The Oscars might just be simple movie awards for some, but they are monumental achievements for others. Even with the decrease in public interest, they’re still among the most prestigious awards one could ever win.
From under-represented communities breaking ground with the Academy to movie legends cementing their place among the all-time greats, the 96th Academy Awards achieved all kinds of records, even if some opportunities were controversially missed. One thing is for sure, though: history was made on March 10…
Milestone wins
Cillian Murphy wins the Oscar for Best Actor
The Irish have been dominating the entertainment industry in the past few years. Paul Mescal, Andrew Scott, Barry Keoghan, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Ruth Negga, Fiona Shaw, and, of course, Cillian Murphy — the world of movies and television owes a great debt of gratitude to the great nation of Ireland. And yet, never has an Irish-born person won an Oscar for Best Actor. Until now.
I know what you’re thinking — what about one of the greatest actors of all time and three-time Best Actor winner Daniel Day-Lewis? Well, DDL does indeed have British-Irish citizenship, but he was born in London. Murphy led the race after securing the SAG award in February, and sure enough his Best Actor win serves as a fitting climax to the Hollywood Irish renaissance of the 2020s.
Justine Triet wins the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay
Anatomy of a Fall Nation was holding out hope Justine Triet would win at least one Oscar on Sunday (I know this because I, too, am part of it). Despite her film taking Cannes and the world by storm this past year, Triet unfortunately wasn’t the favorite to win in either of the categories she was up for; Best Original Screenplay (she co-wrote Anatomy of a Fall with her partner Arthur Harari) and Best Director.
And yet, against all the odds, a miracle struck on Sunday and Triet came away with the Best Original Screenplay gong. This means she is the first French woman to win in that category. Due to Christopher Nolan beating her to Best Director, though, it’s still a fact that only three women have won the Oscar for Best Director in the past (Kathryn Bigelow, 2010; Chloé Zhao, 2021; Jane Campion, 2022).
The Zone of Interest wins the Oscar for Best International Film
The Best International Feature Film category was a funny one this year. Anatomy of a Fall, a French movie nominated in almost every big category, was not France’s submission for the bracket. Perfect Days is a Japanese film made by a German man, and Italy’s submission, Io Capitano, barely has a lick of Italian in its two-hour runtime.
Similarly, The Zone of Interest, spoken entirely in German and set in Poland, is a British film. As a result, the Oscar winner stands as the UK’s first-ever win in the Best International Film category. The space is reserved for movies spoken not in the English language. The UK’s previous nominees in the category were for films with Welsh dialogue.
Missed milestone wins
Lily Gladstone winning the Oscar for Best Actress
Lily Gladstone has already made history by becoming the first Native American person to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (three other, non-American, Indigenous women have been nominated before — Merle Oberon, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Yalitza Aparicio). They also became the first Native American/Indigenous winner of the SAG Award in the same category, sending them well on their way to repeating the feat at the Oscars.
Gladstone’s arresting performance as Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon would’ve granted the actress her first career Oscar and made her the first Indigenous woman to win for an acting performance and the first Native American Oscar winner ever. Of course, this didn’t end up happening as Emma Stone took the gong for the second time for Poor Things. Likewise Osage Nation songwriter Scott George, and the author of Best Original Song contender “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People),” would’ve made history if he won as the first Native American man to be nominated in this category. However, Billie Eilish topped the category for Barbie‘s “What Was I Made For?”
John Williams winning the Oscar for Best Original Score
John Williams’s place in the Oscars Hall of Fame is already firmly established. The 91-year-old is the most-nominated living person with a total of 54 nods over the years. In 2024, he added the title of the oldest person to ever be nominated for a competitive Oscar with his Best Original Score nomination for his work in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
If Williams won, he would’ve become the oldest Oscar winner ever — a record currently in the hands of James Ivory, who was 89 when he won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name. Still, although he lost in this instance to Ludwig Göransson for his work on Oppenheimer, the legendary composer will find comfort in the five Oscars he already possesses for Schindler’s List, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Wars, Jaws, and Fiddler on the Roof.
Oppenheimer winning more than 11 Oscars
Movies like Ben-Hur, Titanic, and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are the stuff of Academy Award legend. For decades they have enjoyed a three-way tie for most awarded movies, winning 11 Oscars each.
With 13 nominations on its back going into the ceremony, Oppenheimer stood a strong chance of deserving a spot in that illustrious list, especially as it was the favorite to win in at least eight of the categories (Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Original Score, Film Editing, and Sound). As it happened, the film only took home seven of those eight, losing out Best Sound to Zone of Interest.
Even so, seven is nothing to sniff at and its multiple Oscar wins put a nice bow on the Barbenheimer phenomenon, as well as the achievements of Nolan’s film in its own right as a near-billion dollar box office smash (despite being a 3-hour long biopic composed mostly of dialogue and complicated quantum physics theory). 2023 will go down in the history of film, and Oppenheimer was a big part of that.
Martin Scorsese winning the Oscar for Best Director
Martin Scorsese is a champion of cinema and one of the greatest directors of all time. Frankly, we’re all begging for time to pause so he doesn’t get any older and can continue making movies for all eternity. His latest, Killers Of The Flower Moon, was a sweeping drama about the exploitation of the Osage at the hands of greedy oil dealers.
Christopher Nolan was the favorite to win the Oscar for Best Director, so it was no surprise that he took home the statuette. If Scorsese won, however — and he was every bit as deserving — he would’ve been the oldest winner in the category, at 81 years old. Clint Eastwood was 74 when he won for Million Dollar Baby.
Thelma Schoonmaker winning the Oscar for Best Editing
Of course, when you talk about Marty, you have to talk about Thelma. Possibly the greatest director-editor duo of all time, Scorsese’s film very nearly gave Thelma Schoonmaker a chance at making history too. The editor almost finally broke out of the four-way tie she’s been in since she won the Oscar for Best Editing for The Departed in 2007, bringing her total to three trophies (she had previously won for The Aviator and Raging Bull). Michael Kahn, Daniel Mandell, and Ralph Dawson all have three Oscars for Best Editing as well.
As it was, Schoonmaker lost out to Jennifer Lame for Oppenheimer, as predicted. Nevertheless, the turn of events shouldn’t be too sore for Schoonmaker as she remains the single most nominated person in the category with nine nods over the years — all but one for collaborations with Scorsese.
The source for all records included in this article is USBets.com.
