Oppenheimer

Symphony of life through the guilt of the world and its destructive developments in science. The moral integrity of both individuals and mankind is tested through Nolan's cinematic masterpiece ‘Oppenheimer’. Nolan scrupulously pieces together almost all of Robert J Oppenheimer’s life, his romantic life, his career, his political scrutiny, his questioning of morality. Some aspects of this biopic are delivered at surface level but the more significant events that need exploring deeper are dealt with thoroughly. The pacing is near perfect and fluid considering the content, however potentially too much is crammed into this 3-hour epic. Nolan masterfully links all life events of ‘Oppie’ into the mainstream timeline, meaning the narrative is consistently interconnected to all running sub-plots which, whilst impressive, detracts from any intimate atmosphere. The constant music and dramatic gravitas sometimes weaken the sense of escapism and slips into a showcase of technical spec and contextual indulgence rather than story telling. This especially happens during scenes of ambiguity, where instead of explaining or at least delving into Oppenheimer’s psychological concerns and torment, Nolan replaces this with fancy atomic visuals that are undoubtedly hallucinating and beautiful. The character development of Oppenheimer is hard to track as it only represents itself in cause-and-effect circumstance and as such the script is ironically more plot-driven than character driven, almost as if the script Is dedicated to fulfilling a ‘Wikipedia checklist’. Every actor gives an astonishing performance with Cillian Murphy fully embodying his role with a sobering display. Robert Downey Junior, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt give equally great performances with Robert Downey Junior potentially playing his best role since ‘Iron man’. Despite Nolan’s strive towards detail, there is no Japanese voice or perspective it is only through the guilt of the Americans that we see the pain of the Japanese. If deliberate, this perhaps draws upon the ignorance of the West and those in high command who have little grasp of the psychological and long-lasting damage, which thereby complements the director’s bleak presentation of former US president Truman. As previously mentioned, some of the less important events such as Oppenheimer’s love life are either rushed or skimmed over, two of the three romantic relationships are sufficiently explored but still lack the attention and care to be as powerful as they could have been. One of the major reasons for this film’s box-office success, apart from the ‘Barbenheimer’ media frenzy, is its booming use of IMAX which is fully equipped to turn any cinema into an active bomb testing site. Speaking of bombs, the long-awaited detonation is without question one of the best demonstrations of cinema’s technological capabilities since ‘Interstellar’, most audiences will most likely be blown away and possibly out of their seat. Without the use of IMAX this film would have lost a lot of its praise as the shaking surround sound and stunning display is arguably responsible for a good 60% of the atmosphere and entertainment. In conclusion, although Nolan’s latest work is unquestionably a masterpiece and evident of his high effort and detailed approach to film making it is certainly not without its flaws and proves that quantity and quality can only co-exist for so long.