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How Oppenheimer Won Best Picture


For years, you had to be a lovable underdog to win Best Picture. But Oppenheimer cruised through as the frontrunner all season — here’s how.

It was a serious drama with weighty themes, a marvel of big-screen spectacle, a biopic that was also a World War II movie that was also a three-hour exploration of postwar America’s original sin. While his previous films brought to mind a clever schoolboy doodling on graph paper, Oppenheimer saw Nolan imbue his peculiar obsessions — fractured timelines, show-stopping set pieces, dead paramours returning from the grave — with real thematic weight. Thanks to Barbenheimer, their awards trajectories wound up remarkably similar: two Internet-beloved blockbusters that swept their seasons, and together mark a turning point away from the “spread the wealth” ethos of Oscar’s preferential ballot era.

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