of really, really talented people on each film. in the case of oppenheimer, this incredible cast that, you know, you ve already mentioned, cillian and emily, but also, you know, robert downeer and matt damon and ken branagh there s a very, very long list, florence pugh and many others. for me, how i do it is to bring together talented people like that and in the service of making films that i would have wanted to see as an audience member, you know, i view myself as the audience not, it s not a sort of us and them thing. i make the films that i would really want to, you know, go to the cinema and sit down and my popcorn and watch the film. i ve seen oppenheimer. many people will be about to see oppenheimer when it premieres this week, after it premieres this week. let s talk about that. i mean, you have played with concepts of physics in some of your films already. i d say interstellar, about time and gravity. clearly, as far as oppenheimer goes, the atom bomb is the ultimate and m
christopher nolan almost needs no introduction. the acclaimed director is behind blockbusters including the dark knight trilogy and interstellar the futuristic science fiction epic which blasted matthew mcconaughey and anne hathaway into space as well as historical films, like dunkirk, which brought the story of the evacuation of allied soldiers in 1940 to a wider audience. nolan delivers box office successes, and the movies have won 11 oscars from 36 nominations. but the director has never clinched the coveted best picture or best director award. perhaps his latest, oppenheimer, will change that. starring cillian murphy as theoretical physicist j robert oppenheimer, it charts the invention of the first atomic bomb, which was tested by scientists in the desert in new mexico in 1945, and then dropped controversially on hiroshima and nagasaki, ending world war ii. i sat down with christopher nolan ahead of the film s premiere in london.
it s become a thing over time that i don t sit in my chair when it s put out. and so eventually they stop bothering to put it out for me. why is that? why don t you? because it s pretty hard to get up once you ve sat. you know, directing films, it s quite a physicaljob. it s quite tiring, very long days. you re on your feet all day. when you sit down, your energy level ebbs, you know, and it s harder to get up. makes sense. so i keep my energy levels up by by not sitting down, but i don t i don t impose that. it might make them feel a bit guilty, but that s on of them, not me. absolutely. you re known for your realism, for putting observed reality in front of your camera. there was even a rumour, i think, only halfjoking, that you d actually detonated a real bomb for this film in order to make sure it looked looked right. i m sure you didn t. but the scene of the trinity test in the film is very powerful and very real. what was your process and your thinking when you were recreating
and it s what makes his story the most dramatic i ve ever encountered. it does feel like a very timely film. i wonder if it does for you with. we haven t talked about nuclear threats for a while and then with what s going on in the world right now, suddenly the the fear of it has risen up again. yeah. i mean, our relationship with the fear of nuclear weapons, with the threat of nuclear weapons is very complicated. i grew up, you know, in england as a teenager in the 80s. nuclear holocaust was very much on our minds. it was in the popular imagination, things like sting s song russians, that refers to oppenheimer s deadly toys . it was one of the first times i remember thinking about who oppenheimer would have been. you know, it was time of the height of membership in cnd, the protest agreement, greenham common, you know, these kind of things. so when i was 12 or 13, myself and my friends, we were convinced we would die in a nuclear holocaust.
and when you talk to leaders in the field of ai, as i do from time to time, they see this moment right now as their oppenheimer moment they refer to it as their oppenheimer moment. they re looking to his story to say, ok, what are our responsibilities? how can we deal with the potential of unintended consequences? sadly, for them, there are no easy answers in oppenheimer s story there are troubling questions. it is a cautionary tale, and there s some really amazing and dramatic questions that come out of it, which is why i wanted to make a film of it. but this film certainly doesn t offer any easy answers to any of these questions. and i think these technologies, ai in particular, if you look at it, i, i think that it s a good thing that people look to oppenheimer story in this way. but as far as i m concerned, i do put nuclear weapons in a different class. i think they are a very specific and singular