If anyone will arrive at the Oscars with at least one statuette virtually guaranteed, it is Christopher Nolan, who in the previous days won as director the award given by the union made up of his colleagues, the Golden Globe, the Critics Choice and the Bafta. It is quite likely that as a producer he will also win the award for best film, after having triumphed in the producers’ union, and that he will lose in the best adapted screenplay category where the favorite is Cord Jefferson. But even if he can’t take it all, it will undoubtedly be Oppenheimer’s year, a well-deserved recognition for a cinematographic phenomenon that left almost $1 billion at the box office with an intelligent and risky proposal about a key chapter in the history of humanity.
Have you become a fan of nuclear physics since this movie?
I couldn’t say that I have a greater appreciation than the average person. But it’s true that I got involved in this project because of my interest in quantum physics based on my collaboration with Nobel Prize winner Kip Thorne, who worked with me on Interstellar and Tenet. Therefore, he had a predisposition towards the topic. Robert Oppenheimer and his contemporaries were involved in a transformation of scientific thought based on Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. That was one of the most important paradigm shifts in human thought. But I felt that my job in adapting American Prometheus, the great book by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin that we used to develop the film, was to be clear about what the themes were and understand the perspective of the physicists, although it was not my intention to overwhelm the audience. . No one will come away from seeing Oppenheimer as a professional quantum physicist, but I did care that after having seen it they would know how important this change in human thought had been.
How complex was it to adapt that book to the big screen?
The great advantage in an adaptation like this is that Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin wrote 700 pages based on research to which Sherwin dedicated 25 years of his life. Therefore, I had the benefit of having a large amount of material and the anecdotes of all the people who were carefully selected to participate in this project. Although someone who reads the book may not necessarily think that there is a story for the cinema, once I found certain moments in the text I realized that there were great possibilities for a film. I had a huge source of information to work with, and the only research I did outside of what’s in the book was reading the records of the hearings that Lewis Strauss held in the Senate, and also the Oppenheimer security sessions, from which I was able to obtain a thousand-page transcript, which I began to work with.
It’s a lot of material…
My process actually consisted of taking notes based on the readings I did of the book, thinking about what I would tell people about this topic if I were at a dinner party, to try to capture their attention. What are the really important things? What moves me about the story I want to tell you? And from there I began to develop a structural approach and intersperse the different narratives, that of Lewis Strauss with that of his opponent, Robert Oppenheimer, using the parallels that can be found between the two different hearings that were held on this topic. Once that was put together, the overwhelming nature of the book worked in my favor, because the level of detail and complexity became a great tool, since there were the answers to everything I needed to know. Thank God, there is a wonderful index at the end of the book that helps you find everything very easily. And the same thing happened with the security hearing transcripts, so I was able to counter different points of view all the time. That’s how I came to have a first sketch, and when I started to rewrite it, I took everything that was in that first version as if it had all been invented. It’s just that that’s the only way that, as a screenwriter, it becomes yours.
The film shows who Oppenheimer is and what he is forced to do, a recurring theme in his filmography. What is it about this dichotomy that attracts you?
I think I’m drawn to characters that the audience can identify with, particularly if they’re far from perfect. I felt very comfortable in the world of action films because I worked with Batman, who was a character that interested me more than the other superheroes because he is a human being who has many conflicts. My fascination with Oppenheimer is because his public discourse did not necessarily coincide with his practical behavior. One thing is what he said and another is what he did. For example, he never apologized for the feelings he felt about the use of the atomic bomb. He never tried to justify himself with excuses. He took charge of something that he defined as a success on a technical level. But everything he did after 1945 reflects that he was someone who carried a good deal of guilt, a clear awareness of what his invention had brought about and the ways in which it had changed the world, not necessarily for good. I thought he was a very powerful protagonist to be the axis of a cinematic story.
The cast he brought together is impressive. How complex was it to find your actors, not only your leads but also those who play small roles?
It was a very interesting process. I explained to John Papsidera, my casting director, that he needed unique faces with a particular energy for all of these minor roles. The number of people involved in the Manhattan project is part of its importance and what I found interesting about this story. That’s why I wanted to show this wide diversity of faces and personalities. John has been my casting director since Memento. He is simply the best in the industry and managed to summon all kinds of young and stimulating performers. The credit for bringing together an amazing cast in the small roles is purely his. John was the one who convinced Jack Quaid to play Richard Feynman. And we also have an actor like David Krumholtz who is wonderful in each of his scenes. For me, as a director, it was exceptional to be able to work with all of them, because they were also able to research the real people they played, since ultimately this is a true story, and they came to the set converted into true experts in whom they had to embody. Each of them knew more about who these people had been than I did. That made it a real pleasure to work with them. And in scenes where there are a lot of scientists, like the GAC meetings led by Robert Downey Jr.’s character Lewis Strauss, we allow ourselves a lot of improvisation. I was able to tell this group to dare, to have a discussion, and that’s how Dane DeHaan was encouraged to bring up a topic playing Kenneth Nichols and Josh Hartnett did the same as Ernest Lawrence. It was a real privilege to have been able to do it…
