Movies & TV

A minor criticism is that Nolan has this tendency to write overly serious scripts where he feels the need to say some things instead of telling them when the latter would be more effective. For instance in the 'Man of Steel', which he wrote (bad movie imo), we see a young (child) Clark Kent reading Plato's Republic (which opens with the question: 'What is justice?', which is smacks of superficial profundity, as you can just explore that more properly through the narrative and visual language of the film. In Oppenheimer, they make sure you know he was not just a brilliant theoretical physicist, but also read modernist literature (Eliot's masterpiece, The Waste Land), listened to modern classical music (forget who; Stravinsky), looked at Picassos and read Sanskrit (true and impressive honestly). It was fine but it could have been more naturally incorporated, whereas here is felt a bit forced.

My main, and I think also the most serious, criticism I would have, is that they did not actually show the consequences of nuclear war. They show that Oppenheimer is a hypocrite, and he suffers both from pride (a desire to play God), but also a moral hypocrite: unlike God, he cannot look at his works. If he wants to take credit for creation, he should also take responsibility for destruction. If Nolan had really wanted to make a film about nuclear horror, instead of Oppenheimer's tragedy, or if he had wanted to expand the tragedy out from the subjective sphere of one man to the socially objective consequences of his actions, then the films honestly shouldn't have ended with the surreal vision of the world burning, but with 10 minutes of actual footage from the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima. That's how you provoke the audience. CW obviously, but if anyone wants to see a film that actually does this, check out: Hiroshima Mon Amour.

As for not showing more detail explaining that the reason for dropping the bomb was one of anti-Soviet Cold-War logic, which is ofc correct, I don't think you can force this into a biography without making it seem forced and clunky. There was not really a way for Oppenheimer to have that kind of paper proof of the internal workings of the state on hand. That obviously raises the question of how you manage to incorportate info which is important like that. Like maybe you have a digression from his story but I'm not sure how to do that well.

By-the-bye, by any technical measure, and in terms of visual craftmanship, the film is a marvel. I honestly can't remember seeing a film recently at a similar scale. This is one reason why many people, and not only people with casual interest in movies, flock to see Nolan's films. That might not speak to you, for whatever reason, which is fine, but this is a legitimate thing for someone to talk about when they liked the movie. People liking things because they find them visually beautiful is natural. This doesn't mean I think it is the most visually beautiful or movie of all time, but it is good to let people know that if they want to go see it just for that then that's fine. The sound-design was also the most impressive I can remember in a film, although that might be a bias of having seen it in cinema. The narrative structure and cinematography were very, very impressive imo; why would be a more technical and aesthetic discussion. For instance, the visual harmonies between his meditation on internal atomic structure, the deaths of stars as they collapse as based on chain reactions, and the culmination in the construction of the atomic bomb, also based on uncontrollable chain reactions, extending metaphorically into the uncontrolable social and political consequences of nuclear weapons, was beautiful imo. If you watch films for cinematographic, superficial as they may be, then I think the film is worth watching. It's also worth watching as an exploration of alienation of a scientist in the form of the fact that no matter how deep his scientific knowledge, it does not allow him to control the consequences of his knowledge.

I should add that I'm biased as I'm a sucker for stories about the wonders and horrors of science as well as history.

Also, my brothers and sisters in Christ: you presumably knew, or could have known, that the film is 3 hours long. That's on you. Some people (myself included) love long films. Sometimes you want a longer run-time in order to flesh out the story, especially if it's an epic or biopic. If you were bored that's a shame but the people I went to see it with were pretty gripped from start to finish.

Scores aren't perfect but I'd honestly give it a 8/10.