“Oppenheimer,” which entered the night with 13 nominations, has picked up six awards so far at the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday. The film, a sweeping biopic about the physicist who invented the atomic bomb, won for director (Christopher Nolan), actor (Cillian Murphy), supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.), editing, cinematography and score.
“Poor Things,” a twist on the Frankenstein story, has collected four Oscars, winning for actress (Emma Stone), costumes, production design, and makeup and hairstyling. (John Cena presented the costume category, appearing naked except for a well-placed envelope.)
The show got off to a comfortable start as Jimmy Kimmel poked gentle fun at the nominated films — “Killers of the Flower Moon” was so long, he joked, that he needed to have his mail forwarded to the theater — and the decision to not nominate Greta Gerwig, the “Barbie” filmmaker, as best director.
“I know you’re clapping, but you’re the ones who didn’t vote for her,” Kimmel said, as the camera cut to a smiling Gerwig.
Kimmel then invited crew members working the telecast onstage and spoke about Hollywood as a union town — that crews stood by actors and writers when they were on strike for six months last year, and that crews could expect similar support when their own contract comes due in July.
The first Oscar of the night went to Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who was named best supporting actress for playing a grieving mother and boarding school cook in “The Holdovers.” “For so long, I’ve always wanted to be different, and now I realize I only need to be myself,” Randolph said.
Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron,” about a youth coping with his mother’s death and father’s remarriage, won the Oscar for animated film. Miyazaki, 83, previously won for “Spirited Away” in 2003. The Oscar for live-action short went to an absent Wes Anderson for “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” on Netflix.
The Oscar for international film went to “The Zone of Interest,” in which a well-off Nazi couple exult in their good fortune while living next door to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In his speech, Jonathan Glazer, the film’s director, decried “the victims of dehumanization,” both in Israel and Gaza.
“We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” Glazer said.
Regardless of its ultimate Oscar total, “Oppenheimer” marks a shift for the Academy Awards. Call it the revenge of the studio movie. In recent years, Hollywood’s top prize has gone almost exclusively to independent movies like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “CODA,” “Parasite” and “Moonlight.” “Oppenheimer,” made by Universal Pictures, is something of a throwback — an expensive film from an old-line studio.
“Barbie” fans have had just one win to celebrate — Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” for best original song — but Ryan Gosling also performed a rousing rendition of “I’m Just Ken,” with a cameo from Slash on guitar.
