Christopher Nolan has made successful and iconic films in many different genres.
He's made great physchological thrillers, detective films, neo noirs, science fiction
epics and conquered the blockbuster film landscape on
many occasions.
But even after all the wonderful films we've seen from the filmmaker in the past, I think
there's reasons to be incredibly excited about Oppenheimer, and through the
potential of it's story, it's filmmaking and its integral focus on character, I think this
could be one of the auteur filmmaker's very best.
So in this video essay, I'm going to be discussing the main reasons why I think Oppenheimer can
be one of Christopher Nolan's best films even after all of the great work he's put to
screen.
Before I get into it though, if you want to keep up to date on any of my content surrounding
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, then don't forget to support this upload by giving
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But without further a do, lets dive into why Oppenheimer can be Christopher Nolan's best
film.
One thing that has always got me excited about a new Christopher Nolan release is the personal
touch that the director manages to bring, even if his films are big in scale or driven
by visual filmmaking.
There's always a deeper sense of thematics or a personal message at the heart of his
theatrical moviemaking.
Memento was taken from a very real experience that his
brother Jonathan Nolan encountered.
The Dark Knight was a reflection of his and many others fears towards escalating terror
in a post 9/11 america.
Interstellar was a more human film but one that focussed on a father and daughter
relationship, stemming from Nolan's own parental experience.
And Inception again grew from that fatherly bond, with the moments where
Nolan would watch his kids playing outside of his office window.
An image that would become an iconic one in the film.
In a recent Empire article, the director said, "I've always worked
in genres that are pretty far removed from my own life, but I absolutely see my life
and its evolutionary points through that.
Right from Following, which is about a lonely wannabe
writer in London.
The fact that there is some relationship with my growth or evolution as a person, being
older, being married, having kids and now my kids are getting older and
leaving...
it tells me that I'm trying to write from an honest perspective, even if I'm writing
a science fiction film, or a thriller or a superhero film.
I'm not one of those filmmakers that looks back at what I've done
in the past and goes, I should have done that differently.
I just want my films to pose interesting questions".
Of course, there's comparisons between all of Nolan's work, big
or small and the article mentioned this, but the stories themselves our their own seperate
beasts.
And the hype for Oppenheimer is definitely in its own category.
It's not a big blockbuster as to say and its not a film that's gonna make 1 billion at
the box office.
I mean sure if it did, amazing, but what specifically is exciting about this project,
is that Nolan is going back to his roots in a way that I think many of us have wanted
for quite some time.
And that is through a return to character driven films.
After seeing Dunkirk, a film about soldiers we don't knew anything about, fighting to
survive and get home across the channel, and then Tenet, a film driven by a protagonist,
who again, doesn't really have a big human backstory, it's refreshing to see a filmmaker
who once delivered great character driven films
returning to that bracket.
Now I love both Dunkirk and Tenet, and the approach of those films, I'd argue, was the
right approach for the types of stories that were told there.
But Oppenheimer is tapping into the earlier work
of say Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige and even Batman Begins, where the we follow the
central figure, either through their early life or
through a complex and traumatic period of it.
In fact Oppenheimer, is covering the whole story and a total of 45 years onscreen in
3 hours.
What I think many of us liked about those earlier films was the deep dive psychologically
into both the character and the largest situation at play.
And what gives Oppenheimer an even greater advantage when it comes to this
focal point, is that while the situation surrounding the film and the importance of the atomic
bomb's bomb's development is huge, the director is taking an approach where at first hand,
we follow Oppenheimer through all of this.
In recent interviews he said that the entire film, or mainly the colour sequences which
take up a huge portion of it, were wrote in the first
person and that both the camera and the drection of scenes, is from Oppenheimer's central perspective.
That on it's own provides an opportunity for a deeper intensity with the main
character and it helps us to get into the mind of one of the world's most intellectual
and game-changing figures.
On top of this, Nolan and his effects team have crafted moments in the
film where we'll actually go into opeenheimer's mind and see the atoms moving and the science
going on in his brain visually.
And that takes the whole writing on the window aspect in
biopic films to another level.
If we're going to follow someone for 3 hours, we better be in that person's shoes and get
their full perspective so that we as an audience can understand
them better and in turn understand the scale of what is going on.
Taking a story like Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin's American Prometheus, giving it a personal
touch and putting us as close as we can to Oppenheimer himself, is
in my opinion, a genius move by the filmmaker, especially after reading the book that all
of this is based on.
Coming to that book and the storytelling material available, Oppenheimer's life is very much
told in broad strokes.
Yes you get get moments of dialogue and even full transcripts of the
trial scenes that took place after the bomb's development, but all the earlier development
stages and other moments in Oppenheimer's life are told as you'd expect from a biopic.
And Christopher Nolan is taking that and applying
a more first person approach to a lot of it.
I don't know what research he's done to get all the real details of particular moments,
but if you know his history surrounding other
projects, he tends to strive for as much reality as possible, even when it comes to franchise
films.
With Dunkirk, he made veterans cry when he screened them the film, because he reimagined
it in a way that was so authentic to what happened on that beach.
And he even went to the extent in Interstellar to put real science
into a computer to visualise what a Black Hole might look like.
