One of the big talking points around the potential impact of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer,
is of course the reflection of nuclear power in today's world.
The fear surrounding the atomic weapon has only grown in recent years
and Nolan's film on the figure who helped develop it is likely going to cause much conversation
on the state of that power.
But its not just Oppenheimer that has related to current conflicts
in the world today because many examples in Nolan's filmography have often been reflective
of the times they release in, or films that extapolate the fears of those given periods.
So in this video, using case studies like Nolan's The Dark Knight and his 2017 film
Dunkirk, I'm going to be discussing why his latest film
could be another that releases at the right time.
This marks the next video in my Road To Oppenheimer series, where I will be doing more video essays
and topical videos on the Oppenheimer film, the American prometheus
book that it's based on and tying those into Christopher Nolan's past filmography as well.
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
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But without further a do, lets dive into how Christopher Nolan may be releasing Oppenheimer
at the right time.
So its not unknown that Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is coming out in a time where
the fears of nuclear annihilation have never been higher.
And when you dive deep into the story of the man who halped develop the atomic bomb,
there's so much that essentially kickstarted where we are today.
Oppie, as he's nicknamed in the American Prometheus book, at first helped
develop a weapon that would hopefully end all greater wars and one that would be developed
before the nazis could do so themselves.
If they did we may have been looking at a completely
different world today.
Over time, we learnt that the nazis weren't close to developing one, but the US goverment
and military still used that weapon in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to stop an
esculation of war with Japan afterwards.
Japan themselves were apparently ready to surrender before and that very action itself
became a huge question mark.
One that would also become very physchologically damaging for Oppie and
those who helped build the gadget.
And after all of this came the political side to the story, where Oppie had tried to prevent
a heightened nuclear arms race by getting more involved
in american politics.
The later aspects of his life were haunted by the ramifications of what this weapon could
do in the future but it was also affected by the humiliating trials that
claimed Oppenheimer was feeding information to the soviets.
The claim was that he was untrustworthy because of his connections to those who
were communists and this was in a time where the russians were progressing their nuclear
arsenal in the years following that very first trinity test.
Oppenheimer and others belived that america should be open with the russians after
the use of an atomic weapon so that there could be this process of rebuilding trust
in turn, pushing for a no first-us law, where countries would agree to never use these weapons
first.
Things transpired and led us to today, where we now find ourselves in quite a worrying
situation.
One where Russia is advancing their attacks on Ukraine and their president
is continuously mentioning their nuclear arsenal.
Whether one of these weapons is ever used is of course unknown but the very existence
of nuclear weapons themselves and the history
of them, makes it inconcievable that someone would use them today.
Because if one does go off, then its likely the hit nation would retaliate,
leading to all-out annihilation on a global scale.
This is a central fear in the minds of many people today and while, like I said, you wouldn't
beleive that this would ever happen because of the consequences, still, there's
always that small percentage as we inch closer to midnight on the doomsday clock.
So this leads us to a big talking point about Oppenheimer
as a film, one that relates to how Christopher Nolan has on multiple occasions, released
a movie at the right time.
So lets first take a trip back to a few of Nolan's other films and
talk about how the director makes a movie that reflects the real world landscape at
a given time.
Starting with 2008's The Dark Knight, a film that is often considered as one of, if not
the greatest comic book movie of all time and also one of the most defining blockbusters
of the 21st century.
A film that changed the comic book genre if you will or one that became connected to the
conversation that the X-men films started, which was that this genre could tap
into the deeper questions that we had towards big real-world themes and from a filmaking
sense, a movie with more realistic lens.
Primarily, the dark knight was a reflection and
reaction to 9/11.
If you watch the long Dark Knight documentary on Warner Bros home entertainment YouTube
channel, the writer, filmmaker and others touch on how this film was really a
large scale property that explored the world of that time.
The poster was a reflection of terror and 9/11.
The use of technology in that film, especially in the third act, was an
extension of our fears towards survelliance.
And the Joker himself in The Dark Knight is the manifestation of terrorism conducted by
an individual who wants to watch the world burn.
Its a film that only becomes richer on more rewatches and lasts the test of time, because
it speaks to people on a much deeper level.
Yes you can watch it as a batman film and get the
thrills and action that you expect.
But you can also view it as a piece about the modern world of that time and a film in
communication with the fears that modern america had after 9/11.
So Nolan right from that film was making projects that directly speak to the time they came
out in through large scale filmmaking.
And when we move forward to say Dunkirk, he did it
again.
In the UK in 2017 we were going through a little thing called Brexit and others around
the world were falling out with their neighbour countries.
There was this sense of seperation amongst people and this idea of
the collective was increasingly becoming fragmented, whatever way you look at it.
Dunkirk in its very nature is yes a film set in world war 2,
but its also a survival thriller about different individuals who we know nothing about fighting
across the channel in an effort to just get home alive.
And what happens in the later parts of that movie very much touches on the
idea of the seperating world and the needed push for a communal effort.
We watch three narratives, one of air, one of sea and one land
eventually come together, and the individuals that we followed throughout help each other
on a small boat to just simply surive.
It's communal heroism and showing how little efforts can
build a much more heroic act.
So as a whole, Nolan has consistantly made films that speak to a global audience in the
time they release, even if they are of a particular genre or they
focus on characters that you typically wouldn't relate to.
And that's because thematically, the story connects to everyone.
Even look at Interstellar and its argument for putting more
love into the science and reflecting the outlook of us needing to look more beyond our own
solar system if we're going to survive.
