Written by: Mark Aguilar 🇸🇻
Concluding the 96th Academy Awards, Christopher Nolan’s biographical epic, Oppenheimer, came out on top with 7 Oscars, including Best Picture. Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things follows behind with 4 wins at the ceremony.
Oppenheimer won other major awards, including Best Director for Christopher Nolan, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr, and Best Actor for Cillian Murphy. These are three major names in Hollywood, all finally receiving their first Oscar wins.
The film also won three technical craft categories: Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Cinematography. Notably, the film lost the Best Sound category to The Zone of Interest.
The other big winner of the night was Poor Things, which won categories such as Best Makeup and Hairstyling (defeating front-runner Maestro), Best Production Design, Best Costume Design (in a heated race with Barbie), and Best Actress for Emma Stone.
It was a bit of a shock to see Stone’s name announced as the winner as many projected Lily Gladstone to win the category for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. This marks Emma Stone’s second Best Actress win, following her 2017 win for La La Land.
The Zone of Interest was the only other film with multiple wins on the night with two awards: Best International Feature (submitted by the United Kingdom) and Best Sound. During Jonathan Glazer’s acceptance speech, he was visibly shaking reading from his letter where he condemned the actions of Israel in Gaza.
Glazer was the only recipient of an Oscar that night to mention the conflict happening between Israel and Palestine. This came despite there being a major pro-Palestine protest happening before the ceremony, causing a 5-minute delay to the start of the show.
There were many films honored on the night, one of which being a surprising upset when The Boy and the Heron defeated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in the Best Animated Feature category. Many saw Across the Spider-Verse as the front-runner, but it seems as if The Academy wanted to reward Hayao Miyazaki potentially one last time.
The legendary Japanese director, who previously won an Oscar in 2003 in the same category for Spirited Away, decided again not to attend the ceremony. His two films remain the only 2D hand-drawn animated films to win in the category.
Despite being the highest-grossing film of 2023, Barbie only left with one Oscar on the night for Best Original Song. Winning for “What Was I Made For?,” Billie Eilish became the youngest ever 2-time Oscar winner at the age of 22. Her previous win came in the same category in 2022 for “No Time To Die”.
Da'Vine Joy Randolph won Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Holdovers. She was a first-time nominee and winner, and she swept the category in all other major award ceremonies such as the SAG Awards, BAFTA, Critics’ Choice, and the Golden Globes.
First-time writer/director Cord Jefferson won Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction. Best Original Screenplay was won by Justine Triet and her partner Arthur Harari for Anatomy of a Fall, which was the 2023 Palme d'Or winner in Cannes.
Despite the film being nominated for many categories, including Best Director for Triet and Best Picture, France decided not to submit the film in the Best International Feature category. They chose to submit The Taste of Things, which did not get nominated.
Another notable Oscar winner was Wes Anderson, who won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short for his film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Despite his auteur status, Anderson was not able to attend the ceremony as he is about to shoot his newest film in Germany.
Finally, one of the most notable releases of 2023 was Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese. Despite being nominated for 10 Oscars, it went home empty-handed. This marks the second Scorsese film in a row to win 0 Oscars after The Irishman won 0 Oscars in 2020.
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