If you've ever seen 'Inglorious Basterds,' there is a moment at the end of the movie where Brad Pitt's character says
I've read a lot of posts that said that this is Nolan's magnum opus, his masterpiece. So I wanted to know if there was a self-referential moment like that in the movie and there kind of was. It comes when the bombs is dropped on Hiroshima and General Groves tells Oppenheimer that the wisest decision he made was appointing him
director of Los Alamos.
The whole movie was about Oppenheimer, the director, delegating tasks left and right, undertaking this huge operation. He was effectively working on a film set out there in the middle of nowhere with thousands of crew members. He acknowledges that other scientists are better at math than he is, which I would imagine Nolan has to acknowledge that there are other filmmakers who were better at action than he is. But he alone is the director to get this job done. This is him saying that "I'm the best director out."
And you would be hard pressed to go against him after this one. What a performance. This, maybe, just maybe, was his masterpiece.