Oppenheimer (2023)

 

Genre: Drama

Time: 3 hours

Director: Christopher Nolan

Quick Summary: The story of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.

So for context, I knew nothing when going into this film. I knew none of the history or of the person beforehand and I'm going purely from this film.

Now this is a film where you fully have to focus on what is going on as it jumps back and forwards through the timeline and it can take a long while to understand what is happening when. For the first hour, I mainly struggled to understand and follow who was who. It is incredibly dialogue focused, and not a lot happens on screen apart from people talking a lot of big words, which admittedly I don't mind but is definitely not for everyone. 

I enjoyed this mostly, but it was too long. The last hour to me felt incredibly dragged out. I understand there was a lot of context to them that needed to be shown/said, but ultimately I became bored by the end and was waiting for it to end. Along with a lot of words being thrown at me for three hours, my brain became slightly exhausted from keeping up. 

Aesthetically, it was incredibly well done as it perfectly captured the look of the time and how people were. It manages to bring you into the time period with ease, absorbed in what is happening and fully lost within the film. The score and sound design was wonderful as well, amplifying scenes when needed. Considering a lot of the scenes were completely practical makes them all that much more impressive and such a visual treat to see. The Bomb is one of the most pressurising and heart-stopping scenes through visuals and sound.

I went into this assuming I was going to learn more about the science side of things and seeing bomb explosions, and I came out with the realisation it was a character study about a man who knows he created the end of the world. It shows a man who is highly intelligent with an equally high curiosity and ends up being haunted by his own creation's repercussions as well as his own actions. It also focuses on the events after Hisorshima, people trying to pin the blame on Oppenheimer who tries to fight a losing battle against and expresses the effects of carrying this heavy burden for the rest of his life whilst pushing himself to his utmost limit.

I wasn't sure if I fully liked how all this information was put across. I was mainly confused about a lot of it. There was a good amount of visual representations of Oppenhiemier's mental state that I really liked, frantic, unable to keep up, frustration, dissociation, paranoia and jealousy. These were all shown in ways that would be almost impossible to show as well as Christopher Nolan had done. The rest of it was people constantly talking big words and the editing of a lot of scenes was personally too quick for me. 

I think this a great look into someone who was so incredibly intelligent and can be viewed simultaneously as a martyr and a scapegoat for the way in which he helped bring an end to the deadliest global conflict in history but also made something much worse. Not for everyone as this is a very intelligent film that talks a lot. 

6/10

" Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity."

" Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

"You can't lift the stone without being ready for the snake that's revealed."

"You don't get to commit sin, and then ask all of us to feel sorry for you when there are consequences."