remain worthy of plaudits, it was Nolan’s film that came away triumphant on the night.
Countless filmmakers have come out in support of Oppenheimer, too, with the influential writer of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader, commenting: “Oppenheimer. The best, most important film of this century. If you see one film in cinemas this year it should be Oppenheimer. I’m not a Nolan groupie, but this one blows the doors off the hinges”.
Elsewhere, both Denis Villeneuve and Paul Thomas Anderson have come out in praise of the movie and its spectacular efforts to reunite audiences with the cinema in the summer of 2023.
When will Oppenheimer be streaming?
Oppenheimer is currently available to stream for free on Peacock in the USA. Elsewhere, Nolan’s ‘Best Picture’ winner can only be rented or purchased in the UK on such platforms as Prime Video and Apple TV.
While it is available to watch on the small screen, its Oscar success will, no doubt, mean that it will also be re-released in cinemas. As Nolan himself adamantly states, there is no better place to see Oppenheimer than on the silver screen, “You rarely get the chance to really talk to moviegoers directly about why you love a particular format and why if they can find an IMAX screen to see the film on that’s great,” he told AP, “We put a lot of effort into shooting the film in a way that we can get it out on these large format screens. It really is just a great way of giving people an experience that they can’t possibly get in the home”.
Watch the trailer for Nolan’s ‘Best Picture-winning billion-dollar biopic below.
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