Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer was quite an undertaking. I think Nolan bit off more than he could chew. I am not sure I like the way he constructed the screenplay around the animus between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss. I think ending the film earlier in Opppenheimer’s life would have served the massive amount of information Nolan packed into the screenplay better.
It is a beautiful looking film especially during the scenes in which we are in Oppenheimer’s feelings, his heart, if you will. Nolan shows us Oppenheimer and his dead mistress naked and having sex right in front of a hostile government committee and his wife as he is questioned about that affair. Nolan creates another strong scene when Oppenheimer informs his coworkers of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. This is a much more complex scene in which Nolan cuts back and forth from Oppenheimer and the coworkers in the bleachers. Nolan gives us the flavor of the combination of elation that the war has ended, and that the work they have done was successful, but also the horror of what that work wrought.
I believe that if Oppenheimer wins awards for nothing else, It will win for its soundtrack and sound design. This was the real engine of the movie rather than the visual film itself. I noticed while watching that though the influx of information and dialogue almost never stopped the soundtrack slowed or quickened or changed in other ways to give the viewer a sense of rhythm that the constant dialogue could have destroyed. In fact, the only time I remember there being quiet is when the bomb explodes. Hear Nolan really takes his time to give us an appreciation for the enormity of what his happening through silence.
I didn’t admire the movie unreservedly but the soundtrack was incredible.



I saw it again, Tuesday. I found the Los Alamos part boring but I was pleasantly surprised with the last hour which is mostly the hearings of both Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss. That was very exciting, thanks principally to Jason Clarke and the reactions of the functionary that Robert Downey, Jr."s Lewis Strauss is talking to. I went to get a drink during the explosion.

Finally seeing this Sunday!

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I saw this when it first opened last month, but I've been neglectful in posting my thoughts. Rather than writing a review in paragraph form, I just going to make a "things I like" and "things I didn't like list.

My rating for the film is a B- which puts it near the middle of the pack for Christopher Nolan films for me. I'm not a big of his, and I'm old enough to remember how after Memento came out, he was the new "it" golden child of the American indie-film scene. I was on board. I loved Memento and thought the reverse storytelling fit the premise well, and then when Insomnia came out, I thought it was wonderful... not as singular or good as Memento, but still up there. At that point I must have watched Following and really dug it, but still put Memento on top. In 2005 I watched Batman Begins in the movie theater, and really dug it a lot and thought it was different, had a few issues with it, but it was an interesting direction for the character. I remember I gave it a "B+" which I also gave Sin City, but considered the later the superior of the two big dark comic book movies of 2005.

I then saw The Dark Knight in 2008 and that's where my problems with Nolan really came into being and I thought he's been downhill from there.

Anyway... to the point.

Things I liked:

1. Cillian Murphy is great in anything. I'd watch a two hour film of him reading the phone book.
2. The black and white photography is crisp and well done during those scenes.
3. The exploding of the bomb in slowing it down and showing the visuals as the sound is mute before the explosion kicks in.
4. Matt Damon plays his character well and the relationship between the general and Oppenheimer is genuinely interesting and dynamic.
5. The topic of the film is fascinating. I would love to see an Oppenheimer film with more focus done with a different writer and director.
6. The scene with meeting Truman in The White House was great and I didn't even realize until after I saw it and read the credits, that it was Gary Oldman!

Things I didn't like:

1. The music was too intrusive and loud and had that constant and continual movement thing that most scores in Nolan's films do. There's no really melody or motif ... nothing memorable like a musical piece such as in something like Lawrence of Arabia, North by Northwest, or The Third Man... or anything where you can hear the melody and tune. It's just a filler meant to elicit movement and intensity, so it feels artificial... as thought it wants to impose tensions into the film rather than earning it through story and situations, nor does it compliment the film. I would like to see the film without the music track to see how well it holds up.

2. Too many things going on at once and scenes interrupt each other before the moment felt complete. Nolan's films often feel like they never settle and hold still to absorb the moment and to really capture character. The tone and editing is very similar to a trailer or advertisement.

