Christopher Nolan: "Of course the triumph of fascism in Spain influenced Oppenheimer in his decision to build the bomb"

• LUIS MARTINEZ

  London

Updated Sunday,16July2023-02:00

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Christopher Nolan (London, 1970) is not Stanley Kubrick, but – and without anyone being offended – there is something. After turning Interstellar is a kind of masterful expanded and updated version of 2001: a space odyssey, now, a step further, he gives the reply to the master with his particular and very bombastic reading of Dr. Strangelove, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (that is, a hurrah for the translator, Red phone? We flew to Moscow). Oppenheimer is many things. Among them, the movie of the season without the slightest hint of doubt. It is that, in addition to a reflection on time, on responsibility, on doubt, on humanity itself at the limit of all its catastrophes and a cinematographic spectacle that returns to the cinema the power of the subjugating, of the unheard of, of the train arriving at La Ciotat de los Lumière.

The film arrives on the billboards in the middle of a war, in the middle of a climate crisis, in the middle of the chatGPT, in the middle of an actors' strike that has stopped the entire Hollywood ... The film arrives and a second later it is already at the center of all threats, all fears, all anxieties. Nolan meets us at the Corinthia Hotel in London at nine o'clock on Sunday morning just after the premiere. On one side the Thames, on the other the world.

Christopher Nolan is shown relaxed, awake after the probable party, calm and with a coffee in hand. Christopher Nolan wears American, which is not the same as always but looks quite similar. Christopher Nolan is not Stanley Kubrick, but – and without anyone being offended – there is something.

Let's start with the basics. In which version should Oppenheimer be seen? How would you recommend seeing it to enjoy it fully? The premiere in London has been at the same time in a conventional theater, within the unconventional that is the cinema of Leicester Square and in the IMAX room of the British Film Institute.La difference between one and the other are minimal. I love both versions. There is a nuance if you will. Technically, in terms of image quality, they are the same. I don't know how technically you want the answer, but, to summarize, I would say that there are parts of the film shot in the original film and parts in IMAX. Depending on whether you choose one room or another, you will access the first generation of one part or another of the film. I've been working for years on films that don't have a definitive version. But the underlying principle, so to speak, is the same: when you're shooting on large-format (70-millimeter) film or IMAX film, the amount of information is so great that that will translate directly to the viewing experience. We then ruled out watching the movie on an iPhone... Well, if you decide to see it like this, also the huge amount of information will have its translation on the screen. It looks better. Anyway, the IMAX is still different. It fills the peripheral vision above and below and the sensation is unique. By the way, also the laser version, the digital one, is extraordinary. As I say, the important thing is the source, the key is in the amount of information you accumulate from the source. Then we return to the cinema experience. The film goes back in time, to the Second World War, like Dunkirk, a film about Europe at the time of Brexit. Now it's a film about the A-bomb on the brink, as we are, of every possible crisis. The most general of all possible questions occurs to me: Is returning to the past the only way to understand the present? The first and most important thing in cinema is to tell a great story. You can't try to go around giving lessons. I don't think I'll discover anything if I say that this story is probably the most dramatic one can find. And that is always the initial impulse. That said, and quite clearly, Oppenheimer's story is very much a very instructive cautionary tale about a lot of things going on right now. Let's get to it... If we ignore the details of the nuclear argument for a second, what is debated and laid bare with the nuclear threat is the relationship between science, government and the media, that profane triangle, that unholy alliance. I've had a lot of conversations recently with people who work in the field of Artificial Intelligence and who talk about us living in an "Oppenheimer moment" right now. Again, we are facing a problem of responsibility. As creators, as scientists and as technologists, the question we must ask ourselves is: what are our responsibilities? It is not worth delegating our responsibility to AI. Having spent a couple of years working on the film, the answers are not easy at all.

The question I least like to answer is: What is cinema? Because it is only done to me by people who want to deny what cinema is.

