Much like most of Christopher Nolan’s movies, the dialogue in “Oppenheimer,” at key moments, can sometimes sound inaudible; Nolan’s sound editing and mixing is, and has always been, a polarizing topic.
Many have wondered why he never fixes it, given that it’s become a common complaint from his detractors. In “Oppenheimer,” which is dialogue-driven, the mixing, at times, muffles out what his on-screen characters are saying. However, the film is a vast improvement when compared to his last few, especially “Tenet.”
In a recent interview with Insider, Nolan says that maybe it’s because he doesn't have his actors do ADR, which is the practice of returning to the recording booth in post-production to recapture dialogue to make things clearer.
I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor re-voice it later, which is an artistic choice that some people disagree with, and that's their right.
Nolan’s other excuse is that the IMAX cameras he uses for his movies can be noisy, interfering with quieter scenes.
There are certain mechanical improvements. And actually, IMAX is building new cameras right now which are going to be even quieter," he told Insider. "But the real breakthrough is in software technology that allows you to filter out the camera noise.
Nolan has defended his sound in the past, and in Tom Shone’s new book, “The Nolan Variations,” had expressed being surprised about how “conservative” moviegoers are about cinematic sound. In the interview, he went as far as to call his style of sound mixing purposeful and “radical.”
His point of view comes from a biased perspective; he already knows the dialogue of his movie, inside and out, but he seems to forget that the audience doesn’t, it’s their first time with the material and they might not grasp it as much.
In Shone’s book, Nolan also mentions how he got calls from other filmmakers who would say they just saw his film, and the dialogue was “inaudible.” “Some people thought maybe the music’s too loud, but the truth was it was kind of the whole enchilada of how we had chosen to mix it," he said at the time.
When a filmmaker mixes dialogue that is inaudible, you better hope that the screenplay isn’t dialogue-heavy, which is not the case with “Oppenheimer”.
The 3-hour film almost solely relies on dialogue. I would say this was his best film in terms of understanding what the characters are saying, but it’s far from perfect work. The sound in “Oppenheimer” didn’t bother me as much as it did others, but I completely understand where the complaints are coming from.