Thoughts on Oppenheimer · 4:59am Aug 18th, 2023
I wasn't going to see this at first, initially. I've never been a fan of Christopher Nolan's work, and after "Tenet" came out I swore I'd never have anything to do with one of his films again... but my mom wanted to see this and I decided that I may as well tag along so she'd have someone to watch it with.
Imagine my surprise to find that I actually was able to sit through the entire three-hour runtime and not once find myself wishing that the movie would hurry up or just end.
Yes, the movie presents scenes in anachronic order, but it really works. (There's also a very simple but effective trick to distinguishing these scenes, using black-and-white for these flashback-type moments. It really pops and makes the sequences stand out.) Unlike other movies, it works for the movie's benefit, instead of feeling like the director showing off.
Cillian Murphy is well-done in his role as the enigmatic, brilliant but often alone, J. Robert Oppenheimer. If I had to sum him up, or at least how *I* saw him in this movie, he seems like a man who is lost in his genius: brilliant in the realm of the theoretical; alone and adrift in the concrete area of the real world. (The beginning sequence in the movie where he impulsively poisons an apple to spite a teacher, coming close to killing his scientific hero instead, feels like a good microcosm of his role in the movie as a whole.)
Though in many ways I really think that the best performance in the movie would be Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, the career politician who is looking to destroy Oppenheimer in revenge for slights both real (and minor) and imagined. It's a heck of a performance in many ways but Downey sells every moment of it.
That being said, there's tons of great acting in this movie. Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's second wife Kitty; Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr; Matt Damon as General Groves; Casey Affleck as Boris Pash; and Gary Oldman as President Truman, are just a few of the names I can readily think of to praise for their time onscreen. (While it's very brief, Rami Malek's turn in the finale of the movie as David Hill is great too.)
And of course, I cannot overlook the actual iconic set piece of the whole movie: the Trinity test. Even if you already know that the bomb will work... it's still a scene to put you on the edge of your seat. Wow.
All in all, I am glad to have seen this. Even if my favorite Nolan film will still be "The Prestige."
Glad you were able to get some good from this movie, even if you still know the outcome.
5742735
Thanks, me too.
That's actually something I'd highly praise the movie for. Even if you *know* the bomb is going to work... that Oppenheimer won't be completely ruined by Strauss' revenge scheme... the presentation and performances are still able to reel you in all the same. (Or at least, they did that for me.)
Like seriously, I know I already mentioned it in the review, but the buildup and payoff on the entirety of the Trinity test sequence is just magnificently executed. I was on the edge of my seat through all the countdown... and then flinched back when the bomb detonated, and then the shockwave hit.
This movie is a sort of Doomed Hero Story. We know full well that it can only end one way. Trinity explodes, and the genie is released from the atom bomb in one of the most sobering moments in human history.
And, while there IS a common story about some scientists not being sure if it would be possible their bomb might set the atmosphere ablaze in a chain reaction by fusing oxygen and hydrogen, well, apart from that concern being evidently unfounded, for a nuclear bomb to do such a thing would require a bomb of absolutely ludicrous proportions, as in, more nuclear material than exists on the planet, fissioning at 100% efficiency. I recommend watching Kyle Hill's video on Oppenheimer's Terrible Possibility, but, to reiterate the above, we would not be able to destroy the world with a nuclear bomb.
We can fuck it in plenty of other ways with enough of them, but fully setting the atmosphere ablaze is not a possibility. One I think everyone is thankful for.
5742775
A Doomed Hero Story. That's a pretty good comparison, not gonna lie.
And also, yeah, that story about the worry of the bomb igniting the atmosphere is a big part of the movie... or rather, it comes back in the darkest possible way at the very end. While, of course, the math about the atmosphere going up in flames is proven wrong, at the very end of the movie, we witness a conversation that Oppenheimer had with Albert Einstein - the exact contents of which had been kept private throughout the entire movie, up until this point where we finally see it and what was said... the truth of the matter being Oppenheimer confiding in Albert about the nuclear arms race:
The movie ends on an absolutely chilling note, with imagery of rows of ICBMs, trails of missile smoke rising into the clouds, Oppenheimer flashing back to imagining hordes of V2 rockets soaring through the sky... and finally, Oppenheimer imagining nuclear fire spreading across the entire globe. It's haunting. There is no other word for it.
5742850
That's, unsettlingly accurate.
Also good to see RDJ getting more roles. Looks like he's doing well. Good for him.
5742858
"unsettlingly accurate" is quite apt.
The movie has some really effective lines that way. The closing to RDJ's character plot is probably one of my favorites, honestly. Basically, Lewis Strauss' whole scheme to ruin Oppenheimer is motivated by the paranoid assumption that Oppenheimer was turning scientists against him, and because Oppenheimer disagreed with him on various policies for the Cold War. Around the end of Strauss' story in the film, after his plan to become Secretary of Commerce has blown up in his face, he has a private meltdown and erupts to one of the Senate aides about Oppenheimer's conversation with Einstein (which he saw, but didn't hear) and his conviction that Oppenheimer was turning the man against him.
The aide cuts him down in EPIC fashion.
5742892
Brutal. But, not undeserved.
5742893
Aye. Very richly deserved, for sure.