Christopher Nolan loves teaming up with his cinematographers on more than one occassion. For the longest time, his partner was Wally Pfister. With Interstellar, Pfister departed to work on his directorial debut Transcendence and Nolan found a new partner in Hoyte van Hoytema, who he has stuck with ever since. In talking about the approach and techniques adopted for shooting his latest film, Hoytema referred to Oppenheimer as a psychological thriller when comparing it with his other films and how starkly different it was to his past endeavors.
My biggest challenge with Oppenheimer rests in the way it is very different from the other films I’ve made with Chris. In Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet, there’s an emphasis on action. Oppenheimer is more like a psychological thriller; it’s reliant on the faces of its characters.
Being essentially a drama, Oppenheimer would involve a lot of close-ups as opposed to wide-ranging action shots that offer the kind of spectacle people usually flock to IMAX screens for. Hoytema took on the challenge on filming what is essentially an intimate, psychological drama in full-scale IMAX and use the high-resolution footage to create a sense of immersion.
IMAX is usually this format for spectacle, used to present vistas and convey grandeur. But from the very beginning, I have always been curious to discover if it can be just as powerful when used for close-ups. Can we shoot psychology? Can we make this an intimate medium? With Oppenheimer, there has been an evolution. It was the first film where I was forced to put my money where my mouth was, so to speak, and make it happen, because the story demanded it.
Nolan on his part, revealed that they focused on filming footage that was simple to shoot, without resorting to overt stylization of any form save for the black-and-white sequences. They relied a lot on real world environments and the textures therein to immerse audiences and make them feel involved. This in turn necessitated the need to shoot things practically, thereby reducing a reliance on CGI.
The style of photography that Hoyte and I adopted for this movie was to be very simple yet very powerful. No barrier between the world of the film and the audience, no obvious stylization other than the black-and-white sequences. But particularly with the color sequences, we wanted very unadorned, simple photography, as natural as possible, revealing lots of textures in the world. Whether it’s the costumes or the sets or locations, you’re looking for real world complexity and detail.
Oppenheimer certainly looks stunning from the trailers, especially if you’ve had a chance to catch them in IMAX. With the whole film essentially being shot on IMAX cameras, it certainly is the format of choice that you should watch the movie in. This behind the scenes featurette ought to convince you.
Oppenheimer releases in theaters on July 21, 2023. Directed by Christoper Nolan for Universal Pictures, it is adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin and features a star-studded cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Jack Quaid, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, Alden Ehrenreich, Dane DeHaan, and David Dastmalchian. Tickets for the movie are now on sale.
