As movies become more expensive with budgets reaching over 200 million on average it becomes very rare to see anything that has real substance and care. Many movies today feel forced, continuous, and somewhat redundant with certain respect from a general audience perspective (not that there isn’t anything good coming out). Luckily just when the night is becoming darkest before dawn, Christopher Nolan steps back into the fold with a new project and reminds us how powerful, moving, and emotional movies can and should be. It’s no secret that Christopher Nolan is considered by many to be the most ambitious and unique movie director of the last eighteen years, and his movies speak for themselves (as well as being someone who brings people to the theater in droves). Nolan has always been able to combine a big and complex concept on paper (Tenet, Inception, Interstellar for ex.) and blend that concept with wonderful writing and storytelling to deliver some of the most emotional and unique blockbusters ever made. He also knows how to dabble in established intellectual property and make it completely his own, while paying homage to that property. In terms of genre, he’s gone from drama to thriller, to suspense and science fiction all while sticking to practicality and believable scenarios.
Regardless of what you think about his movies, Christoper Nolan is one of the biggest proponents for film and its preservation and importance. He doesn’t take shortcuts and wants everything to be captured on film (as compared to shooting on digital) and it shows in the quality of his incredible work. After the very complicated break up between Nolan and Warner Bros in 2021 after nearly a twenty-year working relationship, Universal won the bidding war to distribute Nolan’s next movie which created much intrigue and excitement.
What eventually ended up being put together was a movie that may be the most important and relevant movie of our time when it’s all set and done. After getting a copy of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s speeches from Robert Pattinson on the set of his last movie, Nolan became obsessed and dug deep into Oppenheimer’s life and history and came up with the idea of telling those stories on the biggest screen possible. This movie also has much of it’s story and perspective from American Prometheus which told the story of Oppenheimer’s life.
For the first time in his filmography, Christopher Nolan would tell a first-person story that takes place at the center of WW2 that features little to no action and feels as heavy as any other War movie. It would focus on Oppenheimer’s life and career from aspiring scientist not being able to put what he was thinking into reality, to becoming the father of the Atomic Bomb and the excruciating pressure and emotional toll it put on his life, reputation, and career. Oppenheimer is also the first movie shot in IMAX that features scenes shot in Black-and-White which helped put together perspective and served as a storytelling tool, and it wasn’t an accident as Nolan wanted to have a sense of objective and subjective perspective to bring even more depth and focus on the movie.
This isn’t the first film from Nolan to feature scenes in different chronological order, but it is done so expertly well in Oppenheimer that it didn’t feel as jarring as if it were done in another movie. In many ways, Oppenheimer feels like a combination of everything Nolan has made in his career rolled into one ambitious picture, while also being Nolan’s most balanced movie with the most amount of humor (in certain parts) than any of his previous works. Perhaps not as cynical as an Oliver Stone film, you could consider this Nolan’s JFK which is accurate in some respects, but there is definitely a bigger scale involved here. This movie doesn’t leave you sad and angry over the murder of a President and certain ideals, but it makes you question why good intentions and ideas sometimes become dangerous.
This movie was made for IMAX and the kind of spectacle that only that platform can deliver, there are so many wonderful and awe-inspiring shots and sequences (including the Trinity test) but the small, quiet scenes also feel much more serious and even more personal, many of the dialogue scenes become even more interesting in the IMAX lenses. The sound design, score, editing, and cinematography are ALL top-notch, but the sound design is the real MVP of Oppenheimer as you feel the explosions in the theater just as much as the scientists in the film, and every choice that Nolan makes feels natural without any wasted motion.
When it comes to those Scientists who were involved with the Manhattan Project, the casting just like in every other Christopher Nolan film is top-notch but also filled with surprises. Appearing in his sixth movie with Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy who has done some extensive character work in many projects (Inception, Peaky Blinders, just to name a few) was picked by Nolan to portray the tortured father of the Atomic Bomb, J Robert. Oppenheimer. This was his movie and his story, and the movie did not sway away from that. Much of what he does is very internal, but also external as the way Cillian can make you focus on his facial expressions made you understand him more, while being a lot more nuanced in some parts of the story. This is a career-defining performance and one that deserves all the praise that it’s getting because it’s just that good. Besides Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. reminds everyone just how damn good of an actor he really is as Lewis Strauss, he fits right into this movie and delivers a powerhouse performance that is very layered, I hope Robert decides to take more chances in the future because as stated in some interview he was worried he couldn’t hang after being in the MCU for fifteen years. There are also some smaller but powerful performances from the likes of Benny Safdie, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, David Krumholtz, Tom Conti, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, and Jason Clarke, just to name a few.
The biggest takeaway from Oppenheimer is the heavy and incredibly genuine emotional stakes in this film. Many of the concepts introduced in the movie are questions and issues that we as a country are still being debated on. The Atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are the most controversial attacks ever done by one country to another, and the creation of these atomic super weapons marked a change in the future of the world, not just warfare. The bigger takeaway is the fact that Christopher Nolan has put together a movie mostly about scientist with little to no action using only 100 millions dollars. It goes to show the incredible power this type of film has. The ending of Oppenheimer sticks with you the way that few if not any other movie about WW2 has and will. Christopher Nolan has delivered something special here and it’s a movie and story that I think everyone needs to see at least once, and if you can see it on 70MM IMAX, please do.
