With apocalyptic atomic-bomb thriller Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan brings one of his enduring obsession to the screen. We meet the director in LA to talk about going nuclear.
Read an extract of our exclusive Oppenheimer feature from our July 2023 issue below, or see the full piece here.
We see the lower fifth of Christopher Nolan. The shoes. A bit of trouser. A small section of Christopher Nolan on the move, glimpsed through the bottom of a windowed wall, the rest blocked out by frosted glass, obscuring him until he’s ready.
He stops to talk to someone, but even then, despite hearing his voice, we can’t make out the words. So here we sit, waiting for him in a small conference room, seeing and hearing bits of him, unable to piece it all together. It’s enigmatic. It’s cryptic. It’s — dare we say — cinematic. And very Christopher Nolan. He just can’t help himself.
Yes, for a man who likes his films to pose questions rather than provide answers, who constructs them like puzzles, this all makes sense. It’s early May in the Los Angeles post-production facility where his films are taken to the finish line. In rooms and offices there is evidence of an impressive career — framed newspaper cuttings about The Prestige, various awards, an Inception poster, a Batpod maquette, framed cells from the Dark Night trilogy, and film cans containing reels from his latest opus, Oppenheimer, a bit of which he’s just played for Empire in a screening room so loud it felt like an earthquake. As it should — this is a film about the man responsible for the development of the atomic bomb. The footage is, we tell Nolan as he finally appears, unnerving. “I think ‘unnerving’ is definitely a good word to describe it!” he laughs.
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