What are Christopher Nolan’s best movies? Is ‘Oppenheimer’ his No. 1 film?

Christopher Nolan’s biographical film Oppenheimer is an intricate, meandering thriller chronicling the life of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, “the father of the atomic bomb”. It’s a dense and labyrinthine film, in many ways mirroring Oppenheimer’s own complex life - a genius blessed with a brilliant scientific mind while struggling to fend off his own demons.

Irish actor Cillian Murphy continues his collaboration with Nolan. He starred in three of the filmmaker’s previous works - The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception and Dunkirk. He plays Oppenheimer, hired to coordinate the Manhattan Project, a Federal-funded program to develop the atomic bomb. Murphy explained the difficulties he stumbled across while researching his role, and accurately depicting Oppenheimer, a chain-smoking, obsessive workaholic with a self-destructive streak. “He was complex, contradictory, polymathic - incredibly attractive intellectually and charismatic, but ultimately unknowable,” he told NBC.

Stunning visuals

Interwoven into Oppenheimer’s story are complex tales of affairs, his political beliefs, investigation by the FBI and subsequent court cases. Like all of his most recent films, Nolan shot Oppenheimer on high definition Imax 70mm film stock - the larger format lending detail, sharpness and a stark realism that cannot be achieved with conventional 35mm stock. Among the highlights, the apocalyptic footage of the spectacular, and horrifying atomic explosion during the Trinity Test, recreated without computer-generated imagery (CGI), as the director explained, “I thought, okay, how do I portray the Trinity Test? That first atomic device being detonated. Computer graphics are extremely versatile and the detail that can be achieved and the variety that can be achieved is obviously unparalleled but they tend to feel a little anodyne, a little safe. It’s very difficult to have CGI convey threat. Everything about Oppenheimer is about engagement, it’s about being in his head”. Nolan’s special effects teams devised a number of processes that were filmed with macro lens in HD, including paint being hurled, magnesium compounds being ignited and ping pong balls exploding.

Nolan’s 2017 thriller Dunkirk detailing Operation Dynamo - the Allied evacuation of Dunkirk in northern France during World War II, was shot in large format to startling effect - many scenes were shot hand-held, giving Dunkirk a gritty realism that makes it, for many critics, the greatest war film of all time. It grossed $527,016,307 worldwide but is not Nolan’s biggest hit at the box office.

“Endure, Master Wayne”

The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the third part of his Batman trilogy, grossed $1,081,153,097 but is not considered his best work despite receiving favorable reviews, though hardly glowing. The Guardian’s Philip French wrote, “The intellectually challenging final film, The Dark Knight Rises, sets out to reconcile issues raised in the first two. It brings Wayne’s story to a suitably epic conclusion while at the same time offering the dramatic imbroglios, action set pieces, twists and surprises the form demands. The Dark Knight Rises has an intelligence, epic thrust and visual grandeur far beyond its present box-office rival, Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble.

Of course, determining what is considered to be Nolan’s best movie is entirely subjective, Memento (2000) - a psychological thriller starring Guy Pearce as the short-term memory loss-afflicted Leonard Shelby received glowing reviews and a was a box office success, grossing $40,047,078 - less than The Prestige, Nolan’s fifth film. 2014′s Interstellar figures among Nolan’s best-known works - a three-hour, thought-provoking sci-fi drama in which the director grapples with diverse philosophical themes such as love, what we view as progress and the future of humanity.

Could Oppenheimer surpass Nolan’s most successful movie, 2012′s The Dark Knight Rises? Maybe. Since it’s release on 21 July, it brought in $174 million in global box office receipts during the first weekend alone. Manohla Dargis gave his verdict on the film for the New York Times: “Nolan is one of the few contemporary filmmakers operating at this ambitious scale, both thematically and technically. Working with his superb cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan has shot in 65-millimeter film, a format that he’s used before to create a sense of cinematic monumentality. The results can be immersive, though at times clobbering, particularly when the wow of his spectacle has proved more substantial and coherent than his storytelling. In “Oppenheimer,” though, as in “Dunkirk” (2017), he uses the format to convey the magnitude of a world-defining event; here, it also closes the distance between you and Oppenheimer, whose face becomes both vista and mirror”.