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On August 23, Christopher Nolan’s latest masterpiece, Oppenheimer, will officially be in theatres. The Syncopy-Films-latest-produced work by the visionary director tells the story of scientist Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project, whose achievement was the production of the first-ever atomic bomb.
The Manhattan Project
The project, whose name refers to a “safe house” headquartered in downtown Manhattan, kicked off as a research project to then become bigger and bigger again.
In its final stage, the project involved up to 130,000 people, costing over 39 billion dollars at today’s currency value.
An all-star cast
Nolan’s plot unfolds world-changing events (as he did with Dunkirk, too), and Hamilton partnered to supply his watches to the actors, including main characters Cillian Murphy as Robert Oppenheimer and Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., the project’s military commander.
The film includes many other guest stars, like Robert Downey Jr., Rami Malek, Emily Blunt, Gary Oldman, and Josh Hartnett. Most of them were assigned one or more carefully-selected vintage Hamilton watches.
Hamilton watches appearing in Oppenheimer.
The brand’s commitment and effort were extraordinary; while not being leading characters of the film’s plot, they nonetheless represented the American watch heritage back then.
The search for the most appropriate timepieces was so hard that the brand had to reach private collectors whose watches were unavailable at the brand’s archive yet a perfect match for the movie’s deployment and the brand’s American chapter.
Cillian Murphy wears three watches in the film; a Hamilton Cushion B, a Hamilton Endicott and a Hamilton Lexington.
On Kitty Oppenheimer’s wrist, played by Emily Blunt, is a Lady Hamilton A-2 in 14-karat gold. General Leslie Groves Jr. wears a Hamilton Piping Rock and a Hamilton Military Ordnance.
As said, the watches do not take an active part in the storytelling like Interstellar or Tenet; they nonetheless promote a clever “product placement”, unveil new timepieces to the watch community, and, hopefully, some of them will someday be listed once again in the brand’s catalogue.
(Photo credit: Hamilton)
Giovanni Di Biase @Horbiter®
