Matt Damon will play Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves

The upcoming epic thriller based on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.
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I keep hearing Damon saying 'big canvas', what does 'canvas' mean in filmmaking?

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DUNKIRKIE wrote:
April 19th, 2022, 10:31 am
I keep hearing Damon saying 'big canvas', what does 'canvas' mean in filmmaking?
Scope. The scale of the story is very large. But it also means that he's using a literal "big canvas" to tell it. He's not limited to a small frame. It's like painting, if you're given an 8"x10" vs a 24"x36", you have a lot more freedom or space to tell the story that you want. So it's literal and metaphorical. This is not to say that that a smaller frame can't feel big because plenty of movies do a lot with less. In a way, Dunkirk is a "small" movie since it only takes place in this stretch of several miles, but it feel like a larger canvas because of all the different perspectives Nolan utilizes.
Last edited by DylanHoang on April 19th, 2022, 10:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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DylanHoang wrote:
April 19th, 2022, 10:41 am
DUNKIRKIE wrote:
April 19th, 2022, 10:31 am
I keep hearing Damon saying 'big canvas', what does 'canvas' mean in filmmaking?
Scope. The scale of the story is just very large.
Alright, I thought it's something like scale or so, thanks

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DUNKIRKIE wrote:
April 19th, 2022, 10:43 am
DylanHoang wrote:
April 19th, 2022, 10:41 am
DUNKIRKIE wrote:
April 19th, 2022, 10:31 am
I keep hearing Damon saying 'big canvas', what does 'canvas' mean in filmmaking?
Scope. The scale of the story is just very large.
Alright, I thought it's something like scale or so, thanks
It's also scale in this sense, I think.

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Leslie Groves
Matt Damon

Driven, duty-bound and abrasive, Leslie Groves, Jr. was a distinguished and trusted officer in the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers who had just overseen construction of The Pentagon when he was given the assignment of leading the Manhattan Project. Despite differences with Oppenheimer in politics and temperament, the conservative and pragmatic Groves was immediately taken by Oppenheimer’s genius and vision and recruited him, over the doubts of many, to be his partner in the mission. Groves made significant contributions to the work of building the atomic bomb, not the least of which was his faith in Oppenheimer’s commitments amid concerns over Oppenheimer’s Communist sympathies.

To play the brigadier general, the filmmakers recruited Matt Damon, who earlier this year added to a gilded resume of Oscar® nominated performances (and an Academy Award® for co-writing Good Will Hunting) with an acclaimed performance in Air, which he also produced with his friend Ben Affleck. “The relationship between Oppenheimer and Groves is a great source of enjoyment in the movie,” says Emma Thomas. “Because so much of the movie is told through Oppenheimer’s perspective, you really need someone playing Groves who can immediately bring the audience in, somebody who has that movie- star confidence, a little bit of swagger, but somebody who also feels deeply trustworthy. Matt was just the perfect guy for that. He brought so much humor and warmth to the role, and the dynamic between him and Cillian is delightful to watch.”

For Damon, the appeal of working on Oppenheimer was in crafting an origin story for the world he’s known his entire life, formed from the fallout of the Manhattan Project. “I’m a child of the Cold War,” Damon says. “I grew up with the consequences of this piece of history. So, I always viewed it through that lens. What was interesting was going back and trying to understand what these guys were thinking and what was happening for them and the terrible decisions that were placed in front of them. But there’s also all this human messiness of politics, ambition, and morality tied up in the pursuit. I could also really relate to this idea of people—in this case, scientists—just wanting to know if they could do something that has never been done before. There’s that incredible natural human curiosity, fascination, and ambition of pushing to the bleeding edge, to see what can be learned, to see what would happen. And then there’s the idealism, or naivete, of some of these guys. Oppenheimer really did believe that this was going to mean the end of all war. Yet we have been living under this kind of ‘Sword of Damocles’ for my whole life and decades longer, and we often don’t think about it enough. So, without a doubt, this is one of the most important stories of our time.”

Damon fleshed out the part by focusing on the essentials of Groves’ personality. “Groves had a very big ego and was not well liked by really anybody,” Damon says. “But Oppenheimer liked him; they had a certain kind of understanding and rapport. Groves never doubted what Oppenheimer did or why he did it. Groves was supremely proud of the engineering feat and the scientific significance of their efforts. There wasn’t much reflection on his part. It was just: ‘I said I was gonna do it and I did it.’ It was fascinating to play someone with that kind of certainty and focus, as well as someone who was very, very smart, but suddenly surrounded by geniuses operating on a different level—geniuses who had Groves’ same ambition but were also more conflicted about what they were doing and what might come from it.”

Damon adds that it wasn’t too hard for him to connect with Groves and the fraught gambit of the Manhattan Project. Although the stakes for creating the first nuclear weapon were infinitely higher, on an interpersonal level it wasn’t that different than moviemaking. “You see so many parallels with our business,” Damon says. “The different tensions, the people who are put together who come from different worlds and have different agendas and different expectations, hopes and dreams. We all get pushed together and try to do the thing that we want to do. There’s a lot of friction and tension, as well as fission and fusion. I think that made it easier for the cast to relate to what our characters were going through.”
Oppenheimer" Production Notes

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I had my reservations about Damon in this role. His performance in Interstellar and all.

A particular scene depicted in various trailers certainly didn't help his case either.

However, I'm relieved to say he is among the very best players here.

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There’s some recent interview with Nolan (don’t remember which one) where he said that Damon added a line of dialogue to one of the late security hearing scenes that sort of “summarized” Groves’s relationship with Oppenheimer, but I can’t figure out what line it could be.

Anyone know or have a guess?

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Janky Sam wrote:
August 19th, 2023, 2:31 am
There’s some recent interview with Nolan (don’t remember which one) where he said that Damon added a line of dialogue to one of the late security hearing scenes that sort of “summarized” Groves’s relationship with Oppenheimer, but I can’t figure out what line it could be.

Anyone know or have a guess?
There's one that immediately comes to mind because it sounded ahistorical, where Robb asks Groves if, under "current AEC guidelines" (in the actual hearing, it's the Atomic Energy Act that's being referenced), he "would clear Dr. Oppenheimer today"; in the film, Groves responds saying that he would not clear Oppenheimer, but that "I wouldn't clear any of those guys" (implying that the AEC's guidelines are so draconian that the Manhattan Project couldn't have been done with the same people, or just simply noting that the Manhattan Project had a lot of left-wing or communist-leaning scientists like Oppenheimer anyways). In the actual hearing, that last bit isn't there: Groves simply says that "I would not clear Dr. Oppenheimer today if I were a member of this Commission on the basis of this interpretation [of the Atomic Energy Act]. If the interpretation is different, then I would have to stand on my interpretation of it." That's it. In the real hearing, Groves' testimony is essentially negative (that's no accident: Strauss and Hoover used the fact that Groves kept some elements of the Chevalier incident from the FBI to blackmail him into testifying against Oppenheimer), but in the film, that negative testimony is undercut by that last statement, which an irritated Robb tries to cut short. And then as Groves walks out of the room, he and Oppenheimer meaningfully nod at each other. Clearly, Nolan wanted the relationship between Groves and Oppenheimer to have a happy ending instead of the depressing and seeming betrayal from real life (and I'll admit to feeling a bit emotional seeing those nods during one of my viewings :P). I'm not sure if that's what's being referred to in this interview, but if I were willing to bet, that's what I'd wager it was.

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