Directed by:
Christopher NolanScreenplay:
Christopher NolanCinematography:
Hoyte van HoytemaComposer:
Ludwig GöranssonCast:
Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Conti, Benny Safdie (more)VOD (3)
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Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer is an IMAX®-shot epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it. (Universal Pictures US)
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Two commissions, two ambivalent narcissists and a lot of tensions, things left unsaid and affecting history. Unexpectedly emotional and working with characters for a Nolan film. Spectacular in all its intimacy, transparent in all the time-playing frenzy of characters, names, and events. Three hours of dialogue condensed into what feels like a much shorter running time. The tangibility of it all, the acting, Göransson's score, the editing... Everything is at the highest bar, but that's no the reason to love it. The reason is how it totally nails it, how it grapples the issue in an unscholarly way asking the big questions of life, and how damn good it is as a film.
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I was expecting another new world adventure and instead got a wildly edited, plodding three-hour procedural with elements of an inside job at the end. All to the sound of monstrously thumping music and artsy black and white flashbacks. I'm not disputing the dense premise, or the decent performances, but the film only has two sparks in 180 minutes. One when the bomb goes off and the other when the camera is trained on Florence Pugh – with or without clothes on, it doesn't matter, both work.
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Nolan made a bold move when, after Tenet flopped because of the coronavirus pandemic, he spectacularly cut his long-standing ties with Warner Bros. and played a game of “Do You Want Me?” with other studios. Universal can thus now call Nolan “my darling”. All the studio had to do was fork over the money for a project that doesn’t fit into the currently preferred pigeonholes of Hollywood production. Oppenheimer is thus interesting as a marketing challenge. The first steps led through the elevation of the project itself to the high-concept tagline “Nolan makes an atomic bomb”. Subsequently, the elevation of analogue was brought into the mix, which, in combination with the detonation of the bomb, helped to evoke the impression of an event. Finally, the phrase “70 mm IMAX” helped to complete the suggestion that a three-hour biopic about a theoretical quantum physicist would be an epic spectacle. The most remarkable thing about this is the fact that the premium projection format is employed not for a visually bombastic spectacle, where it would be obviously justified, but for a dialogue film that is mostly composed of shots of actors in suits or uniforms delivering their lines. On the other hand, the myth of 70 mm film stock previously was used in the exact same way to promote Tarantino’s interior dialogue-heavy The Hateful Eight. Even more than in the case of Tarantino’s film, this time the PR spin doctors managed to create the impression that for every film fan a visit to an IMAX cinema is the equivalent of a pilgrimage to Mecca. This is a commendable approach in the interest of achieving a return on the funding invested in Oppenheimer and securing future Nolan projects. Despite the whole PR circus, however, I will venture to say that we don’t need the biggest screen to fully appreciate this film. Excellent sound, yes, but not IMAX. Oppenheimer will not rivet viewers to their seats with the spectacle of its scenes. However, it does offer excellent screenwriting that brilliantly holds the viewer’s attention and succeeds in clearly and thoroughly examining the title character. I write that as someone who has trouble remembering names, so a lot of films with numerous characters don’t work for me, because I easily get lost in them. That is not the case with Nolan’s Oppenheimer, because of how it is told, or rather how it layers not only the timelines, but also the images and sound. It’s as if Nolan has gone back to his roots, when he didn’t have huge budgets and captivated audiences solely with the power of the ingeniously composed narrative in Memento. Except that, unlike his youthfully ambitious hit, the non-linearity in Oppenheimer doesn’t come across as a gimmick. With an unpretentious purposefulness refined over the years, it makes it possible to dissect and, in a way that is fascinating for viewers, piece back together the disparate roles that Robert Oppenheimer played in his life, as well as the professional, personal and moral questions tied to his personality, work and position in the context of major historical events. Thanks to the film’s structure, which constantly places details aside in favour of the bigger picture and distances the context and point of view from the dramatic appeal of the moment, Nolan’s portrait succeeds in avoiding the minefields of poster glorification, tabloid scandal and philosophical ponderousness. Not by dispensing with them, but by constantly bombarding them with particles of other points of view. In Oppenheimer, the standard phrase “complex portrait” is an uncompromising maxim.
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A focused Nolan, a perfect Cillian Murphy and a roaring Ludwig Göransson in a history lesson I've always wanted to see. The suffocating atmosphere, disturbed only by the celebration of the Trinity explosion, sticks to the palate, and at times you feel sick of what could have been. If Hitler hadn't shot himself, they would have dropped the nukes in Europe. Oppenheimer's life of communism, his wives, his nightmares, his friends and his enemies are all engulfing, and for three hours they don't let go, whether it's black and white conversations or the simulation of a nuclear explosion. The horrific ending with Einstein still resonates with me. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
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Barbenheimer, part 2. I wouldn't be afraid to compare Nolan's Oppenheimer to Dominik's Blonde. Both films are adaptations of biographical novels, dealing with generally known topics, bringing back the same stories, the same settings, the same personalities and asking the same questions. Perhaps both films are more formally ambitious, but they don't bring anything new or surprising to the table. Perhaps only the new acting challenges of dealing with images of characters that are culturally rooted and defined. And Nolan of course has the most attractive cast of today, there is no doubt about that.
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