(So I have finally seen Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, and already, it's my favourite
movie of the year so far.
I was completely floored by Nolan's epic telling of the atomic bomb's
creator, and I'm not gonna lie, I think it may be one of the very best films in his filmography.
In short, it's a masterpiece from start to finish.
The performances were outstanding, the character work is the most compelling it's
ever been and the filmmaking is some of the most inventive on a large scale that we've
seen from Nolan.
Of course, he loves to push the bar in some way with every film he puts to screen,
but with this one, there's top tier execution across the board in big and smaller, more
intimate ways too.
So in this video, I'm going to be giving you my spoiler free review of
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, discussing why it's now one of my favourite films by
the auteur blockbuster director.
I will be doing an extended spoiler filled video essay in the
coming days too, so look out for that and many more uploads during the release of the
film.
Before I get into the reasons why I loved Oppenheimer though, if you want to keep up
to date on any of my upcoming content for it, then don't forget to support this upload
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But without further a do, lets dive into my spoiler free review for Oppenheimer.)
So last night I went into Oppenheimer leaving all expectations and early hype at the door,
ready to just experience this monumental story for the first time and really discover how
Nolan has tackled the complex story of this man's
life as presented in the book American Prometheus.
And boy, was it one hell of an experience.
Having read the book myself I already had a
understanding of the material and the broad sketches of Oppenheimer's life that were going
to be brought to life.
And what really stands out with Nolan's adaptation is how he's
intricately constructed this story in both big and smaller ways from top to bottom.
When you're making a biopic film, yet the story demands a huge scale and themes that
relate to all of us on this very planet, I think you have to
approach it that way regardless of having a filmography full of the more artistic blockbusters
with lots more action.
You have to capture the intimacy with the performers using up close
photography, yet you have to present the scale involved when it comes to detonating an atomic
bomb or showing the implications that this story
has.
So with Nolan taking that on by developing new IMAX tech that can capture more of the
drama and conversations with deeper emotion, yet using it to also film all of the mind
bogling visuals both inside Oppenheimer's head and
in the New Mexico desert during the trinity test, it just highlights the extent to which
he's gone to with this project.
This isn't one genre of film on show, and like Oppenheimer's story,
it captures a huge range of filmic tones and story points that will make you ask at the
end, how has Nolan managed to pull this off so
effortlessly.
Speaking of pulling it off, I think the best place to start would be my astonishment surrounding
the adaptation of the novel's telling to screen.
After reading American Prometheus, I had concerns surrounding how Nolan would tackle
the long list of ethical concerns, moments in history, scinetific knowledge and political
points through his complex structure to filmmaking.
And it turns out that telling this story through both subjective black and white and objective
colour, and intercutting throughout was a touch of genius.
He expands on the book by really placing us inside of Oppenheimer's
mind or detailing what he might have been feeling and grappling with, and then superbly
contrasts that with the black and white thread which features the perspective of Robert Downey
Jr's Lewis Strauss.
We get his outlook towards everything going on with Oppenheimer, the bomb project and
the concerns over his communist ties.
The intrigue this creates and the way Nolan and his team recreate the many conversations
involved make you feel like you were there, that you experience that history with them,
feel their motives and question it all deeply yourself.
And that's the thing about this adaptation, it's incredibly attentive to detail.
The importance of the supporting players like Jean Tatlock and Frank Oppenheimer, the intergoration
of those figures and their ties to communism and the investigation of Lewis Strauss later
on, are moments in the book that I never thought would make it to screen or moments
that didn't need to be adapted.
And yet Nolan captures it in detail and makes it highly revelant to everything going on.
On top of this, characters voices and gestures are all brought
to the screen well by the performers and you can tell the research had been done, not just
at the script stage and in pre-production, but
actually leading up to and during the shoot as well.
We're actually there in Los Alamos experiencing and dealing with the issues surrounding the
unleashing of nuclear energy and then of course afterwards too, when the genie had
been let out of the bottle.
Even extended lines from the actual transcript of the Oppenheimer trials are delivered truthully,
and just like Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin's book, it plays
out like an intense thriller.
But as I touched on slightly before, what really makes this as Christopher Nolan's own
new masterpiece is the fact that he's done stuff that wasn't there
on the pages.
He's gone deep into Oppenheimer's mind and tried to imagine what he may have been feeling
or thinking about, and in fact, showing two historical perspectives towards
the whole situation make it that much more thrilling and compelling.
Rather than have it just play out like a docu-drama, he's imagined
it as a thriller and expanded upon the biopic by attempting to investigate the mind of the
central character in new ways.
It's the kind of experimental effort that you need with a story
like J. Robert Oppenheimer's, and while being respectful to the material, it also opens
up a new way of seeing and questioning this story.
Questions is the key phrase, because Oppenheimer leaves you with a lot of them.
And Cillian Murphy's acting really helps drives that questioning.
It's an academy award level performance, with the returning Nolan acting bringing the
gestures of the man to life and delivering dialogue that captures the prophet-like attributes
of Oppie, but also his inner trauma.
In fact it's a perfect lead performance that showcases
a full turn in ideology.
And seeing him go from many supporting roles in Nolan features to giving a such as triumphant
yet dramatic one one here is just so great to see.
