"Oppenheimer" by Christopher Nolan (2024)

Rating: Recommended Watch. Thought Provoking.

I just returned from a late Saturday night showing of Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" on 70mm IMAX film. I insisted upon seeing it in this specific and somewhat rare format because Nolan himself planned the entire production using that equipment and for the purpose of the audience experiencing the film in this setting. I purposefully refused to read any reviews or doing any research into the film prior to seeing it tonight, and wanted no outside influences or concepts weighing upon my own experience of the film. Now that I've just sat through it in the format intended by the director, I'm glad I did this.

The film tells the very complicated circ*mstances and consequences of The Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer's legacy laid bare. This is not a story of victory or defeat -- it is a history of human nature, human weaknesses, of government involvement and the individual personalities that make up this thing called "government". It does this at a pace and length which is appropriate given the content needed to discuss...but which also feels like it drags without knowing where it is heading at the end.

Let me discuss some of the more technical components of this film.

I will readily admit Christopher Nolan's style of directing is not my preference, and frequently relies on crutches and "cheap tricks" to move a story along. All of his films have been heavy on dialogue (often called "exposition"), and this makes following these stories very fatiguing as an audience. Character relationships are essentially told to you as though you, the viewer, are incapable of unpacking these qualities based on how two actors respond within a scene. "Oppenheimer" is no exception to this legacy, but it benefits from grounding in historical fact and details in all those contextual complexities.

Florence Pugh's character Jean Tatlock is a good example of a side plot - a communist party member who has an affair with Oppenheimer - which confuses and sidelines the story in parts, but again is one more of these elements of the actual historical timeline. A sex-scene early in the film which has already garnered a lot of attention is included perhaps as a way to introduce Oppenheimer as a serial philanderer and as a remarkably intelligent man with huge capacity to learn. But looking back with hindsight, there is an excessive quality to having it play out in a way which could have been shown far more efficiently without the choppy dialogue. Perhaps the studio wanted Pugh to have more of a role as a rapidly-rising actress, but sharper editing with more focus on a singular narrative would have ultimately improved the film.

Nolan also prefers quick edits and short shots that bounce back and forth between actors. I find this distracting and rarely adds to the emotional component of his films. The big exception to this I noticed here was the entire Trinity Atomic Bomb test sequence, and a scene of Oppenheimer providing a public speech after the bombs are dropped on Japan. These intense emotional moments gained a larger presence by pulling in more and more people shown through jump-cuts -- but there's also a world where a different director would use longer shots with more depth and incorporating more characters on screen simultaneously which could also be powerful. Shots of men putting on sunscreen, preparing for the blast at different locations, and counting down to the test itself build up into an emotional crescendo — but again, this is Christopher Nolan’s go-to editing trick and has become predictable over an entire career.

The acting is all excellent, and the casting for each character feels appropriate and genuine. Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer is physically a dead-ringer for the real man, and the remainder of the cast downplays their personalities enough to do justice to history. Matt Damon sticks out as a bit more snarky than the others, and his humor tends to bleed through in moments, but feels genuine to his character and doesn't detract from the narrative. Again, the biggest issue for this film is Nolan's excessive use of dialogue that trips over itself in the excess, and the actors are sometimes speeding through lines without having an opportunity to respond emotionally or physically to one another. After seeing Nolan's batman films, Inception and Interstellar, I understand this is simply what Nolan prefers and it is easily his greatest weakness.

Looking at the entire scope of the film's narrative, it was very hard as someone without the historical background of events to understand what message it is trying to tell until the very last few minutes of the film. In a way, at 3 hours long, it operates as something like 3 clear narratives in one -- A thorough introduction to the man and his both scientific and political origins, The Manhattan Project execution leading up to the successful test, and the Aftermath of their efforts and political infighting this initiated. The introduction often felt difficult and dull to follow to start out a long movie, knowing as an audience that the run-time is 3 hours and that there is a slog to get through. The second part around execution builds from that hour long setup -- BUT, I found myself getting lost in all these characters and government security factors that it was overwhelming at times. The third part - the political and moral aftermath - genuinely dissolved into historical details about sabotage and communist spy interrogations that became very hard to keep focused on. Talks about associations with the communist party during McCarthy era senate hearings feel like its almost a different movie altogether. It stops feeling like a science and innovation narrative, and turns into this criminal inditement which grows paranoid and aggressive.

The most impactful parts of the film lie in a shocking awe of this unholy power captured by humans -- a power everyone knows will be more problematic after their current work is done, but that fails to stop their pursuit. I might say the scientists were cowards for driving forward and allowing the politicians later on to use this new tool for their own devices. But that's not important towards the film.

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All in all, as I have felt upon seeing Nolan's past films, time will have to show if this is an actual masterpiece of this era... or if it is another bloated representation from a director who has earned nearly carte blanche to pursue whatever projects he desires. My sense is it will be much like Dunkirk, another world war ii movie of his. That one had a lot of technically sound qualities, but whose story genuinely got lost in the mix.

Dunkirk became a "cinematic experience" meant to feel monumental within a cinema. Oppenheimer feels like it could exist in that same space.

OR... it really is Nolan's finest film and his legacy just peaked. We will have to wait and see.

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Genuinely, I recommend people see this in the largest screen available - mostly to feel the movie rather than seeing details. This is a visceral film that wants to shake you out of complacency and raise consciousness.

It is nothing like a perfect movie -- Nolan simply hasn't earned that as a director compared to P.T. Anderson or many others -- but it is an valuable movie.