There are some new details for Oppenheimer, thanks to a new interview with director Christopher
Nolan, and within that article we also get some first reactions to the film and a
description from the filmmaker about the ending.
The movie is described as a somewhat horror movie by an unnamed filmmaker and Nolan himself
details that many who have seen it have left feeling absoluted devastated.
So in this video, I'm going to be discussing what was said and breaking down all the newest
info.
Before I get into it though, if you want to keep up to
date on any of my upcoming content surrounding Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, then don't
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But without further a do, lets discuss the new interview with Christopher Nolan.
So a new article from the publication Wired has released online, and it includes a full
length interview with Christopher Nolan about Oppenheimer and some early reactions to
the film, which I will be discussing towards the end.
I'm going to be focussing specifically on what was said about the film, so if you want
to read some of the other things that the filmmaker said like with conversation on AI,
a link to the article will be in the comment section of this video.
Also, as you can see onscreen there were 3 new images released for the
film, one of Nolan on location in New Mexico, another of Cillian's Oppenheimer and one of
him with Tom Conti's Albert Einstein at the institute of Advanced Study.
So let's get into everything that was said about Oppenheimer
in this latest interview.
The discussion began with Wired's reporter making an observation about Nolan's films,
saying that it feels like all of them been leading up to his new project.
Nolan agreed and said, "I've tended to feel this way with every project
I've done.
Because I'm trying to build on what I've learned before.
Every time you finish a film, there are questions left hanging.
And so with the next film, you kind of pick up the thread.
In the case of Oppenheimer, very literally, there is a reference to him in Tenet.
His story has been with me for years.
It's just an incredible idea—people doing these calculations, and looking at the relationship
between theory and the real world, and deciding there's a very small possibility they're
going to destroy it.
And yet they pushed the button.
It's literally the most dramatic moment in history.
My feeling on Oppenheimer was, a lot of people know the name, and
they know he was involved with the atomic bomb, and they know that something else happened
that was complicated in his relationship to US history.
But not more specific than that.
Frankly, for me, that's the ideal audience member for my film.
The people who know nothing are going to get the wildest ride.
Because it's a wild story."
The wired reporter then turned to the charisma of Oppenheimer and observed
that in the movie, someone says to him, that he can get anybody to do anything.
He was a brilliant manager and brilliant at knowing
who was doing what in each room.
Nolan replied to this and said, "he knew how to motivate people through the theatricality
of his persona, the projection of his own brilliance.
He gave all the scientists and officials and everyone
a focal point and had real charisma.
It made it all come together.
The film deals with this a lot, the idea that these academics, these
theorists could come together and build something with their own hands of this magnitude, of
this importance."
The interview then turned to all the tension surrounding the nuclear threat both during
the time of Oppenheimer's story and all the way up to today, and Nolan explained how he
was connected to that growing up.
He said "I grew up in the 1980s in the UK, and we had the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
and all that.
People were very, very aware.
When I was 13, me and my friends, we were convinced we would
die in a nuclear holocaust.
I was talking to Steven Spielberg about this the other day and he grew up under the threat
of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the '60s.
There are times in human history when the danger of nuclear warfare has been so palpable
and tactile and visible to us that we're very aware of it.
And then we can only be worried for so long, and we move on.
We worry about other things.
The problem is that the danger doesn't actually go away.
What I remember from the '80s is that the fear of
nuclear war had receded in favor of fear of environmental destruction.
It was almost like we couldn't sustain the fear of it for that long.
We have a complicated relationship with our fear.
And yes, as of late, Putin has been using that doomsday threat and that fear to saber-rattle.
It's extremely unnerving."
The conversation moved towards Oppenheimer and his roles in history, especially after
the bomb had been tested and all the complications with the US Goverment excelled.
Nolan spoke a bit about this saying, "the thing with Oppenheimer
is that he very much saw the role of scientists postwar as being the experts who had to figure
out how to regulate this power in the world.
And when you see what happened to him, you understand that that was never going to be
allowed to happen.
It's a very complicated relationship between science and government, and it's
never been more brutally exposed than in Oppenheimer's story.
I think there are all kinds of lessons to be learned from it.
He tried to work from within the establishment and not just
turn around and say, you know, what we need is love or whatever.
He was very practical in his approach, but he still got crushed.
It's very complex, and I think from our inventors now,
it's very disingenuous for them to say, we need to be regulated."
And here, Nolan begins to discuss probabaly the most powerful theme within this movie's
many discussion points, one that I also spoke about in my video a few
weeks ago.
And that is the whole idea of Openess, which Niels Bohr, the character that Kenneth Branaugh
plays in the film, really inspires within this story.
The interview says, "there was a moment when Oppenheimer wanted the science to be shared."
And Nolan replies, "Candor was the word he used.
He believed it about the Hydrogen bomb as well.
I mean, it's funny talking about it, because in a way these are spoilers for the film.
But in another way it's history.
There is this important moment where, as the H-bomb program gears up, he took to making
speeches where he would say, I wish I could tell you what I knew, but I can't.
If you knew what I knew, you'd understand that we all have
to share information.
It's the only way we'll not destroy the world, essentially.
So candor was what he viewed as the most practical means of that.
We were all coming together, and he viewed the UN as being a powerful body in
the future, with real teeth.