You feel his fear in the moments leading up to the trinity test, you feel his anxiety
and depression afterwards, yet you are shown the insane intelligence
and world changing expressions too.
Cillian makes that believable and more human than Oppenheimer was on the pages of American
Prometheus and it's a true testamant to his performance
here.
But I cannot say it was only down to him because the supporting cast are equally as formidable.
Robert Downey Jr plays Lewis Strauss with the relentlessness we expect, but then
also with an angle that makes you see how he might have seen things his way.
It's a supporting role that I think will have huge oscar buzz for the remainder of the year.
Emily Blunt further delivers a unique and emotional performance
as Kitty Oppenheimer, allowing us to see her and her husband's troubles even more so, especially
during the 3rd act of the movie.
And Florence Pugh is explosively good as Jean
Tatlock, making her character highly important in the 8 scenes of screen time she gets.
It's these performances and many other surpise roles
throughout that make you realise what a great move it was on Nolan's part to harken back
to his early days of traumatic and troubled character work.
So on an adapted storytelling and performance level, Oppenheimer has really
fired on all cyllinders.
But it doesn't end there, because as suggested previously, the filmmaking takes this all
to the next level.
As mentioned, the inventive IMAX cinematography using new cameras, both in
colour and black and white paints a complete compelling picture.
There's yes huge vistas and explosions but there's also a lot of intimate moments where
you literally see every pore in the actor's faces.
We haven't seen this level of effort put into capturing dialogue scenes and more intimate
moments using an IMAX camera before, and that really helps to transport us
right next to these characters.
It absolutely works and it ups the bar for how event films and even more intimate features
can be filmed using IMAX technology.
The score is also its own character in the film too and while this might
be jumping the gun having only seen it once, I think it might have matched Inception as
my favourite soundtrack in a Nolan film.
Ludwig Gorannson crushes it and delivers a range
of motifs in the themes he's created, whether it's Oppenheimer's theme or the one for him
and Kitty.
On top of this, the production work and how they've rebuilt los alamos and filmed
in the real places, like the institute for advanced study or in Oppenheimer's actual
house, really puts you in these places and lets you feel
the authenticity of the moment.
I can't stress how much this helps in the experience of watching Oppenheimer and seeing
it in 70mm will likely only enhance that experience.
I myself am watching it in that format in the coming weeks
and I can't wait to see the detail of this film in an even crisper format.
But so far, having only seen it once in regular IMAX, it's clear to me that Oppenheimer is
the kind of film that can define a cinematic auteur.
To me, this is the best of the very big and the very small in filmmaking.
When a director can capture detail, intimacy and immersion so successfully on such a large
scale using the biggest technology, it's very apparent
that Nolan has quickly become one of the industry's best all time filmmakers.
And I think Oppenheimer is the film to staple that impression.
It's one of his finest cinematic achievements, and that's even after giving us multiple groundbreaking
big event films and character movies in the past.
He's combines all of that experience here in probabaly the perfect story and
character project.
You can feel his worries towards nuclear power and how he saw that in Oppenheimer's story.
There's even a moment in this film that involves his actual daughter
which made my skin crawl.
But that's exactly what Nolan wants you to feel.
He wants you to have these questions, to think about the many dilemmas and what they mean
today.
You know you have an all time great historical film when
the central ideals are expertly transferred onto the present landscape that we deal with
today.
And you get that so much with Oppenheimer.
It makes you think about the tension of the doomsday
clock and whether we might ever run out of time.
It makes you think about those around you and what could happen in the future
surrounding this nuclear power.
And it makes you wonder what these people were going through and how relevant that is
to the landscape today.
I honestly can't wait to see how these many discussions expand after more people
have seen the film and I think just after one watch, that's a great sign that the movie
has done its job.
It is in my opinion a masterpiece, and other than some scenes which could have been
trimmed down in the edit suite, and a bit more expansion surrounding a few of the supporting
roles, I'm struggling to think of negatives after watching it.
It's 3 hours that fly by and it features some of the most important storytelling on both
big and small scales.
But that was my spoiler free review for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer.
Nolan continues to put his stamp on many different genres of film, and the same can be said about
his latest effort, which gives us an inventive take on
the biopic movie.
But like his previous work he combines multiple genres into one, and you really get a bit
of everything here.
There's drama, there's thrills, there's astonishing visuals,
romance and all the horror surrounding this moment in history.
He effortlessly combines all of this to give us an all time classic that I
think is going to be analysed, talked about and debated for many years to come.
I need more watches of the film but I think for me, having read the book and loving all
of Nolan's previous work, this might be a top 3 film
in his filmography, up there with The Dark Knight and Inception.
I'm giving Oppenheimer a rating of 9.5 out of 10.
But to those who have already seen the film what do you think of
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, and do you agree that it's one of the best films of the
year and one of Nolan's best too.
I think it's one of his best and I wouldn't be surprised if it
got loads of Oscar nominations, especially in categories like Best Film, Direction, Acting
and Cinematogrpahy.
Again, it's all subjective and I appreciate a range of reactions and reviews,
so let me know down below in the comments section what you personally thought towards
the film alongside things that stood out with your
first impressions.
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