In some interviews he calls it the "Prometheus moment" (in fact, the book on which the film is based is entitled The American Prometheus) and maintains that, unlike in other similar episodes in human history, what makes Oppenheimer's story unique was the certainty of global suicide. Committing suicide was not collateral damage, it was a very certain (albeit small) possibility that when the bomb exploded the whole atmosphere would catch fire... In reality, apocalyptic thinking has infected all generations of humanity. We always believe that we are the last generation that will live on Earth. It is part of our culture, our mythologies, our religions... But the unique nature of Oppenheimer's story is that his work, in what he was involved in, was literally the first time that the human being showed himself capable of destroying himself. Otherwise, Oppenheimer gave humanity the ability to wipe out itself. And that changed the world completely and forever. Therefore, any comparison we make with other technologies – AI, for example – is not entirely fair, because nothing can compare to that. Even when you go down the rabbit hole of AI and get to the point of how it could destroy us, for example, you're actually watching the Terminator or the Matrix or whatever. Let's just say AI has been the threat of science fiction for decades and decades. Or if we talk about climate change, it is an avoidable phenomenon, even if it is for a period of time. We can do something about it. Over time, if we are able and responsible, we will be able to adapt and hopefully reverse the process. There are many people who work hard and with passion to achieve it. Nuclear weapons, however, are there waiting to be used. God forbid. But if they were used, it's over, it's the end. No more theories. That is what Oppenheimer provided to humanity. In addition, the threat does not expire. It's not a thing of the past, of the Cuban missile crisis, of the Cold War... It is there more present than ever with the war in Ukraine.In reality, the threat of nuclear weapons will always be there because it has only one possible end. Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr shared the original optimism that the awareness of certain destruction was so evident that the mere existence of such a horrible weapon would necessarily mean the end of the war. The paradox is that this has not been the case and will not be. It can be argued against that it meant the end of World War II, but that scenario where only one power has the bomb no longer exists. And it is now when we return to the myth of Prometheus. Stealing fire from the gods carries with it torture for all eternity. And there we are. As they say, you can't put the paste back into the tube. I think about my previous film, Tenet, and that one was more optimistic in that it raised the possibility of uninventing something terrible by going back in time. Not anymore. We cannot uninvent the atomic bomb. There is a decisive episode in Oppenhimer's life and this is underlined in the film: his commitment to the Spanish Republic in the Civil War. I do not know if it would be an exaggeration to say that seeing the triumph of fascism in a contest like the Spanish one was decisive in his decision to build the bomb. No, I don't think it's either exaggerated or strange to maintain that statement. Can focus However you want: from a Spanish perspective or from a transatlantic or American point of view. Oppenheimer was clear that the rise of fascism was by far the most important threat facing the world. And, therefore, what happened in Spain influenced him and all the intellectuals of the time. I think of Hemingway obviously. The line of force for him was democracy and ultimately communism, even though he was never a communist. Yes, he was interested in communist ideas and, in fact, he was surrounded by communists. Support for the Republic in Spain was a necessary consequence. He became aware of the threat long before American society did as a Jew. Think of Charles Lindbergh for example. Cillian Murphy and Christopher Nolan at one point during filming. UNIVERSALPero could perhaps have stopped thinking that the remedy was worse than the disease... When his government came to him to make the bomb, he knew Heisenberg's work and therefore knew that the Germans could also build it and probably faster. There is a race against fascism that grows in Germany, Italy and, obviously, in Spain. Of course, then the world changes and certain political affiliations become problematic. The American attraction to democracy and resistance to authoritarianism is not immune to the fear that later arises from communist revolution. To go back to what I asked before, these are incredibly turbulent times and Spain is at the center. I am surprised that in the framing of your question you speak of exaggerated or strange. I was referring to the license perhaps to make the construction of the bomb depend as a cause and effect directly on the Spanish Civil War... From a philosophical or intellectual point of view it is so. Maybe not specifically. What happened in Spain was very important because of its theoretical implications. The connections between different fascist thoughts or the balances between opposition to fascism were important for an intellectual like Oppenheimer who did not pay so much attention to the details of politics. He lived political movements as an abstraction. The paradox is that, despite all the effort to end fascism, if we look at Europe today we see that the heir party of fascism governs in Italy, in Germany the polls say that the far-right party is the second and in Spain almost all the polls say that they will enter the next government. It is like a double defeat for Oppenheimer: the disaster of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which he did not believe would occur, and the brake on fascism that, it seems, has not happened either. It's been almost 80 years and it seems like we're pretty much at the same point. Yes, it is worrying. There are two pretty scary things in your question. On the one hand, the expression he has used of "more or less" and, on the other, the almost 80 years. When we think about that time, it would seem that the relevance of history fades into the past and becomes theory rather than lived experience. It is experience, not theory, that tells you that certain things cannot happen again. And I think as arguments become more abstract it becomes easier for things to repeat themselves or not feel dangerous. In a way, that's what I'm trying to do with this film: to involve viewers and make them aware of the real threat to theAnd immediately: what would it be like to be there? It is impossible to leave Oppenheimer without having the impression that everything is a consequence of a world of men, of the so-called patriarchy, where ego, power, the desire for domination, obsession as the engine of action, the desire for recognition prevail... All the bad. In fact, one of my concerns was always to give the relevance they had to the two women in his life. As I adapted [Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's] book, both the character of Emily Blunt (Kitty) and Florence Pugh (Jean Tatlock) perfectly represented the frustration of the time. The relationship between Kitty and Robert, for example, was incomprehensible to their contemporaries. She was a scientist (biologist and botanist) and gave up everything to support her husband because she believed he was essential to the war effort. And for her it was terribly suffocating and frustrating. But he knew and was aware that his sacrifice was fundamental. In any case, it is essential that there be more diverse views on any of the important issues affecting all of humanity. I like to think that people in the past weren't so blind to that.

