Oppenheimer Review (2023)

With Oppenheimer, Nolan has attempted to do something that he used as a background in his movies, up until this time: Complex character emotions. Being the biopic of the Father Of The Atomic Bomb, J Robert Oppenheimer, Nolan seemed to be doing something that everyone thought was both suitable and different to him: he had been exploring complex physics related stuff in his previous films like Tenet, Interstellar and Inception but also framing it in the biopic of a controversial man. The results: a middling film which begins to be an actual biopic only post the “Interval” (the typical Cut randomly Interval that comes in Indian Release of Foreign Films), the first half seems to be a randomly collected scenes which “show” us scenes of Robert being brilliant, womanising, egoistic etc. The reason why show is in quotes is because we are only told he is all these above adjectives are only told to us by others: we are told he is a womaniser but we rarely see him even speak out leave alone flirting with a woman; we don’t quite see him being a brilliant man, all we hear is him being brilliant even though we feel his passion in some of the opening portions and even his egotism is something that is said quite subtly. Probably one of the scene that explains his egotism is in the scene when he meets the President who congratulates him and when Oppenheimer tells he feels guilty for it, the President says it is not about him. He was only told to make the bomb and the bomb was dropped by the President and that no one would remember who made it. It really brings out the self centered nature of Oppenheimer.

The editing, the main culprit of the first half, strips the film of its emotions, the direction, the screenplay etc. All of it becomes incessant information dump on us, scene after scene building up to something but not quite sure what it is leading up to. The scenes lack any kind of emotional or story revelation nor do they kindle any interest in us. Even the direction seems purely functional and the lack of form seriously harms the dramatic possibilities in the first half thus stripping the scenes of interest. Everything to us is directly shown rather than have a build-up of why they are how they are. We see Jean Tatlock and Oppenheimer meet at a party and we immediately cut to them having had sex, not even telling to us what did they see in each other to take such an action though I understand American are callous about it.

The problem is that the relentless pacing fails to underline the importance of the scenes like for example the naming of the test as Trinity or the emotional scenes involving Jean and Oppenheimer. Nolan’s typical fascination with the concepts of time is presented here also as the film unfolds through various time frames. The framing device is a sort of hearing and the film unwinds as a recollection of testimonies visually. Here Nolan uses B&W and Colour to distinguish (as he said) Oppenheimer’s subjective view by colour and the objectiveness by B&W. However events don’t seem to significantly differ in these sequences and it seems more stylistic than formal.

It’s with the second half that Nolan is able to bring in some sort of drama to these proceedings, a character to Oppenheimer. After the blast (captured so beautifully and silenced extremely brilliantly), we begin seeing the complexities arise in Oppenheimer, atleast to an extent. The scene where he talks with the people of the makeshift town for the project, is probably the most cinematic usage of the medium to convey the effect of the blast on Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer and The Background are separated he is fully blurred in some parts conveying his detachment from reality and playing to the people and not actually conveying his true inner emotions. The moment just a second before the blast when Oppenheimer utters the phrase,”Iam become death, destroyer of worlds” is possibly the only scene which depicts his brilliance and the solemnity with which the phrase is said and corresponding image is purely diving. Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer also has a scene stealing performance near the climax during the climax hearing which is probably the only writing that her character gets.

Ultimately it is a somewhat watchable but definitely underwhelming film when compared to Nolan’s works.