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Christopher Nolan Wants Oppenheimer To Leave Audiences With “Tremendously Troubling Questions”
Not exactly a feel good movie, but an important one, nevertheless.
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (exclusively hitting the big screen this Friday) isn't exactly the feel-good movie of the summer, and the writer-director-producer is more than okay with that.
Taking part in a post-screening panel attended by NBC Insider and SYFY WIRE this past weekend, the celebrated cinematic storyteller revealed that he wants audiences to leave the atomic bomb thriller "with some unsettling questions and some troubling issues" when it comes to the threat posed by atomic and thermonuclear weapons
RELATED: Watch This 5-Minute First Look at Christopher Nolan’s Epic Oppenheimer
Christoper Nolan wants Oppenheimer to leave viewers with questions
"My feeling was that the experience of his life, the experience of what these events were; and trying to understand, trying to feel what it must’ve been like to be in these incredibly paradoxical situations would lead you to a place where you realize that we have tremendously troubling questions left at the end of it," continued Nolan. "The film does not pretend to offer any easy answers. The reality is, as a filmmaker, I don’t have to offer the answers, I just get to ask the most interesting questions. But I do think there’s tremendous value in that if it can resonate with the audience after they’ve seen it."
Fellow panelist Carlo Rovelli — a theoretical physicist at France's Aix-Marseille University — echoed that sentiment, proclaiming that "everybody should see this movie" because it raises important topics about the responsibility and morality of science that remain relevant 78 years after the Trinity detonation.
"The Doomsday Clock that is supposed to estimate the risk of nuclear catastrophe has never been closer to midnight," he explained. "So we are in a situation in which the kind of concerns that Oppenheimer was expressing … are our concerns today. I think this is what the movie brings out so strongly."
J. Robert Oppenheimer (played onscreen by Nolan vet Cillian Murphy) attempted to broach the thorny subject following the conclusion of World War II, begging for international disarmament, and became a pariah as a result.
"Oppenheimer, who keeps saying international cooperation is the only way out, seems to me a message that at least we should discuss more and more," Rovelli said. "So much of international politics is about prevailing against one another; leading the world, being the winning one against the other. And the risk of catastrophe is enormous."
Oppenheimer arrives on the big screen this Friday — July 21. Click here for tickets!
This article first appeared on NBC Insider.
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