Oppenheimer (2023) by Christopher Nolan

A complex, multi-layered, very dense film, Oppenheimer summarizes all the themes of Christopher Nolan’s cinema, grafting them into a (biographical) container, only superficially not very suitable for experimentation. The result is a popular and cinematic work that is likely to go down in history as a milestone in the director’s career.

movie explosion

Film about Christopher Nolan, whatever the topic, will always be to some extent an “event” for both the general public and the more purely cinephile: over the years, the American director has really managed to cope with Kubrikian – and the comparison is audacious) a large number of genres and directions , keeping firmly, at the heart of each work, some basic themes (thinking about time, perception of reality, its decomposition and possible re-reading). If only there was so much curiosity Oppenheimer – besides a cast so full of stars it’s almost overcrowded, to the point where it’s impossible to list them all – mainly depends on the fact that Nolan is taking on the biographical genre for the first time here: a vein clearly far removed from his poetics, where the story about events runs the risk of going hand in hand with didactics, and the inevitable narrative “trace”, apparently, does not leave the author much freedom of action. However, as in many previous films (think sci-fi Interstellar

or a war movie Dunkirk) V Oppenheimer Nolan dismantles and reassembles the genre in parallel with the story, multiplying time frames, chromatic tones, even narrative rhythms. The result is a very dense work, both similar and different from his previous work; a kind of experiment on how much cinema can play with the sensory aspect – as in Dunkirk work on the sound and music is very important – and to provide one’s own reading of a decidedly linear story. Apparently, because if there is one thing that Nolan’s new film destroys in accordance with the author’s intention, it is linearity. But not intelligibility, as one might think.

Three timelines, one tipping event

Movie inspired by biographical book American Prometheus: Triumph and Tragedy by J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, describing the life and work of the scientist world-famous as the father of the atomic bomb. The period considered in the article, in particular, begins with the engagement of Oppenheimer (with a capital letter Cillian Murphy) in General Leslie Groves’ “Manhattan Project” (plays Matt Damon): we are in 1942 and the goal is to outdo the Germans in creating a weapon of total destruction, one that could “save the world at the risk of destroying it”; but the unofficial goal is also to keep under control and at the same time warn the current Soviet ally, who will clearly already be the next enemy. And it is the projection into the future, first invoked and then manifested with increasing insistence – and making it more and more insistent – that is one of the leitmotifs of the narrative of Oppenheimer: a nightmare of a possible holocaust on the one hand, enclosed in chilling visions and real-life nightmares of the protagonist, played by Cillian Murphy, and two timelines gradually joining the main one, clearly chromatically different from it, not by chance, in the magnificent photographs of Hoyt van Hoytem. The chromatic density of the present to represent the world even before the tipping event of the bombing; the desaturated tones of the intermediate faction, the one that depicts an accused McCarthy-era physicist in a tiny metal room; and finally the black and white world of 1959, the one in which the iron curtain finally came down, and that’s the ambition of Lewis Strauss, interpreted (again in this case masterfully) Robert Downey Jr.to dominate the world, now divided into blocks. Between them is an explosion that will serve as a watershed: not (yet) those Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the director leaves behind the scenes – because there is a limit to what can be filmed, and, paradoxically, also to what is. necessary to shoot – but the one in the New Mexico desert, with the Trinity test, which actually represented the first acquaintance with the power of a nuclear device.

Words and images

With a generous length (exactly three hours), but never, as in this case, justified narratively and thematically, Oppenheimer the film is dense, but also deliberately unequal in pace: a work divided between the first hour, accumulating events, characters, plots and themes – in a deliberate narrative bulimia that requires increased attention from the viewer, but also a good readiness to perceive spatial and temporal jumps – and a follow-up that speeds up, completing every single thread of the narrative, bringing consistency to the characters and, above all, following the realization of the less and more apocalyptic than expected of his visions. Everything is filtered by the single look of the eponymous character; the “look” is conceived not only as a perception filtered by the organ of vision, but also as an inner gaze, an inner monologue, unprincipled ambition mixed with growing melancholy. Finally, remorse, when the deadly legacy of one’s work, the horrendous responsibility one has taken upon oneself, and the (im)possible choice to save what can be saved become apparent. In the bitter realization of how late it is. Nolan achieves all this with a very large number of dialogues (Oppenheimerof all his filmography, perhaps the most talked about film ever), but also with those close-ups that say a lot about the main character and his evolution: this was facilitated by the exceptional performance of Murphy, Oppenheimer turns out to be a work in perfect balance between dialogues and images, between the verbal translation of what cannot be filmed (the explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and the plastic visual reproduction of what cannot be expressed in words (the longing and torment of the one who has become both a monster and the savior of the world) .

Fine synthesis

With its complexity and layering, the bold construction of a story that can be artsy, demanding and dense, but at the same time absolutely legible, Oppenheimer As such, it could be a watershed of sorts for Christopher Nolan’s cinema, to the extent of covering all the major themes of the director’s cinematography: reflections on perception and time. I rememberall-consuming ambition Prestigeexistential longing, also associated with the elements of time and memory, Interstellarphysical exploration of mind spaces (and its labyrinths) Origin AND the keeper. Everything is contained in the container of the biopic, in a casing deliberately overturned and subverted, undermined in its foundations, but never so elevated in its potential; in the same way that the potential of an ensemble cast is maximized, in which everyone is placed in the right box (to the names already mentioned, we will add the two unusual female presences of Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh, as well as, among others, the faces of Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Clarke, Jack Quaid, Josh Hartnett, Matthew Modine, Rami Malek and Benny Safdie); and, above all, a 70 mm majestic image to be reproduced and enjoyed on the largest possible screen and in conditions as close as possible to those that its author wanted. An essay on what else analogue has to offer, and how the extraordinary modernity of a language can (and perhaps should) go hand in hand with the recovery, reuse and improvement of technologies rooted in the past. Few filmmakers can express this synthesis with such completeness.

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Gallery

Form

Original name: Oppenheimer
Director: Christopher Nolan
Country/year: UK, USA / 2023
Duration: 180′
Type: Drama, Biography, Historical
Throw: Florence Pugh, Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Casey Affleck, David Dastmalchian, Rami Malek, Robert Downey Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Benny Safdie, Dane DeHaan, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Tony Goldwyn, Alex Wolfe Emma Dumont, Gustav Skarsgard, Matthew Modine, Matthias Schweighöfer, David Kramholtz, David Rysdael, Devon Bostick, Dylan Arnold, Guy Burnet, Jack Quaid, Josh Hartnett, Josh Peck, Danny DeFerrari, James D’Arcy, James Remar, Josh Zuckerman, Louise Lombard, Michael Angarano, Olivia Thirlby, Scott Grimes, Tom Conti
Screenplay: Christopher Nolan
Photo: Hoyt Van Hoytema
Assembly: Jennifer Lame
Music: Ludwig Goransson
Director: Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven, Emma Thomas
Production house: Syncopy, Universal Pictures, Atlas Entertainment
Distribution: Universal Pictures

Release date: 08/23/2023

Trailer

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