Inside the heart of a bomb: this is not an Oppenheimer review

Nolan’s latest film is entertaining but incoherent.

Explosive moments of grandeur and astoundingly powerful individual performances are at the heart of this work, however complex and challenging they may seem in structure and narrative. True to his style, the acclaimed director creates a touching masterpiece about human frustration. Executor: magnetic Cillian Murphy, In essence, the film tells us how one man’s greatest discovery and courage led to his greatest demise.

Oppenheimer, which lasts 3 hours, carefully and non-linearly describes the life story of a famous and controversial physicist. The narrative oscillates between past and present, touching on key events leading up to the nuclear test and its aftermath. The film as a whole is a chaotic collection of insane episodes coming from a narrator too focused on demonstrating wise depth rather than seeking reality.

Equally between an ensemble drama and a stealth thriller.In Nolan’s film, his famous character is portrayed as a kind of human catalyst who – both in spite of and because of his eccentric mind – naturally radiates a kind of revitalizing energy that causes most of the people around him to perform various types of actions. It is this energy that first draws into its orbit such people as the caustic nerd and the alcoholic. Katherine “Kitty” Puning (Emily Blunt) – Oppenheimer’s future wife – and a depressive psychiatrist Gene Tetlock (Florence Pugh) is his longtime lover. This energy it is also what causes many of his peers to gravitate towards him during his academic ascension years, and in many ways this makes him the object of the major general’s attention. Leslie Groves

(Matt Damon) when it starts building up a brain pool dedicated to nourishing Manhattan Project.

But the structure of the story overall chaotic, and the film appears to be a collection of over-processed individual scenes that only occasionally coalesce into something concrete before the film shifts focus and attempts to repeat the process with varying degrees of success.

Centerpiece of the film gets bogged down in tedious attempts to explain quantum physics, devoting a huge amount of time to the scientific elements of the bomb – uranium, titanium, hydrogen, plutonium and the proportions of each of them. Internal relations between members Manhattan Project they are confusing and complex, but designed to alleviate scientific boredom Nolan introduces the human element: employees Oppenheimer calls him “Oppie” and, in his signature pork pie hat, masters the art of mixing the perfect martini and argues with his mistress (Florence Pugh) about the pros and cons of communism.

Oppenheimer it is undeniably a gripping film based on great moral convictions and conflicting consciences, but its remarkable scope is not always clear. By no means linear in structure—filled with pretentious noise and footage transitioning from color to black and white, exploding to the sound of bombs exploding and footsteps—the film is mind-blowing. Christopher Nolan’s films usually focus on images rather than characters or plot, and the actors follow the film. For a change, this is one of the most complex and controversial chapters in American history, and the man who made it possible. Nolan collects facts, but does not seem to be limited to facts alone.

His inability to tell history in a linear way (or perhaps the key word is its rejection) scatters a maximum of different elements at once in a dozen directions. The great story becomes plausible but incoherent.

The film never shows how the bomb ended the war. Oppenheimer managed to defeat the Nazis in developing the bomb, but, to his eternal regret, Hitler committed suicide and Germany capitulated in May 1945, so the United States, contrary to his opinion, dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. ending the war in Japan. As a result, Oppie became the most famous person in the world, but he was so overwhelmed with guilt over the catastrophic losses his bomb had taken on so many civilians in Japan that he wanted nothing to do with the plan. Harry Truman

to start building the H-bomb, an even more destructive weapon of mass destruction, pushing back the government and turning to arms control.

At the same time that the film attempts to illustrate how Oppenheimer’s left-wing political views and his youthful experiences in labor organization influenced his worldview as an adult, it also delves into his personal life and the professional envy of his peers, which made him both menace and menace. a person to be admired. All of this provides a very important context for the film’s action scenes set in the mid-1950s, when US Atomic Energy Commission Commissioner Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr. sublime interpretation) is leading hearings aimed at depriving a physicist of security clearance and deeply discrediting him in the eyes of the public.

But Oppenheimer he’s so prone to jumping from one short, tense, overly intense scene to the next that it often feels like Nolan just shot too many takes and then picked the moments he found impressive, not the ones needed to set off a narrative chain reaction. , which would result in a complete film.

This is especially regrettable because in general, many of Oppenheimer’s actors – in particular Blunt, Damon and Murphy – give truly fantastic and thoughtful roles that speak to the humanity and complexity of their characters. Rami Malek and Alden Ehrenreich extraordinary, respectively, in the role of a physicist from Los Alamos David Hill And unnamed Senate aideBye Dane DeHaan it’s really scary as an army officer Kenneth Nichols. But because of the structure Oppenheimerhardly any of these interpretations have time to take the place they deserve, and once you have the opportunity to feel comfortable and fully immersed in them, the film is already moving on.

For obvious reasons, there are quite a few explosions that emphasize the three-hour runtime. Oppenheimer.

But instead of just focusing on the visual spectacle of towering hellfires designed to maim and kill, Nolan tries to use sound to feel some of the devastation a leading physicist has become known for. While this approach works well when explosions are shown in the film, it really begins to emerge later in the film, after the atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Oppenheimer, surrounded by fellow Americans intoxicated by the idea of ​​American exceptionalism, may not be able to. not be surprised at the horror at the thought of what ended the work of his life

. It’s at moments like these – when the scientist confronts directly the reality of the decisions made by the United States as World War II drew to a close, rather than mythologising the people behind those decisions – the film is at its best.

One man’s desire to fight fascism and save lives resulted in the loss of lives, and no one could better interpret it than Cillian Murphy. His piercing blue eyes perfectly convey agony and silent fury. Robert Downey Jr And Emily Blunt they are excellent. Matt Damon, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh they are well placed in extended cameos.

Oppenheimer it leaves you in pieces because it is a gripping play about a man overcome with guilt and inner turmoil. “Man become death, destroyer of worlds“.

Despite the shortcomings Oppenheimer it is an unforgettable rarity in the cultural swamp of now-stagnant cinematic mediocrity.

Watch and learn something.