The Dark Knight was absolutely rejected for a Best Picture nomination in 2009, but well, at least the Academy Awards were aware of Christopher Nolan. On Sunday night, the cinema entertainment provider finally won its Oscar for directing “The Hell Out.” Oppenheimer. The biopic, which won awards throughout the night, was well-positioned ahead of the ceremony, while Nolan’s directorial win was anticipated by fans and awards predictors alike. After all, the director’s victory, which surprisingly went unnoticed at the industry’s biggest awards ceremony, was a long time coming.
Nolan’s win is the result of a past that included a small number of nominations and zero previous wins. The filmmaker was initially nominated alongside his brother – and his future Stand out TV director – Jonathan Nolan for her work Memory. The duo lost to Julian Fellows Gosford Park.
Hollywood was in turmoil in 2008 under the assumption that The Dark Knight would not only win the director an award, but also break into the top five best films, shattering the belief that superhero stories have no place in the prestigious annals of Oscar history. But it didn’t happen. The Oscars would immediately redesign themselves, never to sniff so heavily again.
2011s beginning put Nolan back in the awards conversation and earned him nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Picture. But still no love for direction. The man crashed a train through a city street – what more could these people want?! The answer was war films; Nolan’s lean, mean thriller about World War II Dunkirk gave him a seat at the director’s table next to Guillermo del Toro (The shape of water), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), Jordan Peele (Exit) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom thread). Del Toro took home the prize, but Nolan’s time would come just a few years later.
“Movies are just over 100 years old,” he said in his acceptance speech Oppenheimer. “I imagine what it was like to do painting or theater for 100 years. We don’t know where this incredible journey goes from here, but knowing that you think I’m a meaningful part of it means the world to me.”
Nolan arrives at his place Oppenheimer moment, not only as an accomplished filmmaker, but also as an industry leader in the vocal field when it comes to the cinematic experience, shooting on celluloid, blowing things up in real life, projecting on IMAX and how crappy it was when Warner Bros. all Maximal aired his films on HBO for an entire year. Over the years, he has become more and more annoyed and rarely relented, which may be why it took so long for him to score points at the personality-focused Oscars. But this commitment to the craft created a cult of personality around him that goes far beyond the usual film nerd community; During a summer of blockbusters, more people came to see his three-hour historical biopic than the umpteenth Transformers film. His Oscar win is a win for artists grappling with a company that seems to favor more… artificially Intelligence.
If The Dark Knight upended expectations, perhaps Nolan’s victory Oppenheimer will have a similar effect. As the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences strives to attract more young people to the Oscars broadcast each year, remember when we almost got the Popular category? – and movie studios scour their IP files for anything they can spend $200 million on, the solution to the entertainment industry’s many problems seems to be in plain sight.
Nolan just won an Oscar for doing whatever his heart desired. Imagine if more people had the chance?
