The classic movie Cillian Murphy calls a “masterpiece”
The star of Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster, Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy, has consistently shown that he has more substance than most of his Hollywood peers. Whether this be via his general persona or his love of great music, it’s not often that a person in the limelight proves themselves to be such an authentic artist.
Demonstrating this point, Murphy recently revealed that the late David Bowie inspired the aesthetic for his performance as the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, in the new Christopher Nolan thriller. The Irish actor explained in an interview that he drew on the musician’s ‘Thin White Duke’ era and on-stage persona when creating his version of the physicist.
“We worked very closely with our costume designer to design the clothes,” the actor told MTV Movies, “And particularly, I wanted to get his silhouette. He was very fragile, he was very, very slim, and I wanted to get that silhouette right.”
Murphy added: “Chris (Nolan) sent me a couple of shots of David Bowie, certain periods in David Bowie’s career, like Thin White Duke and around Young Americans’ time.”
Regarding Bowie’s persona, Murphy continued: “He had these massive trousers, and he was so emaciated but so fucking cool…So we used that, weirdly, for some of Oppenheimer’s trousers.”
This kind of unique approach has made Cillian Murphy such a fan favourite over the years. Adding to his substance, whilst the actor is a big music lover, he’s also a lifelong film buff and has provided many great accounts of movies in his time. He recently demonstrated this fascination with the form on a more forensic level than usual when he and Nolan appeared in the Video Club for the French publication Konbini as part of the promotional run for Oppenheimer.
Having their discussion in a room filled with DVDs, the pair picked out some of their favourite titles from the shelves and explained their admiration. Whilst there were many notable moments, a highlight was when Cillian Murphy chose Mathieu Kassovitz’s stylish 1995 crime drama La Haine. The modern French classic stars Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé and Saïd Taghmaoui as three friends from a poor immigrant background in the Paris suburbs.
The movie was a critical hit, with Kassovitz awarded the ‘Best Director’ prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. It was also the breakout role for Vincent Cassel and would set him up for a successful career. It transpires that the quality of La Haine impacted Cillian Murphy so that he much called it a “masterpiece” and revealed that he was “obsessed with it” around the time of its release.
He told Nolan: “La Haine, one of my favourites. I showed it to my kids recently, this movie. They were absolutely knocked out, I mean, I think it’s a masterpiece. It hasn’t aged, it’s still as relevant, incredibly shot, and the black and white again. I saw that when I was… ’95… yeah, then I was just, I hadn’t even become an actor then, I was just kind of into films. I remember I had a La Haine t-shirt and everything, there was a special edition DVD box set that I had; I was obsessed with it. The score and that as well is amazing, amazing performances.”
Watch the clip below.
