Oscars 2024: Nolan Brings it Home

Kimmel and the Broadcast. I very much welcomed the hour-earlier start time of 7 P.M EST, especially following the Night of Springing Forward an Hour, but when the show started 5 minutes late due to ABC needing to advertise seemingly every show it was aware of (I assume to make up for a slow exodus from the Red Carpet), I grew a little concerned that the earlier start time would yield a 4-hour show. You can only imagine my delight when Jimmy Kimmel, having watched the Oppenheimer team stroll off the stage at 10:24 P.M. EST, looked around for a couple of minutes before ending the show with a shrug and a smile; more of this going forward please. The Academy should ask him to host as often as he wants to. With one exception, nobody seemed to get wrongfully played off and so the entire show felt excellently paced. I do wish I had been able to read all the names and see all the images of the “In Memoriam” segment, since there were (as always) some names that mattered to me, but the showrunners chose to capture everything occurring on the stage, which was (as almost always) too much. With that note aside, and not sure yet how many people tuned in, I think the Academy should look to this broadcast as a template.

The Nominees and the Race. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but 2023 was a great year for film. This was a strong slate of the Best Picture nominees – now having finally seen all of them, here are my rankings:

• 10. Maestro

• 9. American Fiction

• 8. Barbie

• 7. Poor Things

• 6. The Holdovers

• 5. The Zone of Interest

• 4. Anatomy of a Fall

• 3. Past Lives

• 2. Oppenheimer

• 1. Killers of the Flower Moon

There’s not a bad film among those, and different people have completely different rankings of them, with different favorites/least favorites, and I think that’s a rare and great thing. I also think that my 1-5 are genuinely excellent and could all credibly be considered as the best of the young 2020’s decade, let alone the year in which they were released. I’m concerned that we won’t have another slate this strong for a while, but maybe the stars will re-align for the 100th Academy Awards in 2028 to give us not just a special ceremony that I’m sure (hope?) that they’re already thinking about. There will be good stuff every year, and the story of each year will inevitably be the overlooked films (2023: The Killer, Asteroid City, John Wick 4, Afire, The Iron Claw, Priscilla, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Showing Up), but a very strong 10-film Best Picture lineup is worth celebrating.

I’ll get to some winners and losers shortly, but it’s worth noting that Oppenheimer dominated the night, mostly in categories which it had been dominating all awards season. Though last year had the massive Everything Everywhere All at Once sweep, that movie found its momentum in the biggest categories (Best Actress, Director, and Picture) as the season marched on; the same is true for CODA a year prior, though that only won the 3 it was nominated for. It would be fun to both have this stacked of a lineup and a more unpredictable ceremony featuring tighter races.

Oppenheimer. Christopher Nolan is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, who was creating accomplished, ideas-forward, original blockbusters at a very crucial time in my movie-loving development and as the industry increasingly began to move away from that sort of thing, and Oppenheimer is an excellent movie that is as worthy a crowning achievement for him as any other. While I think Dunkirk is his best, this is neck-and-neck with The Dark Knight as his second best in my estimation, it’s hard to disagree with anyone who thinks this is his true masterpiece. It doesn't always turn out this way; usually, our most worthy filmmakers get recognized for good, but not their best work. Maybe Nolan has even more tricks up his sleeve going forward, and maybe he’ll get celebrated again like this down the road, but my guess is that he’s now entered the “living emeritus” status that Spielberg or Scorsese has (fitting that Uncle Steve presented him with the award, and more on Scorsese later), meaning that he’ll continue to be nominated and competitive for his work, but to actually win for Best Picture or Director again will really take some doing. But, to celebrate the present, this was a triumphant night that I am very excited about. And, it’s a great thing for the Oscars to reward an extremely well-made film that grossed, and we can’t overlook this for an R-rated, partially-black-and-white biopic that runs 3 hours, $1 Billion.

It's kind of weird to say this about a movie that still won 7 Oscars, but Oppenheimer wasn’t as bulletproof down the ballot as I thought; some people were expecting this movie to crush the way that Titanic or Return of the King did in their times. Poor Things (deservedly) winning 3 technical categories, The Zone of Interest (deservingly) winning Sound, and American Fiction winning Best Adapted Screenplay (perhaps my least favorite in the category, but still strong) all signal an internationally comprised Academy that wants to spread out the recognition in the years where that’s viable.

The Big Whiffs. Last year, 5 of the 10 Best Picture nominees went home empty-handed after a crushing performance from Everything Everywhere All at Once, whereas this year it’s only 3: Maestro, Past Lives, and Killers of the Flower Moon. I wasn’t very high on Maestro, but I can’t deny that it’s at least good. On the other hand, I think that Past Lives was among the very best I saw last year and stands neck-and-neck with Oppenheimer in my estimation of the year in film. It’s brilliant, and I wish it had gotten more of a spotlight tonight to help turn people onto it. Consider this my recommendation!

And that leaves Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which was my pick for the best film of last year. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I believe he is our greatest living filmmaker, and I’ve made peace with the fact that his only Oscar will be for the very enjoyable, but surely not his best work, The Departed. That lone win stands against now 16 total nominations (including producing and writing credits), and even that number feels low given the totality of his work. Another bummer of a data point (that he to his credit doesn’t seem to care about): none of his films since Hugo in 2011 have won an Oscar for anything, even though his following four (Wolf of Wall Street, Silence, The Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon) were nominated for a total of 26 Oscars and are each staggering accomplishments. Those four won nothing.

Specifically on Killers, I think we all got too caught up talking about its extended runtime, which really should be viewed as a gift. I’m here to say there isn’t a wasted second in its near 3-and-a-half-hour runtime, and that (again) our greatest living filmmaker is making work that is as interesting and vital as it’s ever been, even if he’s left the whiz-bang smash-cutting energy of Goodfellas and Casino in the 90s. The Irishman was his great reflection on America from WWII onward, how crime intersects with American history, and his own potential participation in that not to mention its bleak take on aging and guilt. With Killers, he’s expanded his retrospect into not just the film’s post-WWI setting, but all the way back as he examines one of America’s Original Sins. It touches a deeper darkness than any of his previous work, and it’s really something to watch him bring his signatures to a setting that he doesn’t quite fit in, and to supplicate to his own shortcomings in that regard in both approach and final product. If any non-Native American filmmaker has earned the right to make this film, it’s him. If any filmmaker deserves our bringing our relationships with his body of work to his latest work, it’s him. If any filmmaker is doing work that can stand up to, and redefine, his decades of mastery, it’s him.

Rapid-Fire Highlights. These moments were either great wins or great TV:

• I’m Just Ken.

• John Cena presenting Best Costume Design.

• John Mulaney presenting Best Sound, and The Zone of Interest winning it.

• Cord Jefferson’s speech, if not necessarily his win.

• Godzilla Minus One’s win.

• Jonathan Glazer’s speech after The Zone of Interest won Best International Feature.

• Anything involving Messi the dog.

• The Godzilla Minus One team.

• Christopher Nolan winning Best Director.

• Jennifer Lame (Editing), Hoyte van Hoytema (Cinematography), and Ludwig Goransson (Score) winning for Oppenheimer, but really winning for Tenet.

What will next year bring? Only time will tell.