Intimacy and Magnitude
Time|February 26, 2024
Filmmaker Christopher Nolan on why Oppenheimer's impact goes far beyond its 13 Oscar nominations
By Jeffrey Kluger
Intimacy and Magnitude

DIRECTORS CHRISTOPHER NOLAN AND ALFRED Hitchcock do not have a whole lot in common-very different styles, very different eras, very different tales. All the same, during the five months in early 2022 when Nolan was shooting his blockbuster Oppenheimer, he found that Hitchcock's work bubbled to mind more than once-specifically the iconic scene in Psycho in which Anthony Perkins stabs an unsuspecting Janet Leigh as she showers.

The scene is savage, but after the mayhem is over, all turns orderly. Perkins washes down the shower, swaddles up the body, and places it in the trunk of a car which he tries to sink in a swamp. Halfway down, however, the car stops, its rear end poking above the water.

"[Perkins] looks worried," Nolan says during a conversation in New York City in early January. "And suddenly you're worried as well. How did that go from someone being massacred to me being worried that the guy covering up the murder is going to get caught?"

The answer is in what Nolan calls "cinema's magical point of view," the camera's ability to immerse the audience so deeply in the experiences of the people on the screen that we feel what they're feeling-root for what they're doing-even if we don't want to. A lot of that was necessary in Oppenheimer, Nolan's film of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the Manhattan Project-the government program that developed the atom bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Oppenheimer's work, unlike the murder in Psycho, claimed 200,000 lives, not just one. And Oppenheimer's really happened: those cities were incinerated; those 200,000 lives were lost.

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 26, 2024-Ausgabe von Time.

Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.

Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 26, 2024-Ausgabe von Time.

Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.

WEITERE ARTIKEL AUS TIMEAlle anzeigen
A timely thriller for a mad, mad world
Time

A timely thriller for a mad, mad world

A’70s-style paranoid thriller grounded in the partisan polarization of today

time-read
2 Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
Freshwater reserves
Time

Freshwater reserves

A troubling dip

time-read
1 min  |
December 09, 2024
An exuberant ode to human possibility
Time

An exuberant ode to human possibility

VERY RARELY DOES THE RIGHT MOVIE ARRIVE AT precisely the right time, at a moment when compassion is in short supply and the collective human imagination has come to feel shrunken and desiccated.

time-read
3 Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
Broadcasting a crisis for the world to see
Time

Broadcasting a crisis for the world to see

ON SEPT. 5, 1972, A 32-YEAR-OLD PRODUCER NAMED Geoffrey S. Mason was working in a control room for ABC Sports in Munich while 12 hostages, including several members of the Israeli Olympic delegation, were being held in a building nearby.

time-read
4 Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
The Power of the Peer
Time

The Power of the Peer

WITH MENTAL-HEALTH CARE IN SHORT SUPPLY, CAN REGULAR PEOPLE FILL THE GAP?

time-read
7 Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
QUEERING THE STORY
Time

QUEERING THE STORY

Luca Guadagnino directs Daniel Craig in an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1985 novella Queer

time-read
6 Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
Shopping under the influence
Time

Shopping under the influence

LTK CO-FOUNDER AMBER VENZ BOX SAW THE FUTURE OF RETAIL. IT TOOK YEARS FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD TO CATCH UP

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
The Kingmaker
Time

The Kingmaker

Elon Musk's partnership with the President-elect

time-read
10+ Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
Turkey's Erdogan plots his next power grab
Time

Turkey's Erdogan plots his next power grab

RECEP TAYYIP Erdogan is a political survivor.

time-read
2 Minuten  |
December 09, 2024
Why maiden names matter in the age of AI and identity
Time

Why maiden names matter in the age of AI and identity

IN THE DIGITAL AGE, A NAME IS MORE THAN JUST A label. It's tied to our professional history and social media presence.

time-read
2 Minuten  |
December 09, 2024