For this special episode of ‘The Monocle Weekly’, we look back at interviews with some of this year’s Oscar nominees, including Christopher Nolan of ‘Oppenheimer’, Jeffrey Wright and ‘American Fiction’ to Celine Song of ‘Past Lives’. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the Monaco Weekly.
It's an Oscar special.
I look back on some of the interviews we did this year with the main nominees.
We're gonna start with the favorite win.
Let's be honest, It's Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan.
Robert Bowne sat down with the filmmaker to discuss the film which tells the story of the man widely regarded as the father of the atomic bomb.
All America's industrial might and scientific innovation connected here.
Secret laboratory.
Keep everyone there until it's done.
Let's go recruit some scientists.
I think right from reading the specifics of his story, I mean, I knew about the key dramatic events of this incredible story, the Trinity test, the way in which it changed the world forever.
But coming to the book which I've adapted, American Prometheus by Kyber and Motto show, and reading that, there was this incredible sense of suspense and momentum to so many different aspects of his life.
There's so many things that happened to him as a young man that decades later come back to haunt him, catch up with him in that most sort of cinematic way.
And so for me, I've never really wanted to tell a story of somebody's life in some kind of traditional sense.
I really wanted to just view the events of his life as an experience to be shared with the audience so that they could, I think, maybe come to some kind of understanding of him rather than judging him.
And in that way, the momentum of it, I think, is very important because there are a lot of decisions being made in a very pressured environment, you know, whether or not to push the button before the Trinity test, even knowing that there was this very small possibility that might destroy the entire world.
But so you have to feel that sense of momentum and pressure that's just pushing, pushing, pushing in a particular direction because that's what they're caught up in.
And I want to be caught up in that as well, so as not to be dispassionate and looking at.
Hang on, why do they do this?
Why do they do that?