Nolan's next to be about Oppenheimer & The A-Bomb
Oct 16, 2021 22:28:47 GMT
ibbi and rhodoraonline like this
Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Oct 16, 2021 22:28:47 GMT
I have a theory for how Nolan will approach this movie, so I’m sticking it here in case it ends up playing out this way.
Biopics are often known to be kind of stuffy, dry reenactments of history, but given that Nolan has a made a career of putting his own stamp on different genres, I’m assuming he has a vision for tinkering with the biopic format. The fact that it’s described as an “epic thriller” makes sense if the film is only focusing on the period of his life that deals with the race to build the atomic bomb, but it’s also intriguing that it will also apparently follow Oppenheimer’s later decision to call for more international control of nuclear weapons and his opposition to the hydrogen bomb. In my last post, I said that I could see most of the film playing out like a taut thriller, with the ending being a melancholic flashforward featuring Oppenheimer living in regret... but if Nolan is interested in the man’s contradictions and highlighting certain thematic ideas in the way that I believe he is, then I think a nonlinear narrative approach could potentially work to draw out those ideas powerfully.
It’s easy to say “Nolan will probably do the nonlinear thing like he did with Dunkirk because that’s the gimmick that he frequently relies on,” so maybe it’s not that bold of a prediction, but I’ve never felt like Nolan’s narrative conceits were ever arbitrary – to me they always serve the story and act as tools that enhance the stories he’s telling, and in this case I actually think a nonlinear approach would be appropriately motivated here.
After WWII, there was a security hearing held in 1954 that investigated Oppenheimer’s Communist ties because there was doubt about his loyalty and suspicion that he was a Soviet agent (it also focused on his opposition to the H-bomb and stances in later projects). The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer's security clearance being revoked, ending his role in the US government, and he became an academic exile.
I could see Nolan structuring the whole film by cutting back and forth between two narrative strands showing the process of developing the bomb and the security hearing years later (sort of like how Godfather 2 cuts between young Vito and Michael’s senate hearings). This would not only sustain tension across the film (the race to end the war interwoven with the paranoia of McCarthyism), but would also strongly highlight the irony of Oppenheimer’s story – the heroism of ending the war contrasted with the later perception of him as a traitor and an outcast, and also the juxtaposition of victorious scientific innovation and later confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. The film would then culminate with the dropping of the bomb cut together with Oppenheimer’s alienation and regret following the security hearing (contrasting the personal with a large-scale, world-altering event).
Also, for some reason I keep picturing this film in black and white, which I think would be really cool to see in IMAX. With the way he’s always been pushing his use of IMAX (more handheld camera in Interstellar, strapping it to planes in Dunkirk, running film backwards in Tenet), I would expect him to keep looking for ways to experiment...
Biopics are often known to be kind of stuffy, dry reenactments of history, but given that Nolan has a made a career of putting his own stamp on different genres, I’m assuming he has a vision for tinkering with the biopic format. The fact that it’s described as an “epic thriller” makes sense if the film is only focusing on the period of his life that deals with the race to build the atomic bomb, but it’s also intriguing that it will also apparently follow Oppenheimer’s later decision to call for more international control of nuclear weapons and his opposition to the hydrogen bomb. In my last post, I said that I could see most of the film playing out like a taut thriller, with the ending being a melancholic flashforward featuring Oppenheimer living in regret... but if Nolan is interested in the man’s contradictions and highlighting certain thematic ideas in the way that I believe he is, then I think a nonlinear narrative approach could potentially work to draw out those ideas powerfully.
It’s easy to say “Nolan will probably do the nonlinear thing like he did with Dunkirk because that’s the gimmick that he frequently relies on,” so maybe it’s not that bold of a prediction, but I’ve never felt like Nolan’s narrative conceits were ever arbitrary – to me they always serve the story and act as tools that enhance the stories he’s telling, and in this case I actually think a nonlinear approach would be appropriately motivated here.
After WWII, there was a security hearing held in 1954 that investigated Oppenheimer’s Communist ties because there was doubt about his loyalty and suspicion that he was a Soviet agent (it also focused on his opposition to the H-bomb and stances in later projects). The hearing resulted in Oppenheimer's security clearance being revoked, ending his role in the US government, and he became an academic exile.
I could see Nolan structuring the whole film by cutting back and forth between two narrative strands showing the process of developing the bomb and the security hearing years later (sort of like how Godfather 2 cuts between young Vito and Michael’s senate hearings). This would not only sustain tension across the film (the race to end the war interwoven with the paranoia of McCarthyism), but would also strongly highlight the irony of Oppenheimer’s story – the heroism of ending the war contrasted with the later perception of him as a traitor and an outcast, and also the juxtaposition of victorious scientific innovation and later confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. The film would then culminate with the dropping of the bomb cut together with Oppenheimer’s alienation and regret following the security hearing (contrasting the personal with a large-scale, world-altering event).
Also, for some reason I keep picturing this film in black and white, which I think would be really cool to see in IMAX. With the way he’s always been pushing his use of IMAX (more handheld camera in Interstellar, strapping it to planes in Dunkirk, running film backwards in Tenet), I would expect him to keep looking for ways to experiment...