Interesting Facts About Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek amongst others revolves around the enigmatic and morally conflicted theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer. He provided to the world its first atomic bomb and perhaps the means for humanity to obliterate itself with a final war that reduces the environment for mankind to a planet contaminated by hazardous radiation. With massive opening day numbers, this IMAX film is already turning into a blockbuster. Read on to know some lesser known facts about the movie.

Interestingly, this is the first Nolan film to feature sexual content. Some of Nolan’s earlier films like Interstellar, Inception, Tenet and The Dark Knight Rises have been gripping action and science fiction thrillers, but have been devoid of any intimate scenes or sexually suggestive content. In Oppenheimer, the turbulent love life of the principal character is depicted in scenes with his wife, Katherine Kitty Harrison and psychiatrist Jean Tatlock. This is the first time the veteran auteur is stepping out of his comfort zone to include R-rated scenes in a major film.

Christopher Nolan seems to have taken a vow to depict scenes in his films as realistically as possible and is averse to the use of CGI in earlier films as well as Oppenheimer. He prefers to set up elaborate mechanical systems and uses practical effects to showcase scenes which require a high use of special effects. In a recent interview, Nolan revealed that the Trinity explosion in Oppenheimer is depicted as close to real life as it gets while keeping in mind the quantum mechanics and theoretical physics of the explosion.

In an effort to represent theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer’s life as dynamically as possible in Oppenheimer, Nolan has shot scenes in black and white footage which is apparently the first time black and white has been developed for the IMAX widescreen format. Kodak and Fotokem developed the first black and white IMAX film stock as a result. "We shot a lot of our hair and makeup tests using black and white," the filmmaker said. Nolan would then head to the IMAX CityWalk theatre and view the footage. Nolan said he’d never seen anything like it, “To see such a massive black-and-white film image? It's just a wonderful thing."

Interestingly, after directing and writing a wide variety of films, this is the first time that Nolan has made a biopic, and that too on a gritty and gruesome historical subject. The film is based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer.