Starring some of the best actors in Hollywood, like Robert Downey Jr., Cillian Murphy, and Matt Damon, among others, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has become another addition to his incredible work. Since its release, the movie has been doing pretty well at the box office and has also received a great response from critics with a 94% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. The cast of the film is also being appreciated for their performances.
And to make it all happen, the filmmaker and his team had to push many boundaries, including engineering the first ever 65mm black and white Imax film.
How Did Christopher Nolan Shot Robert Downey Jr.’s Scenes in Oppenheimer?
Christopher Nolan is known for doing something new and extraordinary in his every next film and he did the same with the 2023 biographical drama, Oppenheimer. The director chose not to use computer-generated imagery or CGI for the atomic explosion to film the Trinity Test.
Similarly, he also had something in mind to portray the two distinct time periods in the movie. And he did come up with an idea. The director decided to portray J. Robert Oppenheimer’s perspective in color and Lewis Strauss’ (portrayed by Robert Downey Jr.) perspective in black and white.
The issue, however, was that he used a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65 mm large-format film, but there were no IMAX 65mm black and white films. This led the filmmakers to give a call to Kodak. “We asked: ‘Do you have 65-millimeter black-and-white film?’ And of course, they didn’t, because they never made it before,” Hoyte van Hoytema, the cinematographer of Oppenheimer shared.
He further shared that they insisted Kodak look into the possibility and try and make one for them. The company tried and finally was able to deliver what the filmmakers needed. van Hoytema has also shared that the outcome of the film was so special and beautiful.
Robert Downey Jr. Felt Nostalgic Starring in Oppenheimer
The cast and the crew of the biographical drama Oppenheimer shared how they managed to get the film together in a recent featurette. Robert Downey Jr., who portrays Lewis Strauss in the movie, has shared that filming the movie felt like he “went back to some origins of great cinema school.”
“I was sitting in the back of a 47′ Packard with an Imax mag on my lap, trying to get this driving shot, and it just felt like I went back to some origins of great cinema school,” he shared. Christopher Nolan also shared that they tested the large format black and white on a giant IMAX screen to have a look at it. And the director described the results as “magical” and “inspiring.”
Oppenheimer is playing in theatres.
Source: NBC
