Hollywood has high hopes that the summer of 2023 can be seen as a kind of turning point in the history of cinema. After years of declining sales, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” brought in real money. This is all the more remarkable given that franchises in particular have been letting the ruble roll recently.
So now a film about a world-famous toy figure and a biopic. No, wait, according to Christopher Nolan, there is a blatant misunderstanding when it comes to his film about the development of the first atomic bomb. Because “Oppenheimer” is not a biopic at all, as the director explained at an event at the City University of New York, according to “Variety”.
Nolan focused primarily on the shortened psychological perspective that an individual character wants to explain about his relationship with his own family.
The biographical view is not for the cinema
“In biographies of the post-Freud era there is a tendency to trace the characteristics of the person you want to describe to the nature of their parents,” said the director, who is best known for his complex narrative positions in films. “This is a very reduced view of a person. When you write a book that’s 500 or 1000 pages long, you can balance that with the person’s individuality and experiences. But when you compress it and reduce it to the necessary simplicity of a screenplay, it’s incredibly reductive.”
In other words, just because a person is the focus of a film doesn’t mean it’s a biopic. And what the film does to the viewer (provoking him to think about what is happening in and around the life of this character) only happens on the psychological level, but not exclusively through it.
That’s why, according to Nolan, the biopic is not a “useful genre” for cinema at all. “In this film the genres are different,” said the 53-year-old. “Here it is on the one hand the heist film that refers to the Manhattan Project and the courtroom drama that is being rolled out during the security hearings. It’s very useful to look at the conventions of these genres and see how they can attract audiences and how they can allow me to communicate with viewers.”
Not a useful genre
To clarify his thesis, Nolan explained that for this reason “Citizen Kane” and “Lawrence of Arabia” are not biopics. One is a film about someone’s life, the other is an adventure film. The biopic is therefore not a “useful genre, just as the drama is not a useful genre. It gives you nothing to hold on to.”
For everyone who had other things to do this summer, “Oppenheimer” – which you should of course definitely see in the cinema – will also be available to watch in the stream, as a download or on DVD/Blu-ray from November 21st.