At the Academy Awards, in his acceptance speech for Best Director, his first win in eight nominations, Christopher Nolan said, “Movies are just a little bit over 100 years old and imagine being there 100 years into painting or theatre… We don’t know where this incredible journey is going from here, but to know that you think that I’m a part of it means the world to me.”
Nolan might be forgiven for his modesty, for if there’s anything that this year’s awards season and last year’s stellar run at the box office have established, it is this: It’s Christopher Nolan’s world and we are all just living in it.
When a film with 13 nominations enters the fray, there is likely to be little surprise in the outcome of the awards ceremony, even if it has been a year of extraordinarily diverse movies. But in winning seven awards at the Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actor in a Supporting Role, what Nolan’s Oppenheimer lost out in terms of drama, it made up in validation for an older way of filmmaking:
The big-studio, big-spectacle film, whose rise and rise had been stalled by the pandemic and the OTT-driven content generated in its aftermath. Of course, Nolan has done it before with his Batman trilogy, resurrecting the flagging fortunes of Warner Bros with his slick storytelling and his ability to tie together parallel timelines into an intellectually stimulating yarn, whose metaphysical undertone is apace with its ability to thrill and awe.
What the win for a film like Oppenheimer does is show that when it comes to entertainment, the appeal of the big screen is unlikely to wane. Like The Lord of the
Rings or Ben-Hur, both of which won multiple Oscars, Nolan’s multiverses are not meant for the confines of the OTT screen but for the liberating conviviality of the big screen, where audiences of all kinds converge. In this season of niche, individualistic projects, that is, perhaps, the crux of Nolan’s triumph.
