One of the most well regarded films from the 2023 movie release schedule, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, is a triumph of historical drama. While Nolan is also known for tackling his Dark Knight Trilogy, films that seem antithetical to his more sobering work, there’s a cool link between J. Robert Oppenheimer and Bruce Wayne that the filmmaker pointed out. To be completely honest, I’d never thought about this prior to his recent remarks.
As he spoke with The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the director of pictures like The Prestige and Interstellar compared Gotham’s fictional Caped Crusader to the father of the atomic bomb with a curious connection. Christopher Nolan used this concept to draw a line between these two figures:
Yeah, if you look at the films that I’ve made, I’ve always been drawn to ambiguous storytellers, possibly unreliable narrators, people who have interesting layers—those are the characters, right? You know, back to Bruce Wayne, Batman, all the rest, I was interested in characters who in some sense are imprisoned by paradox, who are at the mercy of paradox. And so, for me, it was a very natural fit.
Ambiguous storytelling is definitely a specialty in the Nolan-verse, as best seen in the still-debated ending to Inception. The nature of a paradox is something that both Interstellar and Tenet would explore to great lengths. Those themes apply to J. Robert Oppenheimer rather well, as that man of science embodied both of those qualities throughout his life and times.
Christopher Nolan’s taste for ambiguity became an even better fit for Oppenheimer than one would think, as it also shaped how he constructed the story in a unique manner. The screenplay for the movie was actually the first Nolan has ever written in the first person perspective.
Ultimately, this approach led to Spike Lee’s criticism of not showing the Japanese perspective in Oppenheimer. Though, in all fairness, that's a note that many other critics and audience members have made themselves. Explaining this tactic further, Nolan made this point:
And the fact that his story is real, verifiable documentary record, history, really frees you up to just take the audience on the journey. But [for] my interpretation—and ultimately Cillian Murphy’s interpretation of what’s going on in his head, his interior state, which we’re trying to represent—we’ve got a lot of information about where he went, how he got there, what he did.
Rather than choosing to make Oppenheimer a typical sweeping biopic on the Los Alamos project, Christopher Nolan laser focused on the person at the heart of this story. Not seeking to vilify or lionize the man many called “Oppie,” ambiguity and paradox play huge parts in the life of secrecy and discovery that formed a scientific effort that acted as an effective pivot point to geopolitical history.
Much like how Bruce Wayne’s days as Batman changed things in Gotham, escalating the war between law enforcement and organized crime to dangerous lengths, Oppenheimer tells its own story of one man's quest to better the world and the consequences that came as a result. There might be more to this comparison than meets the eye, and viewers are now able to dig into that debate in the comfort of their own home.
Oppenheimer is currently available for purchase on physical media through 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD, as well as Digital HD. You can also find it on Amazon or wherever you choose to strengthen your cinematic library.
And if you’re waiting for an update on the streaming debut, there’s no date set for that particular window. However, it’s to be assumed that whenever it happens, it’ll debut for those with a Peacock subscription, so keep your eyes open.
