My Review of Oppenheimer (2023)

 

Written And Directed by Christopher Nolan

J Robert Oppenheimer: "Now, I become death. The destroyer of worlds."

In something I hadn't initially planned on doing, I did the Barbenheimer where I watched two certain movies yesterday, both of which were very different to one another but oddly complimented the other. Also both screenings were fricking packed, so there's proof that counterprogramming really can work to a mutual advantage.

Anyways reviewing the more serious of the two first, Oppenheimer has to be a movie where director Christopher Nolan made it abundantly clear that he wanted the awards love. I don't mean that in a flippant way. This movie really screamed awards contender in the months leading to its release and now it's here, it's going to get them and then some.

Tackling historical biopics will always been easy awards bait but it also leaves a director wide open to multiple criticisms to boot. Along with the unanimous praise, it's something that Nolan will have to deal with. Saying that, how fucking brilliant is Cillian Murphy as an actor? Christopher Nolan clearly adores working with Cillian as this movie marked their sixth collaboration together. 

Cast brilliantly as American theorist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Murphy delivered quite arguably the strongest performance in his career. The movie began and ended with Oppenheimer undergoing an investigation of his communist connections and in general trying to silence his influence.

It's an investigation largely spurred on by the machinations of Oppenheimer's former ally Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) who never forgave Robert for publicly humiliating him that one time and waited patiently to get his own back. However for Strauss, his attempts to bury Oppenheimer for good led to his own public downfall as a result.

Of course the crux of the movie was Oppenheimer involvement with the atomic bomb that would devastate Hiroshima. The movie spent most of it's bouncing back and forth between Oppenheimer and Strauss's own hearings while also getting Oppenheimer various scientists and the military to help with his research. The latter group largely represented by Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) who sometimes provided a foil for Oppenheimer.

With the movie being very male led for the obvious reasons, the only two female characters of note where Oppenheimer's wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt) and his mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh). Neither are given a huge amount to do with Florence Pugh in particular feeling rather wasted in the whole movie.

However other actors did benefit a little more from this movie. Benny Safdie and Josh Hartnett are great as Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence while Tom Conti pulled in a strong performance as Albert Einstein and appeared more than expected in the movie. I'll also give a shout-out to Alden Ehrenreich who was rather underrated as a senator aide. The thing is, there's so many actors and a lot of standout scenes in a very talky movie. 

- According to Nolan, when recreating the Manhattan Project for the movie, they did film at the real Los Alamos, New Mexico.

- The scenes depicting the collapsing of stars as well as the bomb in question were stunning along with some other surreal moments.

- The jumping back and forth between black and white and color was less jarring than I thought it would be.

- Nolan isn't exactly known for his sex scenes and the ones between Oppenheimer and Jean Tatlock were a bit awkward in parts.

- Shout-out to other performances from the likes of Dane DeHaan, Rami Malek, Jason Clarke, Kenneth Branagh, David Dastmalchian, Jack Quaid and Alex Wolff to name but a few in a very packed movie.

- Chronology: The movie covered Oppenheimer's university days up until him getting the Enrico Fermi Award.

Oppenheimer could be the greatest movie that Christopher Nolan will ever do in his career or perhaps he will better himself with his next project. I'm not sure if it's my favourite from him but it's definitely deserving of the praise it's generating this far. There are sublime performances here from the main cast and the end scene alone will stick with film goers for a while.

Rating: 9 out of 10