The world’s most popular director sits in the crowd, waiting for the star on stage to open the envelope. When his movie is named, he embraces his wife and then walks to the stage. It’s been almost two decades since his breakthrough, the movie that made him a popular and artistic juggernaut: a director who can concoct images no one has seen before, who directs with unprecedented scale and style, who can bend studios to his will and draw audiences on the strength of his name alone. For years his films have collected Oscar nominations but he’s never won the...