Look at Tenet for its conversations about a main
protagonist preventing an attack from the future to save the very present.
And look at a film like Inception which touches on the moral corruption of humanity with the
effect of corporate control.
Essentially the whole motivation for Saito with the inception mission.
Everything touches on themes or ideas that are very present in the world today or ones
that mannifest within our own minds.
Yes a lot of other filmmakers do a good job of reflecting central themes, but I think
with Nolan, he's one of the few to attract a wider audience by
taking a genre or complex story and giving it a sense a relatability on a larger scale.
So when it comes to Oppenheimer, which is meant to be a biopic or thriller film, how
could Nolan once again, make the right movie at the right time.
Well, regardless of it being a film that won't have much action and one that likely
won't play as much on the large scale blockbuster tendancies of the director, I still think
having read the story, that this will connect to a lot of people.
And in turn, I think it will still have a large scale reaction because of its very themes.
The director loves to end his films on a powerful message, something that
the audience can react to emotionally or metaphorically.
The Dark Knight for instance ended on the idea that a city isn't defeated by the fear
of terrorism.
They weren't broken by the choas that the Joker ensued and Batman himself
takes the fall of that to protect the legacy of city's central figure.
In Dunkirk it ends on the message that by coming to together you
can achieve the most important thing and that is survival.
We learn that their surival over the channel was instrumental in winning the next war for
britain.
And in Oppenheimer, a lot of this story, especially the later aspects touch
on the idea of mistrust and that the world needs more openess.
Neils Bohr, the scientist who Oppenheimer looks up to as a god, inspires
this very idea of openess that Oppie eventually tries to transfer towards everything going
on with the US goverment.
And the US govertments own fears and untrustworthy assertions of the
russians lead them to excel their mistrust of Oppenheimer and everyone he's in contact
with.
So I think Nolan is going to make a big point about there being no trust and that the world
essentially can only rebuild with this sense of openess, that Oppenheimer eventually pushes
from Bohr.
That correlates to the world we currently live in and right now you have countries
and political sides who just aren't open enough with one another.
They don't make an effort to listen to the other side, they completely distrust what
they believe and we even see that reflected in other issues like with censorship.
But the very idea of this when it comes to nuclear power, began with those circumstances
surrounding Oppenheimer.
The world changed through his very creation, which had to be
built, but after it changed in some of the worst possible ways.
Now I don't know what themes Nolan is going to centralise in his movie, but
this idea of critiquing trust and openess, which is central to the end of the book, is
something that I think he will put at the forefront, because on a large scale, it connects
to everyone and everything going on today.
So as a whole, Christopher Nolan reflects the fears of the modern world through the
films he puts to screen.
He takes the biggest themes and storylines and makes them relatable to the
audience watching.
He takes Batman, grounds him in reality, and portrays our fears towards terrorism in the
real world.
He takes a world war 2 film, strips out the politics and shows
us a survival thriller about many different people coming together just to make it home.
And with Oppenheimer I think he's going to portray the fears of nuclear annihilation,
but primilary critique the underlying tension
to all of that.
And that is the growing sense of mistrust and ultimately, a world without openess.
A world that if it continues down that path could in the long run face complete annihilation.
Alongside these integral themes to the story of Oppenheimer and the effects of the atomic
weapon on the world as a whole, I think its no
surprise that this film comes at a time in the cinematic landscape when we're seeing
less and less large scale films or blockbusters with ture cinematic storytelling other than
making them for monetary reasons.
After the blockbuster successes of Nolan's previous work, other than say Tenet in the
height of the pandemic, he's now choosing to go the route of a character
driven film that encompases the big themes and conversations that a large scale film
of the past would include.
And I think that very point excites me the most about Oppenheimer.
He's taking everything he's learnt about big scale
filmmaking, and all the character work that he did in his early career and he's essentially
combining it in this one film about one of the
most important people who ever lived.
I don't know how you can't be excited about that and thinking about how he might execute
that and deliver it in the form of a biopic thriller,
makes me very intrigued.
Nolan and his crew said in the recent edition of Total film magazine that all the stuff
happening in Ukraine developed while they were filming Oppenheimer.
This film isn't a reaction to that news, its simply
releasing in a time where the fears of nuclear war have esculated even further.
And I think that speaks to Nolan's eye for making a film
at the right time.
He's clearly interested in takling the biggest themes in large scale movies that a lot of
people want to watch and his previous examples of filmmaking only underline
that point.
We'll have to see how Oppenheimer creates conversations this time, but right now, I
think its again another example of the filmmaker understanding the fears that audiences
have today and one that potentially shows he's making a film to critique the very nature
of those fears.
But that was my video discussing how Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer could come at the right
time.
It'll be interesting to see what the conversation is after this film releases and
having read a majority of the book that it's based on, I think there are going to be many
discussions.
Like I said, the main ones are the uncertainty and suspiction surrounding
Oppenheimer himself, and how those tensions can extend to today.
The book is a fabulous read and with Nolan covering a lot of that onscreen in a claimed
storytelling period of 45 years, there's surely going to be a lot of deeper
analysis to come.
But how do you think Nolan will go about reflecting the fears of today in his upcoming film and
to those who have read the book or know even more about the details surrounding
this story, how do you think people will react to the big talking points.
Let me know down below in the comments section, and stay
tuned for more video essays and topical videos in my Road to Oppenheimer series in the months
ahead.
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