I don't qualify as a movie critique but I do identify as a (sort of) huge movie fan. I am not a movie nerd but it is not questionable that watching movies is a serious hobby of mine. Yes, it is pretty stereotypical, but it's true. My hobbies are really those classic ones: reading a book, watching a movie, listening to music. Before I proceed, I will clarify that I do not (yet?) have a book blog. However, I am a member of a book club.
Speaking of books, I don't know if you know, but this movie is based on the 2005 book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer". Unfortunately, I did not read this book. I am not sure if I plan to, either. I don't think this is one of those movies where the comments would be about if the movie was better than the book or the other way around. However, the book has a significance because apparently Christopher Nolan said (somewhere) that he wouldn't have taken on the project without the book. Since Oppenheimer is a real person, technically, one does not need the book to make such a movie. In fact, there are already other (media) projects about the same person/topic. There is a tv series and a documentary about Oppenheimer, both released in 1980. There were two movies about him in 1989. There is a 2015 play called Oppenheimer, too. Okay, now that we have established this is not the first movie about Oppenheimer, we can proceed.
Perhaps it is worth to note that this is also not the first nor the only movie about atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. I don't know which is more sorrowful: a nuclear accident or actually setting off a nuclear bomb on purpose. I believe at least one of the following words would be familiar to any reader: Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima. There is a very successful 2019 mini TV series called Chernobyl. Unfortunately, I didn't watch it because I didn't feel like I could take it. Now, why did I watch Oppenheimer, then? Well, I guess I have a soft spot for Christopher Nolan and technically it is shorter than the whole of the mini series (which is about 5h30m). Why am I mentioning Chernobyl or the fact that there are other movies/shows about nuclear bombs? Well, if I had watched any other, perhaps it would equip me with the ability of making certain comparisons. I won't be able to add such comments. If you have some, please feel free to add. I am sure that movie critiques are able to make such comparisons and perhaps Nolan's explosion scenes would be rated as the best among those because he used real bombs and not CGI. Among all visual media projects about Oppenheimer (the man) or nuclear weapons in general, I am sure Nolan's will be the one that's the most spoken about of all time.
Now, where did I first hear about this movie or when did I see its trailer for the first time? Interestingly, I do not remember how I came to know about this movie. If you are a loyal reader to my blog (I am not saying you should be), you are probably familiar with the openings of my posts where I start by describing how I came to know about the existence of that movie. My guess is that however means I encountered this movie's mention or trailer, I got too excited and completely forgot about that first moment itself. Okay, maybe that doesn't really make sense but it's not important.
There is a period of time between the point I learned this movie will be released and the point I went to see this movie. During that period of time, I looked things up about the movie because I was curious. What I found although I was not looking for it is how the movie was shot. Apparently, because Christopher Nolan is Christopher Nolan, he had to do things differently and so he used techniques that hadn't been used before. Upon coming across a reels on Instagram, I learned that they filmed in two different aspect ratios (1.9:1 which is the full aspect ratio and native IMAX 65mm aspect ratio of 1.43:1) for magnitude and nostalgia reasons. Apparently, if you go see it at a theatre which doesn't support the full imax experience then you actually see less of what was shot---the image gets cropped. So they actually released a list of theatres which support the true viewing of the movie. Of course, I went to see it in one of those theatres which offers the full imax experience. I was lucky that such theatre exists in the city I currently live. Otherwise, I don't think I would have traveled for it.
Perhaps the best part about this movie was the fact that there were no ads before the movie started. I am not sure if this would be everyone's experience. My guess is that because I saw it in a "special" salon and they didn't have ads given to them compatible with that screen, they had no advertisements to show. This is a good thing. The movie was at 2:00 pm and it started at 2:01 pm. Unfortunately, there were lots and lots, and I mean, lots of people who came in late. This was probably because everybody thought the movie will probably start around 2:20 pm but that's not enough for me to forgive these people. They really interrupted the movie. Moreover, this salon was full, so whoever came late had real difficulty getting to their seats.