Some want to deny what cinema is because they want to steal some of its magic and sell it to you in another way.

Let's change the subject: I have the impression that all his filmography leads in some way to this film. The analysis of time, the experience of cinema, doubt, the dubious morality of good deeds... What is the best answer? I agree. But I have the same feeling in each of my films. I build on what I have already done and to each film I try to bring all my experience until the moment of making it. Making films is not a job for me, it is a passion and something in which I put all my effort. So I have to trust that once this film has reached the audience, and they have told me what it is, I will find another story to tell. The script is written in the first person. Could this resource be considered as a declaration of principles regarding the involvement it requires from the viewer? Cillian Murphy's gaze plays the same role as the Lumière train that they say scared the audience of the first film screening. Actually, this resource belongs to the novel that can propose a very subjective experience. What cinema can do, and no one else can do, is combine it with the empathic response of a play, for example, or a group discussion or a concert where you're experiencing something around you. Cinema is the only medium that can do that, where you can contemplate a story and you can have a visceral response like the train arriving at the Lumière station that it cites, but the relevant thing is that everyone around you is feeling it the same. I'm glad you brought this up because I'm always looking for ways to explain this to people, as I've spent a lot of the last few years talking about why the lived experience inside a cinema is irreplaceable. The movie theater experience is that approaching train. The individual is deceived by an illusion, is momentarily alarmed, and then sees that everyone else is alarmed and thus the illusion is reinforced. Through empathy and empathic response, panic spreads to the crowd and everyone runs away. And that's unique to cinema. It is a shared experience lived in solitude. It's time to get the platforms out... The question I least like to answer is what is cinema? Because it is only done to me by people who want to deny what cinema is. Everyone knows what cinema is. You see all those companies wondering what cinema is and you see that they only say completely false nonsense nonsense. We all know exactly what cinema is. We know what movies are. Young people know what cinema is. I sit in those meetings and they say, "Well, young people don't know the difference between something that's on their phone and what movies are." Of course they know! We all know exactly what movies are just as we know what theater is, or what a record and a record player is. Of course, we all know what cinema is. Some just want to deny what cinema is because they want to steal some of its magic and sell it to you in another way. And I have a lot of faith in the long-term appeal of cinema because it's a unique medium. I recently watched the animated Spider-Man movie with a group of kids and it was a joyful experience. They were children and they knew perfectly well that they were watching movies. Well, now we move on to superhero movies that bother people like Scorsese so much and not you... When Marty [by Martin ScorseHe lashes out at him to provoke. Filmmakers take the bait and express their frustration because studio resources are channeled into specific genres. But it was always that way. In the past they were either westerns or monster movies. We work in a business where our productions are expensive, so you have to balance the individual desires of the creators with who is going to pay for it. That's Hollywood. And that's where wonderful things come from. Also terrible things.

Apocalyptic thinking has infected all generations of humanity, but only the bomb made it real.

At the moment what has come out is a strike that has affected the presentation of his film itself (the actors did not grant interviews). Are we facing a short-term problem or is it more structural within the industry? It doesn't look like Hollywood is at its best. I agree. We live in a strange moment for cinema, for cinema that returns from the covid pandemic. In New York and Los Angeles the rooms were closed for a whole year. The damage to film culture is profound and will take time to overcome. It was a very serious disturbance. It was also a very serious disruption to production. And our unions, which are essential and very necessary (I have to say the first thing that I am very, very much in favor of the strike), got people back to work quickly and got productions back without a problem. But those productions had to be done safely. The safety protocols were excellent, but inhibiting. We couldn't interact with each other for months like in a normal production. So production slowed down a lot and there were very few films last year. Now things are back to their being, but it's a strange moment, because when a relationship between a cultural medium and its audience for so long is interrupted... There are kids who go from being 12 to 15 years old, and from 15 to 18 without entering a cinema more than sporadically. There are generations of young people who have to find their identity, their cinematic identity. That will happen, but it is a time of healing, of change. And it will take time.

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