It may not have turned out 100% accurate in terms of the science on display when we saw
a real image of a black hole, but it ended up being quite an impressive
visual prediction.
So by going the extensive route to capture the 45 years of Oppenheimer's life realistically,
I think it's going to make the central messages, themes and points in
this story even more effective.
Especially when its driven by Oppenheimer himself.
Now having read the book, there's pure moments of complete
tension, there's emotional breakdowns and all the componenets that make for an insane
thriller with an encapturing tale.
And the central themstics are ones that connect to everyone
like every Nolan film does.
Presented as a tragedy, Oppenheimer's story is viewed today as a cautionary tale about
hubris and the role of the intellect in the world of heart.
It's also a story about the lack of trust from all sides,
whether that be from a political perspective, a scientific one or one thats very personal.
And of course its an epic tale about how the world forever changed based on the epic race
against time to build the first atomic bomb.
It connects to all because our world would not be the way it is today, both for good
and for bad, without these events happening.
And while you could say that there's an epic sense of story to every film that Nolan has
done in the last 10 years, the difference again with
Oppenheimer, is that there's a man, a character and a knowledge of that person's life at the
heart of the whole thing.
Dunkirk was marketed as the event that shaped our world, and
while it was an important event that was captured brilliantly by the filmmaker, we're not going
to truely understand the people as we'll probabaly do with Oppenheimer.
The themes and storytelling potential for this is perfect
for a large scale Nolan film, and yet its not a traditional blockbuster that we'd usually
see from him.
And speaking about that large scale approach in a more intimate way, I think with the filmmaking
guiding that too, its just another reason to be excited.
Having this objective vs subjective approach with both black and
white and colour sequences, having a newly created imax camera that can be used in up-close
photography and in dialogue scenes, and applying what we'd expect from Nolan's traditional
practical filmmaking focus, appears like a match made in heaven.
Even critics who haven't loved Nolan's work over the last 5-10 years have
always praised his practical sense of filmmaking and ambition in large scale photography, and
when you combine that with more character driven scenes and find a way to film more
personal moments with big IMAX photography, it could take the typical approach of a biopic
to a whole other level.
They made a big focus on this in the IMAX behind the scenes
featurette released the other week and I think when it comes to the filmmaking side of things
this is by far one of the main reasons that excites me for seeing Oppenheimer on the
biggest screen possible.
We as theatre goers usually go to IMAX expecting the most breathtaking images and filmmaking
on display from a purely aesthetic side of things, and we hope
that as a whole it just elevates the importance of the storytelling.
But recently we've seen many blockbusters or large films shot on the format that either
do one or the other.
But Nolan goes a step further, because he films for real on actual film and he presents
it in the biggest format possible with 70mm.
With oppenheimer he's doing that again, but with
new IMAX cameras, shooting black and white Imax for the first time and had actual new
platters developed to hold this film and its extensive running time.
He cares about preserving film as a historical medium and he truly cares
about the theatrical industry and the way things are shot and shown.
And to me when a director has that passion and strives to present a
film both from a storytelling and a visual perspective in evolutionary ways, I can't
help but be incredibly excited about Oppenheimer, more than I have with recent Nolan projects.
So overall, the director focuses on telling stories that appeal to him, that in turn,
he thinks will appeal to the audience in a big way.
It's no coincidence that the tensions and problems going on in the world today reflect
what's likely being told in Oppenheimer and it seems that Nolan is aiming to present that
in the biggest, yet the most personal way possible.
And I think by doing that he achieves something much greater than an Oscar on his mantle.
No matter how big and large in scale a Nolan film is, he writes and directs what
he's interested in and puts apart of himself into it.
There's a level of passion with him that we don't seen from many films, franchises or
directors in large scale filmmaking today.
And I think going into this, he's learnt from everything he's done in the past and is essentially
combining the best of that in one true and important story.
While Inception is currently my favourite Nolan film, and it
may still be after Oppenheimer, I think his latest work could surpass that.
And this is because, like I've touched on, it has all the
potential to go further with every level of the moviemaking process.
It has an intense and fascinating story that relates to all of us.
It's apparently as close to a Nolan protagonist that we've ever gotten.
And its evolving filmmaking and IMAX in ways that we never thought was possible all in
the format of a biopic film, which tends to be a lot smaller.
So if it does what Nolan and the actors involved are
saying it does, then it ticks all the boxes.
And like how he's elevated multiple genres in the past and the set standard with which
those films are compared to, what's to say he doesn't
do it again.
But that was my video discussing why I think Oppenheimer has the potential to be one of
Nolan's greatest films.
Again, it could turn out to be either a great movie or even one of
Nolan's weaker films, but just going into it knowing his consistent track record, what
we've heard about the project and understanding the material that he's adapting, it makes
me incredibly excited to see what he'll do.
Whether it is great or not, I think we can expect the filmmaker to strive for something
we haven't seen before and yet really capture this
story with his directorial stamp.
We'll have to see, and of course there's not long to wait until July 21st, so when that
day comes, I will be leaving my expectations and hype at the
door, and just ready to experience what Nolan has done with this film.
But are you excited for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, and like me, do you think this
could be one of the director's best character driven films and
what else particularly excites you about it.
I'm interested to hear what you guys think, so let me know what your thoughts are down
below in the comments section.
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