Out of all the reviews a film can get, the most important might come from the person who inspired the project. That is the case with Christopher Nolan’sOppenheimer, as the upcoming film left Historian and Author Kai Bird feeling “stunned.”
Bird co-wrote the Pulitzer-winningAmerican Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,the sourcefrom which Nolan adapted hisOppenheimerscreenplay. It’s a biography of American Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb.
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During a recent conversation with David Nirenberg at Leon Levy Center for Biography in New York, Bird shared his thoughts about the upcomingUniversalfilm and the impact he believes it will have on audiences. “I am, at the moment, stunned and emotionally recovering from having seen it,” Bird said. “I think it is going to be a stunning artistic achievement, and I have hopes it will actually stimulate a national, even global conversation about the issues that Oppenheimer was desperate to speak out about — about how to live in the atomic age, how to live with the bomb and about McCarthyism — what it means to be a patriot, and what is the role for a scientist in a society drenched with technology and science, to speak out about public issues.”
In addition to Bird’s comments, Nolan toldWired Magazinenot too long after that fans had a visceral reaction after seeing earlyOppenheimerscreenings. “Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated,” Nolan said. “They can’t speak. I mean, there’s an element of fear that’s there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I’ve ever done.” Based on both of their comments,Oppenheimermay live up to the hypeand be one of Nolan’s greatest achievements in his filmmaking career.
Oppenheimerwill mark Nolan’s first film under Universal Pictures, as the director parted ways with Warner Bros. due to the director’s frustration with the studios' 2021 hybrid model of having their 2021 films premiere on the HBO MAX streaming service simultaneously with their theatrical release. He wrote the screenplay, while Emma Thomas, Nolan’s creative partner, and wife, returned to produce alongside Charles Roven. Nolan reunited with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (whocollaborated with the director onInterstellar,Dunkirk, andTenet) and composer Ludwig Göransson.
Along with Cillian Murphy in the titular role, the film starsEmily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine Oppenheimer Vissering; Matt Damon as Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project; Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, the chairman of Atomic Energy Commission; and Florence Pugh as Communist Party member Jean Tatlock.
