Universal
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has already garnered a handful of strong initial reactions, but now comes a big claim from Taxi Driver writer and The Card Counter director Paul Schrader. The Oscar nominee attended the New York premiere of Nolan’s epic atom bomb and then took to social media to hailed it as “the best and most important film of this century”.
“If you see a movie in theaters this year, it should be ‘Oppenheimer,'” Schrader added in a Facebook post that was shared widely on social media. “I’m no Nolan groupie, but this one blows the door off its hinges.”
Based on the 2005 book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, “Oppenheimer” follows the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II from the perspective of theoretical physicist and Manhattan Project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer. Cillian Murphy stars. The film also stars Matt Damon as Manhattan Project Director General Leslie Groves Jr. and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Founding Commissioner of the US Atomic Energy Commission. Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh and Benny Safdie also star.
Bird gushed about Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” adaptation during a chat at the Institute for Advanced Study last month.
“Right now I’m stunned and emotionally recovering from seeing it,” Bird said. “I think it’s going to be a stunning artistic achievement, and I have hope that it will actually stimulate a national, even global, discussion about the issues that Oppenheimer was keen to talk about – about how to live in the nuclear age, how to lives life with the bomb and about McCarthyism – what it means to be a patriot and the role of a scientist in speaking out on public issues in a society saturated with technology and science.”
“Oppenheimer” hits theaters nationwide on July 21 from Universal Pictures.