“I don’t make films to make a point”: decoding the apolitical filmography of Christopher Nolan
When Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer was released in the summer of 2023, it sparked a passionate debate about the responsibility of filmmakers to take a stand on contentious historical figures. Based on the life of J Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who spearheaded the Manhattan Project and helped create the atomic bomb, the film takes a highly subjective but not political approach, centring on the man rather than the incalculable tragedy he facilitated.
Oppenheimer swept the Academy Awards, taking home seven statuettes, including for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, and ‘Best Actor’ for Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of the titular scientist. At three hours, the film had ample opportunity to explore the human toll that Oppenheimer’s efforts took on the people of Japan and on the escalating international arms race that followed, but Nolan intentionally steers away. The film received near-universal acclaim, but many critics pointed out the elephant in the room.
Oppenheimer was Nolan’s first stab at a biopic, but he’d stoked controversy in the past by avoiding an overt ideological stance. The Dark Knight horrified some audiences for its violence and sparked a debate about societal breakdown and libertarianism. Then, there was Dunkirk, a World War II movie that takes a more first-person point-of-view approach to war than a bird’s-eye political view.
“I don’t make films to make a point,” Nolan insisted in a 2023 interview in The Telegraph. “I make them to ask engaging questions and try to entertain an audience and give them an exciting experience that hopefully lingers.”
It isn’t just about entertainment, though. Nolan argued that it’s better if the audience takes away different opinions from each film. “I think that when you’re taking on a subject like Oppenheimer, as with Dunkirk,” he said, “You’re ideally looking to make a Rorschach test.”
In other words, he wants audiences to watch the same thing and find different resonances. What you bring to it will inform what you take away from it.
This is one of the greatest aspects of cinema – its ability to meet you where you are. Movies like Titanic or Terms of Endearment might be engineered to activate your tear ducts, but once the credits roll, they’re much less likely to stick in your head quite as persistently as Stanley Kubrick’s artfully ambiguous 2001: A Space Odyssey or Terrence Mallick’s The Tree of Life.
However, it is trickier when it comes to movies based on real life. It’s all well and good to immerse an audience in ambiguity, but what about when that means ignoring one of the greatest human tragedies ever perpetrated? Ultimately, audiences who watch Oppenheimer will come away with a greater understanding of the man but will have to seek other sources to get a full picture of what his legacy entails.
In a world that has become so politically polarised, audiences are more sensitive than ever to being lectured to by filmmakers, and avoiding a political stance is an excellent way to ensure that a movie will be palatable to the maximum number of viewers. However, to give Nolan the benefit of the doubt, it is also true that allowing audiences to process a story from the subjective perspective of its protagonist gives them room to find their own conclusions and curiosities. Nolan’s apolitical approach to filmmaking allows him to explore morally complex themes without alienating audiences. If he continues to mine history for subject matter, however, it’s unlikely he’ll be able to retain his stalwartly neutral position.
