Interview: Christopher Nolan

In a recent interview with Wired magazine’s executive editor Maria Streshinsky, Christopher Nolan discusses his latest movie Oppenheimer. An excerpt:

In the December 2014 issue of WIRED that you guest-edited, there was a line where you said, “The relationship between storytelling and the scientific method fascinates me. It wasn’t really about an intellectual understanding. It was a feeling of grasping something.” Talk to me about your love of science.

Well, I’ve always been interested in astronomy, in questions of physics. I got to explore that in Interstellar. When my brother wrote the script, he would look at Einstein’s thought experiments, and he identified a particular melancholy that some of them had. It’s all to do with parts in time. All to do with, like, twins who get separated and one goes away and comes back and the other’s older, you know? There’s a very literary quality to Einstein onward in terms of thinking about physics and how you would do these thought experiments, how you conceive of these ideas and how they work. The process of visualization that physicists need isn’t so different from a literary process.

Do you feel something like that at the editing stage of a film?

I feel it at every phase, at every phase. A lot of my job is trying to articulate instincts and feelings about the shape of things. It can be difficult and complicated.

I find that if I’m working on a story and I don’t know the structure, I don’t know the flow, something’s wrong. I can’t speak of the piece in a way that makes sense.

There’s a geometry or a geography. I think in very geographical terms or geometric terms about structures and patterns. Over the years I’ve tried adopting a sort of ground-up approach to structure, but ultimately it’s very much an instinctive process: Does the feeling have the shape of a narrative, and how does that come together? And I was fascinated to realize that physicists have a very similar process going on. It’s really fun.

Maybe this is a nod to Interstellar, but physicists always seem so in love. In love with physics, that is.

I’m passionately committed to truth. I love the scientific method. I hate to see it distorted either by scientists in the media or by media speaking for scientists. The pure scientific method, the idea that science seeks to disprove itself constantly, it so elevated human thinking beyond any other form — religion, ­whatever — that we’ve chosen to engage in as a species.

Before this interview, my mom and I watched some of your films together — because of her book, she was curious about what you’d do with Oppenheimer — and at one point she said it feels like your movies can have a very anti-nihilistic message. Dunkirk. Interstellar. Batman. Or, is it optimism?

I mean, the end of Inception, it’s exactly that. There is a nihilistic view of that ending, right? But also, he’s moved on and is with his kids. The ambiguity is not an emotional ambiguity. It’s an intellectual one for the audience. It’s funny, I think there is an interesting relationship between the endings of Inception and Oppenheimer to be explored. Oppenheimer’s got a complicated ending. Complicated feelings.

How are early viewers reacting?

Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated. They can’t speak. I mean, there’s an element of fear that’s there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I’ve ever done.

And the complexity of the subject matter.

Oppenheimer’s story is all impossible questions. Impossible ethical dilemmas, paradox. There are no easy answers in his story. There are just difficult questions, and that’s what makes the story so compelling. I think we were able to find a lot of things to be optimistic about in the film, genuinely, but there’s this sort of overriding bigger question that hangs over it. It felt essential that there be questions at the end that you leave rattling in people’s brains, and prompting discussion.

I was struck by this comment: “I think in very geographical terms or geometric terms about structures and patterns.”

I can relate. Like this:

And this:

I was also struck by this observation: “Over the years I’ve tried adopting a sort of ground-up approach to structure, but ultimately it’s very much an instinctive process: Does the feeling have the shape of a narrative, and how does that come together?”

I can relate to this as well. For me, so much of that “instinctive process” is about immersing myself in the lives of the story’s characters, particularly the Protagonist. Let them “drive” the story-crafting process which is very much an approach based on instinct and feeling.

On another note, Nolan talks about the comparison between the creation of the atom bomb and the emergence of generative artificial intelligence. Similar, but different.

For the rest of the Wired interview, go here.

For 100s more interviews with screenwriters, authors, and filmmakers, go here. Reading, watching, and listening to professional writers is a great way to up your game. That’s why I host as many interviews and conversations as I can on Go Into The Story.

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Interview: Christopher Nolan was originally published in Go Into The Story on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.