Christopher Nolan wrote his 'Oppenheimer' script in the first person.
Christopher Nolan took a new approach
The acclaimed filmmaker - who is known for his work directing the likes of 'Inception', 'Interstellar' and the 'Dark Knight' trilogy - made a big change to his creative procession in the development of his new film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the Manhattan Project in making the atomic bomb.
He told Empire magazine: "I actually wrote in the first-person, which I’ve never done before. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done it before.
"But the point of it is, with the colour sequences, which is the bulk of the film, everything is told from Oppenheimer’s point of view — you’re literally kind of looking through his eyes.”
Nolan even went as far as using Oppenheimer's voice for stage directions, character descriptions and setting details, which he admitted was an "odd thing to do".
He added: "But it was a reminder to me of how to shoot the film. It was a reminder to everybody involved in the project, ‘Okay, this is the point of view of every scene.’
"I wanted to really go through this story with Oppenheimer; I didn’t want to sit by him and judge him. That seemed a pointless exercise. That’s more the stuff of documentary, or political theory, or history of science.
"This is a story that you experience with him — you don’t judge him. You are faced with these irreconcilable ethical dilemmas with him.”
Cillian Murphy plays Oppenheimer in the film, and he wanted the film to be able to "engage people" in a way many movies fail to do.
He explained: "There’s the idea of how we get in somebody’s head and see how they were visualizing this radical reinvention of physics.
"One of the things that cinema has struggled with historically is the representation of intelligence or genius. It very often fails to engage people.”
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