- The Epic Story: Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Oppenheimer’s story receives critical acclaim
- A World-Changing Weapon: Exploring the creation of the atomic bomb and its impact on history
- Timely Relevance: As tensions rise in Ukraine, Oppenheimer serves as a reminder of the weapon’s menace
J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb, altered the trajectory of history. Now, Christopher Nolan has adapted his story for the big screen, but does the three-hour epic succeed? Critics concur.
The first nuclear detonation occurred in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested.
A new film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb, examines how he came to construct a weapon that would change the world and how it changed him.
As Russia’s war rages in Ukraine, people are reminded of the weapon’s menace to the world, decades after its invention.
Christopher Nolan, who wrote and directed the film and based it on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, told that he never intended for the film to be so timely.
“I had a conversation with one of my teenage sons about what I was working on, and he asked me directly, ‘Does anyone still worry about nuclear weapons?'” Is that something that exists in the world?
“I responded, ‘Well, maybe that’s a reason for creating the film, but beyond that, it’s just a very, very dramatic story about how our world changed irrevocably.
“Two years later, he no longer asks that question, and neither does anyone else for all the worst possible reasons, and that’s symptomatic of our relationship with the threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear holocaust – it ebbs and flows with geopolitical shifts in a way that it shouldn’t – I mean, the danger is always present.”
Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy lost weight and perfected a new accent to portray Oppenheimer. He also had to study quantum physics and contend with Oppenheimer’s morality.
This seems to be the case, according to Murphy: “Actors love getting jobs, but they’re desperate to finish them.”
“So, yeah, it was time for a vacation after that,” she said. “If you do anything for 17, 18 hours a day and you’re constantly on set, there’s bound to be a cost, and then you feel at the end there’s all this displaced energy and you’re not sure what to do with it, so you start moving furniture around.”
Nolan interjects, “And have a sandwich”
It was not difficult for the director, whose filmography includes Interstellar, Inception, and Dunkirk, and who has a reputation for avoiding digital effects and greenscreen, to recreate a nuclear detonation.
Instead, he claims that the casting process was intimidating.
“The ensemble, with Cillian at the center as Oppenheimer, was a challenge for me, as were his interactions with this complete team of people working together to accomplish this, you know, impossible feat.
All of these group discussions, disputes, and interpersonal relationships took place in a sort of hothouse atmosphere due to the Manhattan Project and everything they had to accomplish during their years there.
That was something I had never seriously attempted before.
The overwhelmingly positive early evaluations for Oppenheimer suggest that Nolan was up to the task.
A three-hour epic about atomic weapon construction may be too close to the end of the world for moviegoers.
Oppenheimer, starring Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, and Robert Downey Jr., is released globally on Friday, July 21.
