Christopher Nolan lost his first Best Director nod at the Oscars.
We examine his place among populist auteurs who make the Academy wary.
Even a genre filmmaker like Guillermo del Toro took home Best Picture and Best Director.
To be fair, a number of popular movies have won major Oscars.
It was even commonplace before Harvey Weinstein redefined what an Oscar film was,beginning around 1999.
It is arguable hes been due since he went overlooked forMementoin 2001.
Two years later, Nolan again captured the zeitgeist with an original film un-besmirched by superhero drag inInception.
He would be similarly shutout time and again as the years passed.
Its a frustrating narrative, and a familiar one, given that we have seen it throughout movie history.
So whenRebeccawon Best Picture at 1941s Academy Awards, it was viewed as Selznicks victory, not Hitchcocks.
His corpulent silhouette also became synonymous to viewers with his name as the Master of Suspense.
In an era whenonlysuccessful movies won Best Picture and Best Director, the most successful director was eternally shutout.
Hitch finally got his Oscar as a noncompetitive lifetime achievement award in 1968.
With the industry in disarray, a new generation of filmmakers rewrote what American cinema could be.
And his secondactualtheatrical film was the first modern blockbuster:Jaws.
It didnt win, of course, but it was an honor just to be nominated.
However, this is an honor that Spielberg did not share.
And anything that was extraordinarily popular wound up losing to films like Robert Redfords mostly forgottenOrdinary People.
Spielberg eventually won his well-deserved Oscar forSchindlers Listduring the ceremony in 1994.
The filmmaker was invited into the club, but only so far.
One that, for the record, has shut out Christopher Nolan multiple times since then.
