The unique way Christopher Nolan wrote the ‘Oppenheimer’ script
As Christopher Nolan reveals his latest movie Oppenheimer to public screens, filmgoers have scrambled to access tickets to see the longest IMAX movie made to date. The three-hour epic is set during World War II and follows the intense life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist behind the Manhattan Project, also known as the ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb’.
Although the movie has only just hit cinema screens, early critical praise and comments from various figures in the film industry promise a spectacle and possibly one of the greatest movies of the century so far.
Paul Schrader, the screenwriter behind Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, attended the New York premiere for Oppenheimer on July 17th. The Oscar nominee took to Facebook afterwards to praise the movie as “the best, most important film of this century”.
“If you see one film in cinemas this year, it should be Oppenheimer,” Schrader added in the post. “I’m not a Nolan groupie, but this one blows the door off the hinges.”
Adding to the praise, Robert Downey Jr, who stars in Oppenheimer alongside Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, told IndieWire at the UK premiere: “Just going to flat out say it: This is the best film I’ve ever been in. And I cannot wait for you all to experience it.”
Oppenheimer certainly has much to live up to as it makes its first dents at the box office. If it’s to level Schrader’s appraisal on a broader scale, Oppenheimer will have to give moviegoers something totally unprecedented. Based on Damon’s recent comments, Nolan took a unique approach when crafting the movie – something that could help it stand out from the crowd.
In a new interview posted by the Talent Agency Guide, Damon explained how Oppenheimer came together from Nolan’s unconventional screenplay. During the conversation, Damon was accompanied by Nolan and his co-stars, Blunt, Downey Jr and Murphy.
“Chris is very direct,” Damon began. “When he offered me Interstellar years ago, he said, ‘You know, they say there are no small parts. There are only small actors.’ And I go, ‘Yeah!’ And he goes, ‘This is a small part. [Laughs]'”.
He added: “So, when he came with this one, we talked, and he said, ‘You know, the book is American Prometheus. It’s this great Pulitzer Prize-winning book.’ He goes, ‘I’m not calling the movie that, I’m calling it Oppenheimer because it has to be entirely… it is going to be through his eyes.'”
“When I read the script, I’d never seen this before it was written in the first person,” he continued. “Never seen that before. And it gave you, as a reader, the visceral… that subjective Oppenheimer experience. So instead of going, ‘Oppenheimer across to the window,’ it says, ‘I walked towards the window.’ It just had this kind of immediacy and this kind of visceral punch.”
“You can see what he was trying to communicate to us [the actors] and to his crew: ‘This is what the movie is going to be.’ And he said, ‘What I need are actors in support of that. This entire thing is going on Cillian’s [Murphy] back, and I need you guys to support that”.
“So that was really a great kind of marching order. It’s very actionable for us and easy to understand. And every day, I was like, ‘Alright, how can I help that? And…
“How can I get more lines?” Blunt jovially interjected.
Watch the trailer for Oppenheimer below.
