Photo: Matt Damon as Leslie Groves and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer
By telling the story through the eyes of the man himself, it poses the question: what does creating the deadliest weapon ever known do to a person, and how do they cope with the aftermath? Portraying the physicist in Nolan’s three-hour feature is Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy, who says that the immense moral quandary explored in the film sat heavy in his mind, too.
Cillian Murphy: Playing Oppen- heimer was ‘the biggest, most ex- hilarating challenge’ By Rachael Davis, PA Entertainment Features Writer Upon witnessing the detonation of the world’s first nuclear bomb on July 16 1945, J Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb”, reportedly displayed an expression of “tremendous relief”. Having worked tirelessly on this weapon of mass destruction as head of the Manhattan Project, fearful that Nazi Germany could develop a nuclear arsenal before any other country, it’s no surprise that the world-leading physicist was glad that the Trinity test was successful. However, this relief carried with it an enormous weight: Oppenheimer and his team had irrevocably changed the world forever. Man now held colossal destruction in the palm of its hand, setting the stage for large-scale attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for the Cold War. Oppenheimer and his deadly victory are the focus of Inception director Christopher Nolan’s latest venture, the epic biographical thriller Oppenheimer.
“It does affect you, for sure,” says Murphy, 47, of the existential weight of the intense role.
“You don’t know it on a conscious level, but on an emotional, kind of atomic level, it really, really affects you.
“And in this movie, the moral dilemmas and the paradoxes that the character was grappling with, emotionally and morally and psychologically, were huge.
“So it does take a toll, but in a brilliant way… It was the biggest, most exhilarating challenge.”
Oppenheimer’s story, fraught with moral quandary and existentialism, is perfect fodder for writer-director Christopher Nolan. Nolan’s back catalogue, which includes 2000’s Memento, 2014’s Interstellar and 2017’s Dunkirk as well as the Christian Bale-fronted Batman trilogy, shows he is no
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