Oppenheimer needs no introduction here, except perhaps to point out that it was based on American Prometheus – a 2005 biography of the eponymous theoretical physicist by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
The Zone of Interest is loosely based on the 2014 novel of the same title by Martin Amis. It focuses on the life of Rudolf Höss, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his wife Hedwig. They lived with their family in the Zone of Interest – the area around the concentration camp complex, reserved for SS staff who are subject to the administration of the main camp.
The film's two Oscars were for Best International Feature and Best Sound – the former of which is for films made outside the United States in a language other than English. The Zone of Interest is a British film – directed by Jonathan Glazer, previously best known for Sexy Beast (2000) – but the dialogue is entirely in German, except for a few lines of Polish and Yiddish. English subtitles are available.
Martin Amis died on 19 May 2023 – the same day that The Zone of Interest premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. A lifelong smoker, he died of oesophagal cancer. He was knighted in the 2023 King's Birthday Honours (in mid–June) for services to literature; the award was backdated to the day before his death.
Poor Things is based on the 1992 novel of the same title by another recently–deceased British writer: Glaswegian Alasdair Gray (1934–2019), who is best known for his 1981 debut novel, Lanark. The central character (the role for which Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar) is Bella Baxter, a young woman in Victorian London who has been brought back to life via brain transplant.
Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon received ten nominations, but won no awards. It was the third Scorsese film to receive ten or more Oscar nominations but come away empty–handed, after Gangs of New York (2002) and The Irishman (2019).
Killers of the Flower Moon is about a series of murders of Native American people in the Osage Nation, which occurred after oil was discovered on tribal land.
Barbie received eight nominations, in seven categories. What Was I Made For? and I'm Just Ken were both up for Best Original Song; the award went to the former, and this was Barbie's only Oscar. Barbie was up against Oppenheimer in six categories, including Best Picture; Oppenheimer won two of them, but Barbie was unsuccessful in all six.
Brad Pitt's Maestro (he co–wrote the screenplay, co–produced, directed, and starred) received seven nominations but, like Killers of the Flower Moon, received no awards. It focuses on the relationship between the American composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, the Costa Rican–born actress and socialite Felicia Montealegre – who died of breast cancer in 1978, aged 56.
Maestro has been described as "Oscar bait" – a term that needs no explanation, but which proved in this instance to be ultimately inaccurate.
© Haydn Thompson 2024