How Accurate is Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer'?
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I haven't seen it - yet, so...
"A nuclear engineer reviews the blockbuster film."
https://quillette.com/2023/08/01/how-accurate-is-christopher-nolans-oppenheimer/
The critics rave—and I don’t disagree—that the box-office blockbuster Oppenheimer is the greatest film, or at least biopic, since Lawrence of Arabia. The cinematography is grand, the acting is fine, the pace is excellent, and the story has real importance. If, considered as a meal, most movies today are a bag of skittles, Oppenheimer is a thick juicy corn-bred Iowa steak. So, if all you need to know from a film’s review is whether you should go see it, the answer, in Oppenheimer’s case, is unquestionably yes.
But is Oppenheimer accurate? That’s the question that Claire Lehmann asked me to answer for the readers of Quillette.
I have some qualifications for such a role. I hold a doctorate in Nuclear engineering, and my Ph.D advisor, Fred Ribe, was himself the student of Sam Allison, who was a member of Enrico Fermi’s Chicago pile team. Allison was thus my academic grandfather. It was he, a professor at the University of Chicago, who recommended that Fermi’s Chicago Pile-1, the world’s first critical nuclear reactor, be built under the stands of University’s Stagg Field football stadium.
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Click to enlarge. This visual takes a bit to digest, but overall it gives a glimpse of how Christopher Nolan's mind works. The movie jumps around A LOT but overall it ties together to provide the full story. It's a mature way to structure a biopic, one that makes the film complex and challenging the viewer, without making it too disjointed. Honestly none of this makes sense until you've seen the movie, and then it all makes sense afterwards.
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Side note, Nolan's use of sound in his movies is nothing short of exceptional. There are too many examples to go into, but off the top of my head:
(And yes I know usually it's Hans Zimmer involved, or Goransson for Oppenheimer)
- In Oppenheimer, you can see the foot stomping (red on the chart) make early appearances before it haunts him at the rally
- In Inception, he created the "WOMPPPP" sound by having a brass section blow their instruments into a piano, then record the sound off the strings of the keyboard. You should note this sound effect is now over-used in most trailers to hide lazy transitions.
- Also in Inception, the main theme is a VERY VERY VERY slowed down version of the Edith Piaf tune that is heard:
- In Interstellar (still a MASSIVE travesty this movie didn't win more awards, and didn't win for Best Original Score), how the music was conceived through the use of a "human breath" organ sound.
Links below.
Link to video Link to video Link to video -
Click to enlarge. This visual takes a bit to digest, but overall it gives a glimpse of how Christopher Nolan's mind works. The movie jumps around A LOT but overall it ties together to provide the full story. It's a mature way to structure a biopic, one that makes the film complex and challenging the viewer, without making it too disjointed. Honestly none of this makes sense until you've seen the movie, and then it all makes sense afterwards.
@89th said in How Accurate is Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer'?:
Click to enlarge. This visual takes a bit to digest, but overall it gives a glimpse of how Christopher Nolan's mind works. The movie jumps around A LOT but overall it ties together to provide the full story. It's a mature way to structure a biopic, one that makes the film complex and challenging the viewer, without making it too disjointed. Honestly none of this makes sense until you've seen the movie, and then it all makes sense afterwards.
I guess this guy did all of Nolan's movies:
All images: https://www.reddit.com/user/Pitazboras/comments/18n0yaf/timelines_for_all_feature_films_directed_by/