He viewed international control of atomic energy as the only way to ensure world peace.
That hasn't happened, obviously."
And I must say what Nolan said here is exactly what was going through my mind while reading
the American Prometheus book that the movie is based on.
The true struggle is that Oppenheimer and other scientists knew
that there had to be a greater sense of openess when it came to the information shared around
the bomb.
And the US goverment and other governments continued to push this level of
secrecy and aimed more for excellerating their bomb program, which of course grew with the
atomic arms race.
It's chilling when you think about what's going on now and how really things
have stayed on that path when it comes to the secrecy between world powers and how information
is shared through technology.
So seeing how he'll tackle that in the film is going
to be a really interesting part of it.
And like I said in my video the other week, the big narrative talking point is likely
going to be those debates surrounding the idea of openess and
trust.
The final thing said on Oppenheimer in this interview was actually a fun little detail
that makes you think about how Nolan might end this story onscreen.
The interviewer said that her and her mum had recently watched some of Nolan's
films together and she was curious about the optimistic messages that some of them have
and end with.
In reply, he said, "I mean, the end of Inception is exactly that.
There is a nihilistic view of that ending, but also, he's moved on and is with his kids.
The ambiguity is not an emotional ambiguity, it's an intellectual
one for the audience.
It's funny, I think there is an interesting relationship between the endings of Inception
and Oppenheimer to be explored.
Oppenheimer's got a complicated ending and complicated feelings.
I wrote this script in the first person.
It's what I told Cillian.
You are the eyes of the audience and he takes us there.
The bulk of the storytelling, we don't go outside of his experience.
It's my best attempt to convey the answer to the question of what he might have been
feeling."
So when it comes to Nolan referencing and comparing
Oppenheimer's ending to that of Inception, I think he may be alluding to the idea of
Oppenheimer's relationship with his children and expanding on the questions surrounding
whether the world has really changed for the better.
The ending of the book does touch on that quite a bit and it really details the complex
and struggled relationship that he has, especially with
his son and wife.
I think it'll touch on the emotional implications of Oppenheimer's work on his life and especially
the effect that it had on his wife and kids.
There's a big chapter towards the end of the book that really dives
into his life on an island following all the degrading trials that took place.
And I am interested to see how that'll lead into the ending
and what profound message the director decides to leave us with.
The reason I touch on the potential for an emotional ending like this is because at the
end of this interview, Nolan did speak a bit about the first reactions
to the film and what sort of impression people left the movie with.
And it definitely makes me think that he could take a route that deals with
those conflicting questions.
Regarding the first reactions, he said, "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.
But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I've ever
done.
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.
I think we were able to find a lot of things to be optimistic about in the film,
genuinely, but there's this sort of overriding bigger question that hangs over it.
It felt essential that there be questions at the end that
you leave rattling in people's brains, and prompting discussion."
So alongside Nolan's hints at a more emotional ending it seems like the big questions over
atomic energy and how things have transpired today with openess, are going
to be tackled in some way shape or form.
He also mentioned in this segment of the interview that he showed Oppenheimer to an unnamed
filmmaker recently, and they responsed with quite the interesting description of it.
Nolan said, "It is an intense experience, because it's an intense story.
I showed it to a filmmaker recently who said it's kind of a horror movie.
I don't disagree.
It's interesting that you used the word nihilism earlier, because I don't think I'd quite managed
to put my finger on it.
But as I started to finish the film, I started to feel this color that's not in my other
films, and that is just darkness.
It's there and the film fights against that.
I was relieved to be finished with it, but I enjoy watching
the film tremendously.
I think you'll understand when you see the film.
It's a complicated set of feelings to be entertained by awful
things, which is where the horror dimension comes in."
He ended the article saying that his kids had also seen the film too and they too had
quite the fascinating reaction having been quite the younger viewer.
He said, "I told one of my sons about it as I started to write it, and he literally said
to me: But nobody really worries about nuclear weapons anymore.
Two years later, he's not saying that.
The world's changed again, and that's a lesson for all of us, but particularly for the young.
The world changes fast."
So overall, there's a lot of interesting reactions here that Nolan details
and having read the book, it really does sound like he's gone the extra mile to excellerate
the fears at the centre of the story.
And if Nolan has done this and gone beyond the book's
pages by detailing how Oppenheimer must have actually felt, it will make it that much more
powerful.
I can't wait to see how he's approached all the biggest themes and question
points, and like I've said on many occasions, I think this has the potential to be the perfect
match for Nolan's filmmaking style and storytelling appeal.
But they were the main details from the new interview with Christopher Nolan.
It was fascinating to hear what Nolan said about the film, especially with his comments
on those that have now seen Oppenheimer and it's definitely looking
positive based on what's being said.
It's officially 1 month until it in theatres, so we'll all be able to see it soon and I
will of course be sharing my extended thoughts when
I get a chance to watch it myself.
I've also got a lot of content coming up for it both with the continuation of my road to
Oppenheimer series and I'll be giving you constant updates
on the film whenever we get them, so stay tuned as it's going to be a busy month ahead.
But I'm interested to hear what you guys think towards the new details and first reactions
to the film in this new Christopher Nolan interview.
So let me know down below in the comments section.
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