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The ‘Oppenheimer’ Oscars Reminded Us That Movies Can Still Be the Great Mass Art Form
It's been quite a while since the Oscars celebrated a movie at once this big and this artful.
Since then, it’s mostly been smaller films (“No Country for Old Men,” “Parasite,” “Nomadland”) or larger ones (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “Argo”) that didn’t exert the kind of transporting cultural clout that “Oppenheimer” did. For all the impeccable staged enthusiasm, there was a way that the Oscars this year, in being dominated by “Oppenheimer,” took their emotional cue from that film’s winners — which meant a certain classy British reticence on the part of Christopher Nolan and his wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas, a quality that extended to Cillian Murphy’s humble professionalism and proud shoutout to his Irish roots in his acceptance speech for best actor. Robert Downey Jr. came closest, though he too, in his trademark personal way, received his award with the kind of cool polish that comes of having already been canonized, by the Oscar-industrial complex, as the winner.
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