There is a lot to go through about this movie. Let's start with the scenes. If you saw the movie (or its trailer), you should be aware that some scenes are black&white whereas some scenes are coloured. Some say the coloured scenes' scenario was written in first person (Oppenheimer's) and the black&white scenes were written in the third person in the scenario, and that the take away from this is the the coloured parts are subjective (through the eyes of the celebrated guy) and the other parts showed the events through an objective lens. I can see the subjectivity part but I can't quite sharply see the objectivity part. I should also add that Matt Damon mentioned in an interview that the scenario (as a whole) was in first person but I think he might just be referring to the coloured shot parts (or only the parts he was in)---I don't know. Now, how I see is that it's not an objective/subjective differentiation, it has a different nuance. Basically, the star of the movie is Oppenheimer. Nolan even insisted on not having "American Prometheus" as the movie's name, he really wanted to make it personal, about Oppenheimer. What does this mean? Well, first of all, which name reached us through the years? It's Oppenheimer. I didn't even know about Lewis until the movie. What happened is Oppenheimer's name is engraved whereas Strauss has long been forgotten. Oppenheimer still speaks to us, influences us in the present day, whereas Strauss is stuck in the past, hence the black&whiteness. So I don't quite buy that subjective vs. objective perspective idea. When I think of it the way I do though, I think having Strauss' scenes black and white adds a nice nuance to the movie.
Continuing with the scenes, next is of course the bomb scene. I completely find it unnecessary to use real bombs for a "real" effect. I strongly believe that Nolan had no right to be harming the environment like this for a movie. I mean, what did it really add? Do we really care if they were real explosions? You can't even achieve as big an effect as an atomic bomb just by using multiple non-atomic, regular-but-big bombs. I mean, what's the carbon footprint of this movie? If there was a ranking (wrt carbon footprint) among all the movies that have been made until today, I believe this movie would be ranked as the 1st. This is not nice at all. I am saying all this, and I am not even a big environmentalist. Interestingly, I haven't heard of any environmentalist bodies boycott this movie. Maybe there are some and maybe they made it to the news, but the PR and marketing of this movie was immense and hence covering the media so much, so that might be why I haven't heard of any protests. In fact, the immense amount of marketing content of this movie has increased my expectations a lot and I ended up not liking the movie as much, so it backfired on me.
When I say "I didn't like the movie as much", don't get me wrong. I think it is a great movie, but it is not the best movie by C. Nolan, in my opinion. Cillian Murphy says in an interview that this is Nolan's "Magnum Opus". I disagree. I have seen a lot of interview clips done with the people in the main roles, and I think they were all just too excited and since they are in the work, they saw it better than it is (or, they are simply obliged to say good and great things about it).
I don't want to get side-tracked here. So, back to the scenes. Continuing with the bomb scene, what I liked the most was the sound coming SO LATE. It only makes sense that it arrives so late. The suspension was very long, when the audience waited for the "boom" sound. In fact---I heard this from others too---this long wait was probably the most respectfully performed one in the sense that nobody made any noise while waiting. I also liked that they showed everybody one by one while we were waiting for the boom. It was also hilarious when Teller put on sunscreen (and even better, I paid attention later and he still got burned). Okay, so that's all good, but I still think he should have used CGI, it could even be better (and bigger) explosion with CGI. I don't see what's wrong with using CGI a little. CGI nowadays is very good to the point you can't even tell the difference if you hired a good company/person to do the CGI of your movie.
