In a new conversation via EW, Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy spoke with each other about how they came about working on “Oppenheimer.”
There’s an interesting tidbit in there that I don’t think any of the media outlets caught onto yet. Murphy and Nolan mention that the script was written in the “first person.”
NOLAN: I flew over to Dublin to hand you the script, you read it in my hotel room, I went off to look at the Francis Bacon installation in the Hugh Lane [Gallery], and then came back. I'm actually curious if the fact that the script was written in the first person will have added to the feeling of responsibility that you were going to have taking it on.
MURPHY Yes, massively. That's the only script that I've ever read that's been in the first person. It took me a minute, maybe a bit more than a minute, to figure that out. But then it became clear that you wanted it to be completely subjective, that everything was to be seen through the character's eyes as it were, and, again, yeah, that added massively to the terror.
Yeah, so it's all from the point of view of the main character. There's probably no cutting between story lines. Even if this has been done before, that fascinates me in that it tells me how this epic 3-hour movie will be told. Murphy’s Oppenheimer must be in every single scene for it to be that subjective.