3. Stick to one story or focus on one aspect. I would have loved to see the film primarily focus on the lead up to getting the nuclear bomb, the building and security of Los Alamos, and the race against Germany and fear of Russia or a mole. The whole thing where the film went into Oppenheimer having his clearance taken away on the Atomic Energy Commission and Strauss pitting up against him and questioning his socialist connections would be great stuff... IF that's the focus of the film. There's really two different movies here crammed into one, and that combined with showing the relationships with women and including that drama felt like too much and it lacked focus. Nolan doesn't seem to do montage or character ensemble storytelling well for me. He's no Scorsese, Altman, or PTA.

4. A continuation of the third, but Oppenheimer falls for the trap of biopics in the fallacy that a biopic must show their topic's entire life or at least a major portion of their life. No, no, and no. Lawrence of Arabia only showed one tiny aspect and moment of T.E. Lawrence's life, aside from the framing device of his death and funeral. David Fincher's great, great, great biopic on Netflix Mank, only focused on his life around the writing of Citizen Kane. Good stuff. Biopics need to be tight and only focus on one small part of their life. Just because it plays out non-chronologically doesn't meant that this wasn't a point A, B, C, D, E, F, G biopic. It was just played out in a different order.

5. Too many characters - a continuation of the previous two points sure, but when Kenneth Bragnah, Casey Affleck, Rami Malick, and others show up in tiny roles... rather than being cameo parts that work... such as Robin Williams showing up in Hamlet (1996) as Osric in a role that fits and is clearly written in the source material, these small roles seem like a distraction so instead of seeing the historical character, I see "Oh hey! Isn't that Matthew Modine?"

6. I don't like Chris Nolan's tendency to show the same scene multiple times. I didn't need the slow reveal and to see Oppenheimer meet with Albert Einstein by the bond four or five times. I get why that was done, but the Strauss thing didn't work well for me as that relationship seemed like it wasn't really developed well because the film was trying to do to many things at once. In fact, it really felt like this could have been an eight episode HBO miniseries.

7. I didn't like the end message with the Einstein conversation which was very much anti-nuclear bombs.

8. The film brushed over a lot of the build up that could have existed regarding whether or not to drop the bomb on Japan, it simply regulated the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to an after thought or "I have blood on my hands" Oppenheimer guilt rather than a philosophical and tactical/military discussion of the benefits/harms and loss of human life vs potentially saving American lives. This should have been more or less where the film ended with hints regarding the much more powerful hydrogen bombs. Also I didn't like how the theory of peace through strength and mutually assured destruction were completely glossed over and really ignored.

So that's a few of my thoughts. I did like the film, because the subject matter and time in history and the development of the nuclear bomb is great material for a film. I wanted to like this movie more than I did, and I think there's a great A+ film here somewhere given the content, but not in Nolan's hands.

Note: Also I wonder why so many of the films discussion the dropping of the bombs, don't include the other factor that China was prepping and I think actually landing/invading mainland Japan, which put pressure on them too.

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I agree with some of your points, but I still rated Oppenheimer a respectable "B-" Just because it wasn't the film either of us wanted, doesn't make it inherently a bad film, it's just not what it could have or even should have been.

when i was watching barbie when it first release i could hear the big explosion next door and im like that must be Oppenheimer

I'm late to the party but I watched Oppenheimer last night. To quote a fellow MoFo, Meh.

If I hadn't previously spent hours upon hours watching documentaries about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Trinity and the Atomic Energy security hearings, I would've been confused as to what in the hell was going on in this movie. I bet I know more about Oppenheimer than most of the people who went to see this and yet I was still confused by Nolan's film!

With three hours you'd think Nolan could give some depth and soul to Oppenheimer the man and to the people who were closest to him. But no, Nolan gives us an overly long flashy movie-trailer, with lots of visuals and wall to wall sound, but with little depth and even less emotional reflection. Scenes start in the middle and then vanish as Nolan does his Nolan-trick of non linear story telling. Scenes have no beginning, no end and so have little emotional weight...I will say Robert Downey Jr was nothing short of amazing, one of the best screen transformations and acting transformations I've seen in a movie. Cillian Murphy was decent, but mostly his 'channeling' of Oppenheimer relied on looking wide eyed like a mystic with a hang over. Murphy was fine but that's all. The score was overpowering but who cares as there's not 90 minutes of good stuff in this 3 hour show-boat.

