The Big Picture With Christopher Nolan’s latest, Oppenheimer, now in theaters and IMAX, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke to the film’s composer, Ludwig Göransson , about reuniting with the auteur director for one of this year’s biggest features. Having also previously worked together on Tenet, Göransson tells Weintraub it was “extremely exciting” to get the call for Oppenheimer, not only for the opportunity but because “...
LUDWIG GÖRANSSON: I saw it in London at the BFI [IMAX], and it was incredible. It was like the first time I saw it on IMAX, and the sound system there was incredible. It was a great experience. I brought my parents with me. GÖRANSSON: Well, I think when I was a kid, before jumping into this job, I thought it was gonna be...I had a very romantic image of it, you know. So you're sitting in your cabin, and you're writing all this music for yourself, and then it's done, and you send it somewhere, and then they put it into the movie. And that image is not really how it works out in reality.
So on Tenet, it was a great experience, and then after Tenet, we kept in contact. We were watching movies, we were talking about film, we were talking about music. But he is also kind of very– He's also a little secretive. So, he doesn't talk about, like, “Hey, I'm working on this now,” and so the phone call is about reading scripts, and it always comes out of the blue.
GÖRANSSON: Well, I like the instant impression that you get when you see or hear something, or you read or something. Obviously, it's gonna change with time, but immediately after reading that script, I’d never read anything like it, honestly. You immediately go into his head and into his mind. You're seeing the world through his eyes, and immediately I understand that that's what the music needs to feel like.