7/22/23 - Oppenheimer (2023) - 8/10

Before the film I had many preconceived wonders; I had heard that Nolan was trying to use practical effects for the atomic explosion - what would that look like and would it work… is this film about his life as a whole or just the Manhattan Project?... Will the film portray him as a hero or villain?... Honestly, as the film progressed, I realized I had been thinking about all the wrong queries. When that fateful blast finally lit up the screen, I don’t think it mattered what it looked like because the drama had been so finally honed that the build up mattered and was so effective that the payoff was a given. The film was as much a courtroom drama (x2 really) as it was a standard biopic or meaningful event expose. I haven’t read American Prometheus, but from what I am aware of, this is a fascinating departure as a narrative structure and effectively propelled the tale with a vigor I hadn’t anticipated. As to the portrayal of the man on the whole - it was one of reverence, charm, hope and complication; both sinner and saint but ever the crucial steely eyed glare of a driven but shaken molder of humanity’s future.

Though I found the beginning a little shaky, with its need to visualize the internal enigmatic genius boiling under the furrowed brow of Cillian Murphy’s protagonist, but it quickly heaved its dramatic heft behind the eventual governmental assailing that he incurred and balanced that with his professional/personal development. Murphy has at least a nomination coming his way for his portrayal of this charismatic virtuoso. Nolan lets the gravitational well of his foibles, his philosophy and his foreseeable duality to dance between his eyes and his countenance. Tempered, melancholic, poised and byzantine - salient but not showy. The rest of the cast I cannot say the same.

Spoken without a hint of negativity, the cast is an assembled slew of top-notch character actors, adept veterans, and classy rising stars. It is a smorgasbord of unreal talent that only a handful of directors & projects would be able to assemble. Who other than Spielberg, Scorcese, Tarantino and Nolan could load every cell with such amazing actors and performances? It was amazing, and they left their indelible mark on the film. RDJ has to top that list as the impassioned antagonist, bringing a vim that expels any reliance on the franchise foundation that has recently been propping up his career. Both Pugh and Blunt sparkle as a couple of the knottiest love interests this side of a 50’s noir, while so many others wildly excel (Damon, Safdie, Clark, Blair, Aldenreich, Safdie… too many to name).

The score and editing were top notch. The visual interpretations of the psychological toil and strife plaguing Opp was clever and poignant. Again, Nolan’s interpretation of this man’s life and work and the layout with which he engaged with his personality, his exploits during conception and construction of the bombs, and the adjudication of his public dismantling was not only a surprise but an impactful revelation. Like any tremendous story and tribunal quarrel, the emotionality and drama builds to a wave crashing apex that was so engrossing and magnetic that I was subsumed in its apatheothic splendor.

This film was a triumph that executed a standard biopic design with aplomb, kept the science in front of the viewer without drowning them, and allowed the visionary and auditory grandness mesh with one of Nolan’s most affectingly evocative narratives to date. He is a filmmaker of grandeur and spectacle, often a bit aesthetically numb to the lowly human condition, but with Oppenheimer he deftly married provenance to such revelatory ruination.