Cillian Murphy has shared his film pick that he thinks would make the best Christopher Nolan double bill with Oppenheimer.
The actor plays J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s new biographical epic about the creation of the atomic bomb, which recently passed $500million (£392m) at the global box office, making it the most successful WW2 film ever.
The film was involved in a highly publicised box office battle and social media face off with Barbie, which came out on the same day, leading the unofficial double bill feature to be dubbed ‘Barbenheimer’.
In an interview with The Independent, Murphy said he was going to see Barbie, but also picked his ideal Christopher Nolan double bill with Oppenheimer, which would come down to “two options”.
“You could go Interstellar, which is very… explores similar scientific, physic themes,” he said. “Or you could watch Dunkirk, which is also set in World War II. Dunkirk is shorter, so that might be a good match ‘cause it’s like an hour-and-a-half, and then you can go into [Oppenheimer].”
When asked which other Nolan film he would like to have appeared in, Murphy chose 2017’s Interstellar. He has collaborated with the director on six films: Oppenheimer, Dunkirk, Inception and the Dark Knight trilogy.
“I adore Interstellar just because I find it so emotional,” he said.
“I remember seeing it in the cinema when I had little kids. It just had a big impact on me. It broke my heart. I love watching his films when I’m not in them because you don’t have to freak out about the size of your ears, or whatever.”
Speaking to NME recently, Murphy said that he likes playing characters that are “unknowable, ambiguous, kind of enigmatic”, adding: “To me that’s human life: the knotty, weird grey areas… A good man’s life is wholly uninteresting.”
In a five-star review of Oppenheimer, NME wrote that the film was “not just the definitive account of the man behind the atom bomb”, but a “monumental achievement in grown-up filmmaking”.