'Oppenheimer' wins 5 Golden Globes, including best drama

“Oppenheimer” was the big winner at Sunday night’s Golden Globes ceremony, taking home five awards, including for best dramatic film, while “Barbie” — which went in with a leading nine nominations — took home only two, losing best comedy to “Poor Things.”

The night marked the first Globe win for “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan, who noted that the last time he stood on the stage of the Beverly Hilton Hotel he was accepting a posthumous award for Heath Ledger in his 2008 film, “The Dark Knight.”

"Oppenheimer" stars Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. also took home trophies, while the movie also won for best original score.

Sunday’s telecast arrived after a turbulent couple of years for the Golden Globes. In 2021, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which bestowed the Globes, was found to have no Black members — a bad look at a moment of heightened awareness of diversity. After studios boycotted the Globes and NBC halted its yearslong broadcasting partnership, the HFPA was disbanded and the Golden Globes brand fell under the control of Dick Clark Productions. This year’s telecast was on CBS.

Though the 81st Golden Globes featured an announcer who played up the Globes’ reputation for liquored-up behavior at the Beverly Hilton — “Everyone in this ballroom is gettin’ loose!” — the winners and presenters were mostly on their best behavior.

The comedian Jo Koy, a first-time host, mostly played the star-struck fan, claiming he watched the Globes as a child. Though Koy lacked the reckless abandon of five-time host Ricky Gervais or the bluntness of previous host Jerrod Carmichael (who claimed he only got the job because he was Black), he did risk one jibe about the age of new dad Robert De Niro.

“Your last performance has got to be your best performance,” Koy told the star, who sat deadpan at a dinner table. “How’d you get her pregnant at 80?”

Winners were surprisingly concise in their speeches and avoided the usual awkwardness of fighting the play-off music. “Oh my God, there’s only like 18 seconds left,” said Emma Stone, having just begun accepting her award for best actress in “Poor Things.” She thanked a few more people, described the movie half-jokingly as a “rom-com” and then scurried off the stage.

“I hope I don’t get played off, because this is a historic one,” said Lily Gladstone, who became the first Indigenous person to win an acting Globe, for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Gladstone spoke a bit of the Blackfeet language before saying the award “doesn’t just belong to me. I’m holding it with all of my beautiful sisters.”

The speeches were perhaps most notable for what they didn’t mention: The ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Though some stars wore yellow ribbons in support of the hostages in Gaza, there was virtually no political talk or grandstanding at all. Any pre-show jitters that somebody might pull a Vanessa Redgrave — who in 1978 railed against “Zionist hoodlums” in her Oscar acceptance speech — turned out to be unnecessary.

One open question: Whether the Globes’ two new categories — best performance in stand-up comedy and the confusingly-named best cinematic and box office achievement — will survive into the future.

Comedian Jim Gaffigan presented the new stand-up award with a large dose of sarcasm. “Stand-up comedy is a brutal business,” he said. “And thanks to Netflix, people get overpaid for it.” (The award went to Netflix’s “Ricky Gervais: Armageddon.”)

The cinematic and box office achievement award wound up going to “Barbie.” Producer-star Margot Robbie dedicated the win “to every single person on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on earth: the movie theaters.”

In the TV awards, “Succession” won best drama for the third time, while stars Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and Matthew Macfadyen took home trophies. “The Bear” won best musical or comedy with stars Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri winning best male actor and female actor, respectively.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com