‘OK, so here’s how we win the Oscar for a biopic about a theoretical physicist. [Sounds of manic scribbling on a blackboard. A large circle is drawn and tapped with a piece of chalk.] In here, we put as many thespian-coded Hollywood stars as we can. Dozens, hundreds. We might not give them much to do, heck Josh Hartnett will just be patting people on the shoulder, but everything they do do will be poignant. Meanwhile [a shuffle of feet, another, bigger circle drawn] in here we have all the aspects of contemporary cinema production that work exceptionally well on those big screens you have to pay £10 extra to get into. We take all these aspects, sight, sound, scale – spectacle! – and we use them lavishly to recreate the first successful test of a nuclear weapon and hint at its terrifying consequences. [A big swoosh of white chalk under the word “Trinity”. A pause for effect.] I can also confirm today that we will definitely, at some point, have Albert Einstein standing by a pond [a thunder of feet pounding wooden benches]. And the rest? The rest we pad out with extended scenes of cross examination from a hodgepodge of tribunals. People? Let’s get to it.”
This may not be a faithful account of the process by which Christopher Nolan’s new movie came into existence. But the feeling of Oppenheimer being a precision-tooled construction that blends the fascinations of Hollywood’s last commercially successful auteur with the interests of the Academy remains. Serious themes, serious people, an unflinching dedication to both the craft and the medium of cinema, Oppenheimer ticks the boxes. Bookmakers are duly offering odds as short as 1/25 on for it to take home best picture.
