After dominating the Golden Globe Awards and Critics’ Choice Movie Awards recently, director Christopher Nolan bagged the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film for Oppenheimer. The victory significantly boosts Nolan’s prospects of winning the Best Director honour at the upcoming Oscars, The Guardian reported. This is due to the significant membership overlap between the DGA and Oscar voters.
Since 2013, the winner of the DGA Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film has also gone on to win the Academy Award for Best Director in nine out of ten instances. The lone exception was Sam Mendes, who won the DGA award but lost the Oscar to South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho for the movie Parasite. The last time prior to this when different directors won the two awards was in 2012 when Ben Affleck won the DGA award for Argo, while Ang Lee won the Oscar for Life of Pi.
This marks the second time Nolan has earned a nomination in the Best Director category, after previously scoring a nod for his war thriller Dunkirk (2017). If he wins, it will be the first time one of his films has won an Oscar in a major category.
Director Christopher Nolan poses with Oppenheimer actor Cillian Murphy at the 76th Annual DGA Awards in Beverly Hills. (REUTERS)
Including Best Director, Oppenheimer has earned a total of 13 nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, scheduled to be held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on March 10 (March 11 in India).
Oppenheimer, Nolan’s sprawling American saga of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the world’s first atomic bombs, has been considered a frontrunner for the Oscars since its acclaimed debut in late July.
Speaking to The Associated Press after the Oscar nominations were announced last month, Nolan was asked why Oppenheimer resonated so much with viewers.
“It’s always a tricky thing to try to analyse the zeitgeist or analyse success. We were really interested and excited, in particular, to see young people responding to a piece of history. I keep coming back to the unique nature of the story. I think it is one of the great American stories. It encompasses so much that’s important and dramatic about our history. That gives audiences a lot to hang on to. When you get a great group of actors and an incredible cast like we have, you can make this feel real and emotionally accessible. That’s as far as I can analyse its success. Beyond that, sometimes you catch a wave, and it’s a wonderful and unique thing,” he said.
Director Christopher Nolan poses with director duo The Daniels at the 76th Annual DGA Awards in Beverly Hills. (REUTERS)
“When I first started on the project, one of my kids said to me about nuclear weapons, ‘people my age don’t really worry about that so much.’ This was a couple of years ago. With everything that’s going on in the world since, that’s very much changed. We came along right at a time when people were beginning to worry about this again, and worry about the fate of the world. Oppenheimer’s story is so relevant to that — not just the threat of nuclear weapons but also the burgeoning threat of AI and what it can do to our world,” he added.
Other notable winners at the Directors Guild Awards ceremony included Celine Song, who won the award for First-Time Directorial Achievement for her romantic drama Past Lives, and Mstyslav Chernov for the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol.
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