2024-03-04 20:11:27
The story of the secretly hastily built city in the remote mountains of New Mexico devoted entirely to nuclear research is not only the plot of Oppenheimer’s film, but also the story of how the film was made.
Like the inventor of the atomic bomb whom the film deals with, director Christopher Nolan had to create from scratch his version of the Los Alamos site where this deadly weapon was designed.
David Manzanares, director of the Ghost Ranch site where a replica of the city was built, says the project was “obviously shrouded in secrecy.”
David Manzanares, like all the other members of his team, had to wait until last August, a month following the film opened in cinemas, to be able to talk regarding his work.
To reach the site, you must cross barriers marked “Restricted Area”. After passing a few kilometers on a dirt road, wooden houses, offices, and security points that were built specifically for the film appear, and there is even a small church, with desert mountains visible in the background.
The real Los Alamos, located regarding an hour’s drive away, still contains a top-secret laboratory that works to ensure the safety of American nuclear weapons and their maintenance. But since 1945, the mysterious village has become a modern city.
David Manzanares, producer and set manager of Oppenheimer’s film (French)
Real site
Filming the exterior scenes required building a replica of the street. Christopher Nolan is known to always insist on giving his films the maximum amount of real and original character.
As for “Oppenheimer,” the British director contented himself with minimal special effects to film the scene recreating the atomic bomb test, and used real scientists from Los Alamos to take on the roles of silent extras.
In October 2021, Manzanares received a call from a friend’s director of photography who was looking for empty locations in New Mexico for a film set in the 1940s.
A month later, Christopher Nolan personally arrived at Ghost Ranch. “He loved the location right away,” Manzanares said.
His team had to meet the requirements of the director, who actually needed two almost identical designs.
One of the two designs was supposed to be empty, to depict a scene in which Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, appears, informing a US Army general regarding the place where he wants to build the Manhattan Project base.
As for the other, the village of Los Alamos was supposed to be built there, to host the filming of the rest of the film’s scenes starting the next day.
To make this work, Manzanares chose two places that resembled the sight of the “hills” – the orange mountains with broad, flat peaks that characterize the American West.
Once the production team arrived on site, secrecy began to apply to “everyone, even the actors.” He added, “They would get the pages and go to their hotel rooms and read, but they were not allowed to go out with the script.”
Director Christopher Nolan’s filming location for his Oscar-nominated film “Oppenheimer”, in Abiqui, New Mexico (French)
Rattlesnakes
Such measures are common in a film of this size, as large production companies want at all costs to avoid leaking photos, rumors and parts of the story to the press before the film’s release.
Once the Los Alamos scenes were filmed, the city’s fake “laboratories” were removed, as were the telephone poles that might have been uprooted by the wind.
But the film left behind a number of wooden structures, which is the first time this happens in a film filmed at Ghost Ranch. For the site team, this meant keeping it completely secret for a year following filming, but the site is now currently undergoing a cleaning process, in preparation for opening it to the public.
“We found rattlesnakes and black widow spiders,” said Visits Officer Julia Haywood, but added: “The site is now completely safe.”
Oppenheimer’s film, directed by Christopher Nolat, is considered the favorite to win the Best Picture award at the 2024 Oscars, and is also nominated to win awards in 13 categories.
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