The first atomic bomb exploded at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. It took at least three years of work to get to this historic moment. A group of scientists united under Manhattan Project, met in the context of war to push various ideas from physics, chemistry and the humanities to the limit: their conclusions would endanger the whole world. This is part of the story that will be told in Oppenheimernext movie Christopher Nolan.
The previous description could well have attracted the attention of a director or any artistic creator. However, in the case of Christopher Nolan, there is also a secondary interest: he belonged to a generation that grew up listening and warned by stories in this style, in which bombs and rockets were regularly mentioned in various conversations. Based on this, it can be assumed that this production has a personal tone for the director.
Apart from the fact Oppenheimer explores the human factor behind the decision to build the atomic bomb, highlighting the moral tensions of the scientists and politicians who were involved with the project. Based on this, the director during the interview described part of his personal relationship to this story.
OppenheimerJourney into the Past by Christopher Nolan
In an interview with Wiredthe director reflected on his attitude towards the part of the story told in Oppenheimer. It started like this:Story Oppenheimer been with me for many years. It’s just an incredible idea: people do these calculations and look at the relationship between theory and the real world, and they decide that there is a very small chance that they are going to destroy the whole world. And yet they pressed the button. (…) This is literally the most dramatic moment in history.“.
Asked if he grew up surrounded by the specter of the atomic bomb, the director replied: “I grew up in the 1980s in the UK and we had the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and all that. The people were very, very knowledgeable. When I was 13, my friends and I were convinced that we were going to die in a nuclear holocaust.“.
This memory was present in a conversation with another figure in the film industry. Here’s how he explained it: “I talked to Steven Spielberg about it one of these days. He grew up under the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s. Ditto. Absolutely. There have been times in the history of mankind when the danger of nuclear war was so tangible, tangible and visible to us that we are well aware of it.. And then we wait a while and move on. We are worried about other things. The problem is that the danger doesn’t really go away.”
Going even deeper into the 80s in which he grew up, and into the sense of death with which he lived, Christopher Nolan said the following:What I remember from the 1980s is that the fear of nuclear war receded in favor of fear of environmental destruction.. As if we couldn’t hold back the fear for so long. We have a complicated relationship with fear.”
A fear that perhaps he manages to evoke through his cinematic work. Oppenheimerone of the most anticipated films of the year, will be released in cinemas on July 20, 2023.
Source: Hiper Textual
