‘The danger never goes away’: Christopher Nolan didn’t intend for Oppenheimer movie to be so timely
The world’s first nuclear explosion happened on 16 July 1945, when a plutonium implosion device was tested in New Mexico.
Now a new film about the so-called father of the atomic bomb, J Robert Oppenheimer, looks at how he came to create a weapon that would change the world and how it changed him.
J Robert Oppenheimer on the test ground for the atomic bomb in September 1945
Decades since its invention, as Russia’s war rages in Ukraine, the weapon’s threat to the world is back in people’s minds.
Director Christopher Nolan, who also wrote the movie, basing it on the Pulitzer Prize winning book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, told Sky News he never meant for his film to be so timely.
“I had a conversation with one of my teenage sons about what I was working on and he literally said to me – ‘Does anybody really worry about nuclear weapons anymore? Is that really a thing in the world?’
“To which I said, ‘Well, maybe that’s a reason for making the film but beyond that, it’s just a very, very dramatic story about how our world changed forever’.
“Two years later, he’s not asking that question anymore and neither is anybody else for all the worst possible reasons, and that’s symptomatic of our relationship with the threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear holocaust – it ebbs and flows with geopolitical shifts in a way that it shouldn’t – I mean, the danger never goes away.”
To inhabit the role of Oppenheimer, Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy lost weight and perfected a new accent and also had to learn about quantum physics and grapple with Oppenheimer’s morality.
“Actors love getting jobs and then they’re dying to finish them, that seems to be the way,” Murphy told Sky News.
Tom Conti as Albert Einstein with Murphy. Pic: Universal Pictures
“So, yeah, it was time for a holiday after that for sure, if you do anything for like 17, 18 hours a day and you’re in that and you’re on set all the time, naturally there will be a cost and then you feel at the end there’s all this displaced energy and you’re not quite sure what to do with it, and you start moving furniture around.”
Nolan interjects: “And have a sandwich”.
For the director, known for movies including Intersteller, Inception and Dunkirk – and who has a reputation for shunning digital effects and greenscreen – it wasn’t recreating a nuclear explosion that posed a challenge.
Instead, he says he found the casting process daunting.
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“The ensemble – with Cillian at the heart of it as Oppenheimer – but then his interactions with this entire team of people coming together to pull off this, you know, impossible feat, that was a challenge for me.
“Doing these group discussions, these arguments, these interpersonal relationships and all of that, all of which came into such a kind of hothouse atmosphere with the Manhattan Project and everything they had to do in the years that they were there.
“That was something I’d never really taken on before.”
Emily Blunt and Cillian Murphy. Pic: Universal Pictures
The extremely positive early reviews for Oppenheimer suggest Nolan rose to that challenge.
But now, with promotion for the film interrupted by the US actor’s strike, it remains to be seen whether audiences will have the appetite for a three-hour epic about the creation of the atomic bomb – the end of the world perhaps too close for comfort to be considered entertainment.
Oppenheimer, which also stars Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh and Robert Downey Jr, is released worldwide on Friday 21 July.
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Joy star James Norton on the ‘postcode lottery’ of IVF – and playing the scientist who was part of creating the first ‘test-tube baby’
Actor James Norton, who stars in a new film telling the story of the world’s first “test-tube baby”, has criticised how “prohibitively expensive” IVF can be in the UK.
In Joy, the star portrays the real-life scientist Bob Edwards, who – along with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Jean Purdy – spent a decade tirelessly working on medical ways to help infertility.
The film charts the 10 years leading up to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, who was dubbed the world’s first test-tube baby, in 1978.
In the UK, statistics show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade
Norton, who is best known for playing Tommy Lee Royce in the BAFTA-winning series Happy Valley, told Sky News he has friends who were IVF babies and other friends who have had their own children thanks to the fertility treatment.
“But I didn’t know about these three scientists and their sacrifice, tenacity and skill,” he said. The star hopes the film will be “a catalyst for conversation” about the treatment and its availability.
“We know for a fact that Jean, Bob and Patrick would not have liked the fact that IVF is now so means based,” he said. “It’s prohibitively expensive for some… and there is a postcode lottery which means that some people are precluded from that opportunity.”
Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton star in Joy. All pics: Netflix/ Kerry Brown
Now, IVF is considered a wonder of modern medicine. More than 12 million people owe their existence today to the treatment Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy worked so hard to devise.
But Joy shows how public backlash in the years leading up to Louise’s birth saw the team vilified – accused of playing God and creating “Frankenstein babies”.
Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie star alongside Norton, with the script written by acclaimed screenwriter Jack Thorne and his wife Rachel Mason.
The couple went through seven rounds of IVF themselves to conceive their son.
Norton portrays scientist Bob Edwards, while McKenzie plays embryologist Jean Purdy
While the film is set in the 1970s, the reality is that societal pressures haven’t changed all that much for many going through IVF today – with the costs now both emotional and financial.
“IVF is still seen as a luxury product, as something that some people get access to and others don’t,” said Thorne, speaking about their experiences in the UK.
“Louise was a working-class girl with working-class parents. Working class IVF babies are very, very rare now.”
In the run-up to the US election, Donald Trump saw IVF as a campaigning point – promising his government, or insurance companies, would pay for the treatment for all women should he be elected. He called himself the “father of IVF” at a campaign event – a remark described as “quite bizarre” by Kamala Harris.
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Bill Nighy ‘proud’ of new film on IVF breakthrough
“I don’t think Trump is a blueprint for this,” Norton said. “I don’t know how that fits alongside his questions around pro-choice.”
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In the UK, statistics from fertility regulator HEFA show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade.
“It’s so expensive,” Norton said. “Those who want a child should have that choice… and some people’s lack of access to this incredibly important science actually means that people don’t have the choice.”
Joy is in UK cinemas from 15 November, and on Netflix from 22 November
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