Oppenheimer

spoilers below: Over a fiery yet silent backdrop, Oppenheimer opens on the words: Prometheus Stole Fire from the Gods and gave it to Mankind. His punishment was to be tortured for all Eternity. And immediately, it becomes apparent that this is going to be a dark tale. Outside of a few brief moments of levity, the tone of Oppenheimer continues to become even more disastrous and tragic as the story unfolds. This is Nolan like we’ve never seen before. There is no meticulous technical mechanism that guides the film, like the dream navigation of Inception or the time-reversal of Tenet. Instead there is just a man, his decisions, and the consequences. Oppenheimer is a magnificent feat of directing, acting, cinematography, dialogue, and were it not for some technical issues, perhaps one of the greatest films of the past few years. Nolan does perhaps his best work behind the camera in this film, and uses a variety of creative tactics to further enhance an already-engaging story. The use of black-and-white vs. color sequences to demonstrate objectivity vs. subjectivity (calling back to Memento), the fast-paced non-linear storytelling, and the framing of the entire story “within” one defining conversation (a scene that is first shown to us near the film’s beginning is brought back at the end with missing details from the first viewing) are just some of the tools Nolan employs to heighten Oppenheimer. For a director known pretty much solely for his concept-based “mind-fuck” films, he shows tremendous poise putting together his first biopic; not a beat is out of place narratively. And the bomb. Oh wow, the bomb. It looked phenomenal on the 70mm screen. That sequence was so spine-chilling yet also so beautiful, and one of my favorite sequences from any Nolan film. The tense build-up, the countdown, the stakes: every single thing was pitch-perfect. The theater went pin-drop silent for the entirety of the scene, and in that quiet you could really take in the magnitude and horror of this achievement. Like Oppenheimer watching from a distance, we are given a few moments to breathe in the grandeur of the explosion, until both us and Oppenheimer are harshly knocked back into reality by the thunderous rippling effect of the bomb. This point marks a major turning point for Oppenheimer, and it’s here where Nolan really elevates his game. Choosing not to show the destruction left in the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and instead leaving that imagery for the viewer to create for themself, was a brilliant play. Instead, Nolan draws the focus to Oppenheimer, and through his shaken demeanor and vivid hallucinations, we are able to picture a horror much more gruesome than anything the director could put to screen. Cillian Murphy delivers a haunting, mesmerizing performance as the titular character. His transformation over the course of the film from a man beaming with brilliance and confidence to a shell of the same man, pained and burdened, is some of the most impressive acting I’ve seen in a long time. Murphy is able to express so much even without words, and Nolan uses this talent well in some pivotal scenes throughout. I don’t believe we’ll see another performance this year more worthy of the Best Actor honors, outside of maybe Phoenix in Napoleon or DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon. But they’ve got an uphill battle ahead of them, because what Murphy did here was something special. As for the rest of the cast, there are some other gems as well. Watching RDJ sink his teeth into a non-Marvel role is so refreshing; he also delivers a standout performance and deserves his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Blunt, Damon, and Pugh are also all very solid. The only issue, and really the only issue, is baffling. There is some great dialogue in this thing, but it’s a damn shame that for the first 30ish minutes I could only hear about half of it. It’s unbelievably confusing and frustrating as someone who really enjoyed this movie. This was very famously an issue with Tenet as well, and the fact that it’s happened again is killing me. Nolan’s movies already ask of its viewer an attentive mind because the subject matter is typically complex; adding in another layer of difficulty by making every other line unintelligible is a creative decision I simply can’t grasp. I really want to not count this against Oppenheimer, but I have to. A remastered version of this film where the entirety of the dialogue is clearly audible might sit atop my Nolan rankings, but until that comes out, we stick Oppenheimer at 3 below Interstellar and Inception.