I told you so! The most overrated movie of the year.

Bit late to the conversation. The most insanely boring movie I have seen in theatres since well .. "The Dark Knight Rises" and that's the gods honest truth


Thanks Christopher Nolan.

I'll say, I'm not watching another Nolan film period.

I've seen all of Nolan's films and I liked (or loved) all of them. Eight of them I rated a 9/10 (including Oppenheimer), two of them I rated an 8/10, and two of them I rated a 7/10.

Like him or not, Nolan is coming for that Oscar!

I'm with you.

I liked the movie a lot, I just feel the music is way too loud, even during normal dialogue scenes between two people. Also, its just a little too quickly edited. He doesn't let scenes breathe, sometimes I feel like I'm watching a music video. Other than that its very good

Which have you seen?

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That's all the reasons I hated it.

Oppenheimer....See above.
Dunkirk...Disliked it.
Interstellar....Originally liked it, now not so much.
Inception...Bored by it.
The Prestige....I did really like this, the one time I seen it.
Memento...Didn't like it but I could see it was an original idea. Too bad Nolan keeps going back to the non linear story telling style in his latest movies.

I liked this, but definitely felt like it was overly long and had a little bit of a misplaced focus. The most historically significant aspect of his story, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was barely discussed at all, while episodic events such as whether Oppenheimer was a communist and should or shouldn't be granted a security clearance, as well as the hearing of whether someone he had worked with should or should not be confirmed to a Cabinet position, were the focus of the movie. They were riveting scenes, but I thought that was kind of an odd decision, and didn't understand why that was chosen by Nolan to be the central story. It also feels like the movie was trying to do too much all at the same time. There was enough material here for several movies. There was also too much of a focus on a troubled relationship that he had with a woman he was seeing. I very much would have liked to have seen much more focus and discussion on the atomic bomb itself and whether it should or should not have been dropped, and the morality of that, its impact on the war effort and the balance of that with the civilian casualties that would result. There was very little of that in the film, though the movie makes clear that Oppenheimer felt haunted by it. I did find it to be quite innovative and creative in the way that it was filmed, and it did make me more interested in learning more about Oppenheimer and his role in the creation of the atomic bomb, but I feel like the central story should have been Oppenheimer's role in creating the atomic bomb, and an analysis of whether they should or should not have created and then dropped it, and its implications, and that much of the other aspects that Nolan chose to focus on could have been contained within an entirely different movie, or a documentary. What did everyone else think about how Nolan chose to depict this story and what he chose to focus on?

I bet Nolan as the director of a well known story, wanted to do a 'fresh take' on Oppenheimer and deliver a movie that covered the unexpected. Often when directors remake a movie or a well known story, they like to 'reinvent the wheel' so that the can be 'original'.

I agree with you that there is a LOT of material on Oppenheimer that is fascinating and he's an important part of 20th century history. I'd love to see a good mini series made that focused on all of his life.

Check these out! I watched them recently and really liked them:

The movie absolutely focused in his role in helping to create the Atom Bomb. It even went further into his guilt over the bomb after it had been dropped (“I have blood on my hands….”).
The movie was about Oppenheimer, not about the atom bomb alone. So of course it tells his whole story, including his involvement with the communist party, as well as his security clearance being revoked.

I personally found it very riveting.

I finally watched it yesterday. Not Nolan's best, but far better than Tenet & Dunkirk, two movies which I care very little for.

I wonder if this story would have been more enjoyable if it was done as a mini series. It would have definitely allowed most plot lines (or at least the noteworthy ones) a bit more space to resolve themselves. & for us audience to enjoy them more.

Cause everything seemed rush. Every issue or conflict that Oppenheimer faced was quickly bulldozed through.

The music wasn't that remarkable. Nolan's movies don't always have great music, but you remember them. This one I won't.

I thought Strauss & Teller's characters were poorly written. Almost cartoonish.
& I didn't think Cilian Murphy was amazing. He was good, but not amazing as it was suggested by everyone connected to the movie or by the critics.

Also, would be nice if important foreign texts, especially something as profoundly meaningful as Bhagwat Gita, aren't portray as some sort of exotic thing by Hollywood.