We saw Oppenheimer last night. It was good! Great, even! Not the best cinematic experience or whatever, (and honestly I like Barbie much more lol) but it was enjoyable!
It interpreted a lot of events of Oppy’s life, from the early knowledge-chasing years to being put as head of the Manhattan program, to after… it was impressive how much it covered.
The actors did a really great job, and I can see Cillian and Robert DowneyJr. getting Oscar noms for this, they were fantastic.
In terms of some negative nitpicks, I have a few that distracted me a bit.
I will say that Nolan’s infamous trope of characters not being heard very well comes back here. Either drowned out by the score, the background noise, or just bad audio work…
Some key conversations I had trouble following clearly.
Up until I’d say halfway through the film I didn’t quite like how the film kept jumping around between early-life, post-bomb-life, the Senate hearing and the Security hearing.
It finally got into a steady rhythm of mostly-chronological retelling of events lightly broken up by tangents in the “future”.
It also didn’t help that there are very few scenes that seem to last more than a minute, so it’s a breakneck pace and rarely do you get to dwell on one moment before it’s time to see the next “event”.
Also, sidenote, what was with Nolan’s use of “chapters” in this?
The first minute opens with "1. Fission, then half a minute later it’s on to “2. Fusion” then… were there any others? I didn’t notice any, and I found it silly that I barely understood the significance of using them at all.
I will say, it was really cool how he brought in so much talent into this. Every now and then I kept doing a double-take because I recognized an actor in this I’d never expected to show up. (I hadn’t followed much news of this film so I really only knew the main actor and director, maybe a few like Damon and Downey from trailers, but that’s it.)
Kenneth Branagh, David Dastmalchian, Florence Pugh, Matthew Modine, Dane Dehaan, Josh Peck!?, Rami Malek,
And on Rami, for most of the movie I was baffled that he only showed up for two scenes just to drop a pen and act meek. Where’s the dialogue, Nolan? What did you cut him out of? Thankfully it all pays off great with an intense speech near the end of his research on Strauss’ deals.