Movies - TV
Christopher Nolan Broke His Own Rules With Oppenheimer’s Opening Scene
By JEREMY MATHAI
A common thread throughout Christopher Nolan’s work is bringing the story full circle — “Oppenheimer” is no exception to this rule.
The opening and closing shots of the film feature rain and close-ups of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s face; however, Nolan didn’t originally plan
on the symmetry.
The detail-oriented filmmaker admitted that he and his creative team hadn’t planned the film’s opening scene, but that it came about during editing.
Nolan shared, “It’s not in the script, actually, which for me is very rare. It’s a sort of symbol, a symbolic representation that started to insert itself in the filming.”
He added, “I’m a very controlled and controlling filmmaker, and I don’t often shift something as important as that, but it was something that just kept pulling us in.”
Fans may have assumed the ending was another instance of Nolan’s penchant for parallel filmmaking, but it wasn’t until editing the film that the exact opening emerged.