So... Oppenheimer finally hits screens tomorrow! The long-standing desire to see Christopher Nolan go back to personal, intimate character-centric storytelling as opposed to the heavier cerebral kind that marked his recent work, with mixed results, will hopefully get answered with the Cillian Murphy-led vehicle, a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the legendary theoretical physicist and “father of the atomic bomb”.
Nolan would’ve done another biopic sooner had Martin Scorsese not beaten him to it with The Aviator, the subject of which was on the former’s mind for the longest time.
Howard Hughes, Oppenheimer...
It’s easy to see why Nolan would get so drawn to the lives of these men.
What do they have in common? Obsession—a pet theme common to all Nolan films, beginning with his 70-min debut feature, Following—and its repercussions, more than anything else.
Obsession was the predominant theme in many acclaimed biopics too. It has excellent scope for drama—the most essential component of any movie. This obsession may take many forms. The obsession with victory. The obsession with creation. The obsession with proving something. The obsession with vengeance. The obsession with a person (or oneself). The obsession with an ideology. The obsession with technology. The obsession with money. The obsession with power. The obsession with survival.
Some resulted in healthy outcomes, while others led to the individual’s downfall.
There is a long list, and filmmakers employed various tools and storytelling devices, hoping for an account of their subject’s life in the most gripping way possible. Not all of them succeeded.
This piece aims to explore some exceptional examples of the biopic that not only serve as testaments to the remarkable filmmaking capabilities of their makers and mind-expanding imaginary possibilities but, above all, help us get a sense of its central character’s mindscape.
So what makes a good (or great) biopic?
Does having a solid central performance alone suffice? What about novel storytelling approaches? Or a combination of both? The opinions may vary. I gravitate more towards the ones that find a healthy balance between both.
In some instances, paying as much heed to the spectacle and scale as the main subject is essential to do justice to the life they lived. In others, a documentary-like approach would be more apt. It all depends on the events depicted and the eras they occurred in.
I also think the experience gets further enhanced when overcoming internal demons is as much a challenge to the protagonist as career-related trials and tribulations. In my book, the best example of a biopic that achieved a perfect balance of everything is undoubtedly The Aviator. I don’t think any other filmmaker, including Nolan, could’ve done it better. (But, at the same time, I wonder how Nolan would’ve approached the material. Did he forego the idea because he thought it would be impossible to top Scorsese’s version?)
Anyway, the DiCaprio vehicle benefitted from not just the stunning scale that involved seamless CGI and visual effects but stupendous performances from every actor in it, including the leading man who, with his arresting turn, perfectly relayed the life beset by torments, both psychological and professional. As a man who suffered from severe OCD, Hughes’ life was apt for a movie that explored the nature of obsession. (It makes me curious about Nolan’s approach to tackling Oppenheimer’s bouts with depression at certain stages in his life.)
Interestingly, one film that served as a key influence on some of these examples is a fictitious one — Citizen Kane, which told its story as though its main subject was a real character. With pseudo newsreel footage and documentary, it presented its main character as an amalgamation of two real-life examples.
The unique — at the time —narrative structure, which begins with the protagonist’s demise and then goes back to examine his life through testimonials of his friends and acquaintances, may have directly inspired David Lean when it came to Lawrence of Arabia — arguably the greatest biopic of all time.
Again, a classic example of a biopic that balanced spectacle and character development with equal aplomb. It helps that the protagonist, T.E. Lawrence, remains an enigma, even to this day, no matter how exuberant the character may have appeared to those around him.
I guess ambiguity is another quality that sets apart some of these biopics; the most effective ones are the ones that retain at least some sense of mystery about their subject even after the end credits roll—Lawrence of Arabia, The Aviator, and Patton (scripted by Francis Coppola) are a few prime examples that come to mind.
And one expects to find such a quality in Oppenheimer when keeping in mind the words of Cillian Murphy in his latest interview for Vulture, where he said Oppenheimer has “got such an enigmatic quality to what he does.”
Other great biopics like Raging Bull and Steve Jobs stood out with their distinct storytelling flourishes, aside from a crucial central performance. While the former employed black-and-white to ‘soften’ the bloody aftermath of the blows in the boxing ring, the latter opted to chronicle Jobs’ life through three crucial events—three press conferences and accompanying backroom drama—in his life.
While on narrative experiments, Nolan has talked about using colour and black-and-white to create a unique ‘subjective’ experience in Oppenheimer. That should be interesting.
But more than the above titles, Oppenheimer got me thinking of Damien Chazelle’s First Man, which, for some odd reason, isn’t mentioned in biopic-centric discussions as often as one would like.
How did an ordinary (?) man (Ryan Gosling) who experienced multiple personal tragedies eventually become the first man to land on the moon? Another watershed moment in history.
And if we look at First Man from a filmmaking standpoint, we’ll find a few similarities in style between Chazelle and Nolan’s work, especially the preference for practical effects.
So what kind of biopic Oppenheimer is going to be? I can’t wait to find out. Here’s hoping it turns out to be a milestone in Nolan’s career.