Oppenheimer - 75% enrichment?

    I think it's fair to say that Christopher Nolan films tend to get people talking, which I think is a fantastic achievement. I believe that this is what art should do, it should invoke a reaction in the audience. Oppenheimer is no different, everyone seems to have an opinion on it at the time of release.

   

    I've been following the build up and development of Oppenheimer for around two years or so. I had been eagerly following developments, press releases, photoshoots and trailers. I had even gone as far as buying a copy of  "American Prometheus", the book on which the film is based. I started to read it, but found it quite dense in all honesty, I only managed a few chapters before moving onto another book. I'm hoping to pick it up again, and finish it, especially now I've seen the movie adaptation.

    I had been patiently waiting for this release for quite a while, and at the time of writing this article, I finally managed to see the film a few days ago. I have to say I was really excited, I went to see it on a Friday night, with two good friends in a packed cinema. The atmosphere was fantastic.

    I really wanted to go and see the film on 70mm IMAX footage, but I was gutted to learn that only 30 cinemas around the world were actually showing it in it's original format. You need specialist projectors and personnel to handle IMAX footage. It is 11 miles long for this film alone!  So I had to settle for the "conventional format", but never mind, it still looked pretty good on the big screen.

    I think because I've felt so passionate about this whole project, I felt compelled to write this review. I think it is well timed, as back in April I visited Japan (and Hiroshima) and saw at first hand the destruction that the atom bomb did. My visit to the Hiroshima museum was no less harrowing.  

    So, what do I think of Oppenheimer the film?

    Let me give my upfront conclusion now, and then I will proceed to explain it. I thought the movie was pretty good, but not without it's flaws. So typical of Nolan, he has a good idea/concept and makes a bit of a hash of the execution of that idea. I felt the same about Inception, Interstellar and Tenet.

    I think the movie starts strong, it builds up quite a sense of urgency early on, and the three hour run time, to me anyway, went by pretty quickly.

    Let me start by talking about what I didn't like about the film.  For a start, it felt a bit scattergun. The constant time hopping, for me anyway, diluted the effectiveness of each scene. It was OK for a bit, but as the film went on, the back forth between the present and future events just became jarring, it was hard to keep shifting attention to different time frames in Oppenheimer's life. I think a more conventional linear approach would not have been out of place.

    For example: Oppenheimer's early life, then build up to the bomb, testing, aftermath, persecution then redemption. Timestamps and locations. I think that would have worked fantastic. Nolan tries to be too clever for his own good at times, credit to him for trying new ideas, but they don't always pay off, leaving a baited audience a bit underwhelmed.

    Then we get to the convoluted Lewis Strauss revenge plot. This went on and on, for far too long I. As the film focused so heavily on the trial and persecution of Oppenheimer post Hiroshima, it took away from the drama of the atom bomb and it's repercussions for human history. In fact, so focused was the film on the witch hunt, I felt it missed out other  important parts of his life, such as his work for nuclear arms control. The film packs in a lot in 3 hours, maybe too much of the wrong things however, a blank canvas that was not properly used?

    Having said that, Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of the Atomic Energy Commission's Lewis Strauss was an amazing, phenomenal performance. The scenes with him in IMAX black and white were really effective, it added some depth and gravity to those tense scenes where Oppenheimer was accused of spying.

     

    Unfortunately, like a lot of films, the trailer is a bit misleading. The trailer suggested a film that was more conventional in structure and evenly paced, neither of which the film was.

    Anyway, shall we talk about the good bits now?

 For the most part, Cillian Murphy is outstanding as Oppenheimer. He really manages to carry the weight of the film and the character on his shoulders. You really can believe that he is the tormented soul at the centre of this gripping story. In other parts of the film, particularly about his love life, I found his performance (or maybe the directing) a little emotionless.

    As discussed earlier, Robert Downey Jr.'s performance was phenomenal, as was most of the cast. Another standout performance was Gary Oldman as President Truman. Wow, what can I say, it's only a short amount of screen time, but he really packs a punch in a very powerful scene.

 

      As for the much hyped Trinity test scene, this was also another standout moment in the movie for me. I could literally feel my heart race as they were counting down the moment to the detonation; the point at which world history is changed forever. What I really liked about it, (other than the excellent suspense building) was the fact that the sound went dead when the explosion happened, only for the sound to re emerge as the shock wave hits the observers. Pure cinematic glory.

    The soundtrack was really good, some great thematic scoring. The Oppenheimer motif is excellent and captures the sense of scale that the Manhattan Project was all about. I was a big fan of Ludwig Goransson's score for Tenet, it had a real edginess about it. He has carried this trademark seamlessly into this film as well. I'm hoping to write an article about this as well.

    So, I think all in all, Oppenheimer is a good film, but not a great one, The constant time hopping, the cramming in of too much of the wrong content, ruined the film somewhat for me. Of course, art is very subjective, I'm sure a lot of people have different views.

I give the film a solid 7.5/10. It is almost a great classic, but a few missteps by Nolan costs it a place in the pantheon of truly great cinema.

I have a lot of ideas about how I would have done the film a bit differently, using the same cast and scenes, that would be an amazing opportunity.

If only!