Continuing with another scene: the sex scene, Florence Pugh and the claim that Oppenheimer is a womanizer. First of all, I think the sex scenes were completely unnecessary. They didn't really add anything important to the story. Up to this movie, I liked Florence Pugh's acting in general. Her character was underrepresented in this movie. I will in fact go on to say that Nolan is incapable of writing female characters. Both women's characters in this film were extremely shallow. The only point of Florence Pugh's character was almost the only small tie Oppenheimer had to the communists and it was exploited too much. I mean, if they didn't have this character in the movie they could still go with the same story. I don't think what the movie portrays is really enough to call this movie's Oppenheimer as a womanizer. I don't know about the real-life Oppenheimer, maybe there were rumours, or maybe it was certain, and so that's why Nolan wanted to include this "detail". Just because he cheated on her wife doesn't imply he is a womanizer. I mean, a lot of people do this kind of stuff. It was also only a little bit implied that he had some kind of a relationship with another woman, but okay, let's say he had relationships with three women in total in his life, not exactly all of them happening regularly and at the same time either. What's womanizer about this? When I think of a womanizer, I think of a man who tries to meet as many women as possible and who seduces every single woman he meets and somehow will have sex with each of them. So, for example, a womanizer wouldn't stop at his brother's wife, he would try to seduce her too, and even older women. We saw other women in a party Oppenheimer went in the film, and he didn't necessarily try to hit on every single one of them, nor tried to impress them. This is also a good paragraph to mention the following. I can see from this movie that Nolan has no good knowledge at all about romantic relationships. After this movie, I noticed that his previous movies were also white male dominated. Now, you may say, it was 1940s, that's why women are like that in the movie. Well, that's not a good excuse at all. Okay, let's say both Jean and Kitty are hysterical women (why did they have to be portrayed this way?), why is there no background on this? They just come as weird characters in the movie. What's behind Jean's behaviours, or Kitty's drinking while her baby is crying? Even a small hint, some small scene could suffice to fill these gaps---instead of having some other unnecessary scenes. Overall, very bad character development on the women characters of the movie.
Why did Nolan have the sex scenes or the hysterical-women-acting-out scenes? I should add here the scene where Cillian Murphy was naked during the "interrogation". Nakedness, I understand, but it's too cliché. Yeah, yeah, because it was such an intimate/private issue to him, he felt naked while saying those things and that's why the camera went behind the neck of the other guy to reveal R.O. naked. Next, Jean appearing, and that was completely unnecessary. I don't think that Jean appeared like that in the eyes of R.O., it was from the perspective of his wife, but that wasn't made clear. It is mixing Robert's emotions and how he sees himself at the moment with what his wife is seeing in her own mind. With this, and having the women act out out of nowhere (like Jean going "don't buy me flowers"), I guess Nolan is trying to achieve what some artistic movies would contain compared to blockbuster ones. It seems to me like Nolan is stuck between wanting to make an art movie and a blockbuster movie. Anyways, all this is horrible. I don't like it. In fact, I think I liked Nolan more before seeing this movie. In fact, this movie made me realize that the only thing I liked in his movies was the mind-bending aspect of the stories. I didn't care much about how some things were shot. What interest me are story and meaning.
When I ask myself: what difference did it make that the movie was shot in that huge aspect ratio? I don't think it made any difference. At least, not on the positive side. It actually made me resent because if it was just shot like a normal IMAX, then I would see the movie, and criticize about more or less the same things but I'd be overall happy with the movie. Knowing they tried to make it look somehow "special" which added nothing substantial to the movie (in my opinion) is a big minus.
I try to understand why Nolan did such things. The first answer is because he is Nolan. But also, I guess when you are telling a historical event, the only ways you can make the movie interesting is by doing something interesting with the shooting and including sex scenes. Since when is this person so stereotypical? Wasn't the whole point of him being different? It seems to me that he is, at this point, doing things only for being spoken about. I don't like this.
Movie makers claimed that people wouldn't be able to recover from it after seeing this movie. I did not feel that way at all. I was totally fine after I left the salon.
The only part/scene of the movie that struck me was when people were cheering in a room while R.O. gave a speech. This was wild because so many people were just killed. And they were so ignorantly cheering. In their perspective, they celebrated their success but they killed innocent people. Perhaps it is the most barbaric thing. I don't even talk about the part R.O. stepped into a burned corpse. I am talking about people only cheering and clapping and laughing.
Done with the scenes I want to touch, I will move on to acting and the actors/actresses. First of all, I did not notice the president was Gary Oldman---my bad. I did like his line, though, about relieving R.O. saying that he is the one who killed, not R.O.---he has a good point. It was also unbelievable the president calling R.O. a cry baby, which is apparently a real thing that happened. I won't go into Florence Pugh again too much---her role was pretty small (short screen time), it looks like movie makers now see her as an object (to use for sex scenes), and somehow she is one of the main cast (along with Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy and RDJ). The five always posed together at the premiers. I really think it should have been only the 4 of them. If there was really going to be a fifth person, it should have been someone else. Emily Blunt's acting was really good but her character wasn't written well. RDJ is RDJ, I have nothing to say---it was great. Apparently, some people thought he couldn't act (because he had been Iron Man for a long time) but I never thought that, so nothing new for me. Casting Matt Damon was probably one of the best things the movie makers did. I didn't watch Peaky Blinders and I know Cillian Murphy only from other Nolan movies. I thought he was very good at being Scarecrow. I think he has a really interesting face which makes it easy for him to portray a psychopath, if needed. I think his acting was good, but the script wasn't written well. Let's go into this in the next paragraph.
