Total Film has released its glossy cover piece for the eagerly awaited Christopher Nolan historical epic, “Oppenheimer,” which is due in theaters July 21, 2023. Among the spread’s most attention-grabbing tidbits are the development of novel IMAX cameras and recreations of atomic explosions without CGI. Total Film’s feature is the most detailed look at “Oppenheimer” we’ve gotten so far.
The film follows the development of the atom bomb at the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, as well as the crisis of conscience suffered by its designer, self-professed destroyer of worlds J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). It will be in both color and black & white, a style Nolan says he’s been eager to revisit ever since his 2000 sophomore film, “Memento,” which used monochrome to delineate its dual temporal tracks. “I very much loved the structural assistance and the aesthetic charge of shifting between color and black and white that I had on ‘Memento.’” The subjective point-of-view Nolan had in mind for his adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography of the iconic physicist, “American Prometheus,” gave him cause to once again explore the visual device.
SEE Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ teaser trailer commences countdown
“We’re trying to tell the story of somebody’s life, and their personal journey through history and larger-scale history…subjectivity is enormously important to it, as is the approach to time and trying to get the experience of how one person moves through time, and how they process it, and what’s going on in their mind,” says the director. To achieve this in the large format he’s been championing ever since 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” Nolan and DP Hoyte van Hoytema asked Kodak to produce a brand new device for the film, as there are no previous examples of black-and-white IMAX photography.
The other revelation from the article divulges that Nolan shot the Trinity test without CGI. It’s almost as if the auteur accepted criticisms of his maximal approach to filmmaking as a dare to stage a feat even more ludicrously over the top than crashing a Boeing 747 into an airport hangar. The Total Film piece doesn’t provide any technical descriptions of how Nolan and VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson pulled it off but quotes the director as saying it was a “huge challenge.”
SEE Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ gets its first poster
Nolan was drawn to the story by the same ethical dilemma alluded to in “Oppenheimer’s” new trailer. “When they were first talking about building an atomic bomb, and the possibilities of it, there was this idea—this moment—where they realized there was a small possibility that they might set fire to the atmosphere and destroy the world when they push that button, and they went ahead and pushed it anyway. I found that to be an absolutely compelling moment in history that I wanted to take the audience to and have them experience it with the people who were there.”
In the 2.5-minute clip, which premiered exclusively during IMAX screenings of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Oppenheimer is warned that the test detonation’s chain reaction could incinerate the atmosphere if its magnitude exceeds expectations, a message he passes along to the Manhattan Project’s no-nonsense director, Leslie Groves (Matt Damon). “Are we saying there’s a chance that when we push that button, we destroy the world?” he asks. “Chances are year zero,” the troubled scientist ominously replies to his incredulous boss.
The countdown to “Oppenheimer”—and the 2024 Best Director Oscar race—has begun.
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