LOS ANGELES — The Academy gave its 96th edition the ending the season had promised. “Oppenheimer”, Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the father of the atomic bomb, won seven Oscars on Sunday night, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Cillian Murphy — the coronation of the highest-grossing film ever to win the top prize.
Murphy, the Irish actor who has worked with Nolan for two decades, called his win the honour of a lifetime and noted he was standing there as a proud Irishman playing a man whose creation still shadows the world. Robert Downey Jr. won Best Supporting Actor for the same film; Emma Stone took her second Best Actress award for “Poor Things”.
The night had warmth beyond the winners. Da’Vine Joy Randolph won for “The Holdovers”; Billie Eilish’s Barbie ballad “What Was I Made For?” took Best Song; and Ukraine won its first Oscar, for the documentary “20 Days in Mariupol”, whose director dedicated the award to his country.
Host Jimmy Kimmel kept the politics light, and there was no repeat of last year’s theatrics — the ceremony’s lingering trauma remains Will Smith’s 2022 slap, which the Academy has spent two years trying to live down.
For Nolan, long treated by the Academy as a popular entertainer rather than a serious artist, the sweep settles an account. His film made nearly a billion dollars on the back of a meme and a reputation. On Sunday, Hollywood finally admitted him to the pantheon it had kept waiting at the door.
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