Apparently, this movie had a physicist consultant for the science stuff and this consultant is a Nobel Prize winner. This is somehow hard to believe. Or, maybe he advised them right but they didn't listen to him 100%. I have a Bachelor's degree in Physics myself, and worse, a BSC + a master's + a PhD in Mathematics. So I have a really good grasp of how this kind of people act in their private and/or academic lives. Some mathematicians/physicist can really be egotistical and rude. Somehow they try to show Oppenheimer as such a person but only sometimes. This doesn't make sense. I know that for the scenes with Lewis Strauss it was kind of Strauss' perspective, but the words R.O. said were facts, so they were indeed pretentious acts. Moreover, R.O. acted like a smug when Matt Damon's character came to offer him the job as well. Anyways, I don't think this movie did a good job representing scientists in an accurate way. When it comes to science itself, again, not good enough for me. They did better in equations than what most other movies include as equations. But still, I can see that science is somehow romanticized in the eyes of movie makers. Why? First of all, things are never that simple in physics or mathematics. I heard that they purposefully didn't go into the physics part of it much, which is okay, but you can't just degrade it either.
Overall, what's the take away of this movie? I don't know. Did I need to see the real Oppenheimer's indecisiveness or whatever they are trying to portray? Did this movie teach me anything interesting or important? I don't think so. I think if this movie wasn't made, I wouldn't feel its absence at all. I mean, what happened? We saw the "struggles" of this physicist about "his" invention? Well, it was mostly other people who did real physics work on the project after they opened that site. He was the manager. So I am not sure if it's really accurate to call it his invention. He did accept the offer to conduct this project. Does it make him "the father"? It could be someone else. One might say, "oh he was the only person who could do this". I don't think so. If something is bound to happen, someone will emerge to make it happen. From what the movie portrayed, it seems to me that he was just taken away by the idea of bringing together his job and his favourite place (that's close to his brother). Then, he really like being the head/manager of something. Then, he really liked the fame. If the whole point of this movie was to show his struggles about feeling guilty etc, I am not satisfied. Throughout the whole project, he never hesitated to continue the project. He did try to have a say in the usage of the bomb, but he didn't really do that much to claim it, and he had already agreed to work for the military so he should have known that. I am not blaming the guy here, it's already in the past---this is a historical event, I am talking about the portrayals in the movie.
The centre of the story was not the making of the bomb, the story was told around the "interrogations" R.O. had. At the end, to see that all that was only because of someone's low self-esteem, was not so much of a satisfying ending either (you might claim here that that wasn't the ending, but that's where the story wrapped up, that's my point---the end was "oh I think we might have indeed started that chain reaction", ye ye too cliché because what he means is the repercussions of the bombing event and the soon coming ever-lasting hostility between US and Russia, etc, which might include the speeding up of global warming too). It wasn't even clear to me for the whole movie why Lewis was in a hearing but I guess it was because he had wanted to be appointed to a new position. His hearing couldn't be related to R.O.'s security clearance thing, because they didn't even know it was Lewis who started it at that time. I could go on with so many other unclear things but I will stop here. Maybe I will watch this movie again at home when the time comes, but I doubt that I will write about it again.
Anyways, perhaps if they really had a John Krasinski cameo, I could have given the movie a bit of a higher score.
I give 7/10.
P.S. I don't know if anybody noticed this but there were literally flies who landed on the cameras when they were shooting, they would come land stay a bit and then fly away. They didn't even care about this even though they cared about the visual quality of the scenes "so much".
Fun fact: Apparently, this movie's actual film length is about 11 miles and the movie is about 3 hours. So you could, if you want, go on a treadmill, and walk about 11 miles while watching the movie on your phone/ipad, because on average it takes about 3 hours to walk 11 miles.
