Christopher Nolan doesn’t compromise with the cinematic craft and creates astounding worlds around the characters filling them with deep psychological tremor. Also, the director has always been wise in picking up stories to complement his mind-boggling ideas on how to craft them into visual narratives. In its essence, his most recent flick Oppenheimer was not a story that picked his interest with just the reading of the historic book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which largely inspired the core of Nolan’s narrative, has a long history with the director.
Christopher Nolan Revealed That The Seed of Oppenheimer Movie Was Sowed Way Back
Christopher Nolan. Image Credit: Golden Globes
Considering his cinematic prowess, it is almost certain that Christopher Nolan has been fascinated with great stories since his childhood. The director candidly reflected that Oppenheimer’s story picked his interest way before he decided to make a movie on the father of the atomic bomb. “I first heard about Oppenheimer when I was a kid,” he said appearing on Entertainment Weekly’s Around the Table.
“I was growing up in the UK at a time when people were very concerned about nuclear armaments. You know, was protests agreement all of that campaign for nuclear disarmament and I think when I was 12 or 13, I think myself and all my friends were absolutely convinced that we were going to experience a nuclear war at some point in our lives and then over time that fear recedes and and Oppenheimer stuck with me as a figure and I learned more about him over the years including learning this information that you know he along with the key scientists the Manhattan Project. They couldn’t completely eliminate the possibility of starting a chain reaction that would destroy the world and for me that was kind of the hook.”
The director further added, “it’s such a dramatic moment.” He also referred to it in his “last film Tenet.” Also, Nolan said, “I’m just very interested in taking the audience into that room and being there and kind of living in that moment of what would have been like to push that button knowing there was any possibility.” Beyond that, A Sting song, Russians, caught his interest eventually inspiring him to create the 2023 masterpiece.
Crafting Oppenheimer With An Orthodox Approach
Cillian Murphy and Christopher Nolan in Oppenheimer (2023). Image Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pic
To begin with, the crux of the narrative began with the huge challenge of filming the Trinity test. “I mean we always knew that the Trinity test would have to be a showstopper. It’s the fulcrum that the whole story turns on,” Nolan said of the essence of the Trinity test in Oppenheimer.
“When I finished the script, one of the first people I showed the script to was my visual effects supervisor because I wanted to take CG off the table and see if, you know, he could come up with real world methodologies for producing the effect of, you know, first atomic blast. But even more than that I wanted to see how we were going to try and look into Oppenheimer’s mind and see his thought process of, you know, as I put sort of looking into dull matter and seeing energy there and seeing the potential of the strong force there to be unleashed on the world and sort of draw that thread with symbolic imagery and visualizations of the quantum world and everything.”
Andrew Jackson, the director added expanding on the subtle cinematic details referring to the visual effect supervisor, “I’ve worked with for several films, um, he won an Oscar for Tenet. I worked with him for years.” Certainly, it was assuring to Nolan that Jackson understands both the computer and analog world. He spent “months and months and months doing all these experiments and figuring out all these methods,” he said. “Some very very small and microscopic, some of them absolutely colossal,” he added. Keeping CGI off the table must have been a pain for Jackson but was certainly interesting to work with Nolan with his orthodox approach. Nolan’s fascination with analog is fascinating. Fun fact, he doesn’t have a cell phone.
Oppenheimer was a blockbuster grossing over $960 million worldwide. At the Oscars front, the movie leads with a total of 13 nominations including Best Picture and Best Director.
Oppenheimer is available to stream on Peacock.
