Christopher Nolan has achieved yet another milestone with his latest movie Oppenheimer as it surpassed the highest-grossing biopic Bohemian Rhapsody with the movie’s worldwide collection of $942 million.
Nolan, who was in speculation to helm the next James Bond movie after Daniel Craig’s departure as Bond, doesn’t like the term ‘biopic’ as the genre can’t serve justice to the persons on which the project is based. Nolan certainly, doesn’t think of Oppenheimer as a biopic.
Christopher Nolan Doesn’t Like The Term ‘Biopic,’ Here’s Why
By default or popular notion, Oppenheimer is essentially a biopic since it was adapted from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Christopher Nolan, the mastermind behind the huge 2023 hit doesn’t consider the movie as a biopic. Joining a panel at the City University of New York event, Nolan revealed why he is against the term ‘biopic.’
“There is a tendency in biography post-Freud to attribute characteristics of the person you’re dealing with to their genetics from their parents. It’s a very reductive view of a human being. If you’re writing a book that’s 500 pages or 1,000 pages, there’s a way to balance that with their individuality and experiences. When you compress and strip down to the necessary simplicity of a screenplay, it’s incredibly reductive,” he said at the event.
Nolan further believes that the credibility of the concept of biopic as a movie genre is questionable. “This is where the concept of a biopic fails you completely as a genre,” he said. “It’s not a useful genre. I love working in useful genres,” he added. Also, he is far far away from acknowledging Oppenheimer as a biopic.
Oppenheimer Is Not A Biopic, Christopher Nolan Claimed
If the Cillian Murphy starrer movie is not a biopic, what then? Nolan has an answer for it, at least he thinks Oppenheimer is a heist movie. “It’s the heist film as it applies to the Manhattan Project and the courtroom drama as it applies to the security hearings,” the director continued at the event. It’s “very useful to look at the conventions of those genres and how they can pull the audience and how they can give me communication with the audience.”
“Biopic is something that applies to a film that is not quite registering in a dramatic fashion. You don’t talk about ‘Laurence of Arabia’ as a biopic. You don’t talk about ‘Citizen Kane’ as a biopic. It’s an adventure film. It’s a film about somebody’s life. It’s not a useful genre the same way drama is not a useful genre. It doesn’t give you anything to hold onto.”
In its essence, Nolan believes that even great biographical movies are not limited to the purview of the genre, they go beyond the extent of the thematic significance of the movies that justify the true nature of these movies. In this case, for Nolan, Oppenheimer is a heist movie.
