There's no denying Christopher Nolan’s genius as a filmmaker. Next month, the creative mind behind the award-winning The Dark Knight trilogy, Interstellar, and Inception, among others, will give cinemagoers another reason to troop to theaters when his latest film Oppenheimer drops.
Recently, the director sat down for an interview with Wired where he discussed the film, including his approach to making audiences see inside the head of the protagonist, the challenges he encountered, and the surprising parallels between the atomic bomb and AI.
Apparently, the film makes for a very intense experience. In fact, the viewing experience was so intense that, when a fellow filmmaker saw it, he likened it to a horror movie. Surprisingly, Nolan felt the same way.
This revelation makes us wonder just how high the stakes are in the forthcoming film – but then, there are probably no higher stakes than the potential destruction of Earth and everything on it, including our families and friends.
With Oppenheimer, Nolan hopes to tell the story of the first atomic bomb through the eyes of the man that is largely responsible for it – J. Robert Oppenheimer. He called it a wild story and revealed his bias for the man saying "he's the most important man who ever lived."
Even though the director’s aim is to tell an entertaining story with Oppenheimer, it will also ask some hard questions of its viewers and require them to think. This is all by design and Nolan thinks it will make for a compelling story.
In his words, "Oppenheimer's story is all impossible questions. Impossible ethical dilemmas, paradox. There are no easy answers in his story. There are just difficult questions, and that's what makes the story so compelling."
To be honest, this does not surprise us in the least given some of Nolan’s past projects, especially Inception and Tenet. It is what we have come to expect from the genius filmmaker and the reason many fans troop to theaters to watch his films.
Ahead of the film’s release, Nolan and his team have been doing early screenings. On their reactions, the auteur stated, "Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated. They can't speak. I mean, there's an element of fear that's there in the history and there in the underpinnings."
The director certainly did his best to up the ante as he did his best to ensure that audiences fall in love with the characters and the relationships between them. He even went as far as describing it as one of the strongest he has ever portrayed in a project.
Bringing Oppenheimer’s compelling story to life is an ensemble cast that includes Cillian Murphy, as the titular character, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, and Florence Pugh.
By the way, Oppenheimer is set to be Nolan’s longest film ever at almost three hours. The auteur did not spare any effort to ensure he made a great film and he went as far as actually blowing things up instead of using CGI.
Oppenheimer will drop in theaters on July 21.
