It wasn’t a “sweep” — when major awards for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay all go to one film — but Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer still took the first three of these significant Oscars at the Academy Awards Sunday night, plus wins for Cinematography, Editing, Sound and Best Supporting Actor. Especially given so many awards, how should we think about how the film affects audiences? 

Today in The Conversation Canada, Kim Nelson of University of Windsor shares insights from her book Making History Move: Five Principles of Historical Film to discuss critical criteria for viewing historical film — and what we are owed by historical filmmakers.

“Our ability to keep what we are watching at a critical distance is less robust than we may assume,” she writes. “Neuroscience illuminates a central aspect of film’s power to captivate, enchant and convince.”

She proposes thinking not only about how historical films treat evidence and how they narrate – but also factors like how they rupture their seamlessness (by allowing audiences to be pulled out of their immersion in the story). Her analysis yields helpful ways to think about not only this film, but other films treating major historical events, like The Zone of Interest and Killers of the Flower Moon.

Also today:

• Archeoastronomy uses the rare times and places of previous total solar eclipses to help us measure history
• Recent gains point to a growing Russian advantage in the Ukraine war
• Paying people to exercise can be motivating, but the financial rewards don’t have to last forever to work
• Allergen warning: “Vegan” foods may contain milk and eggs