Oppenheimer - Christopher Nolan Movie - July 21

[al_infierno]

Movie was F@#$%ING excellent.  No spoilers ahead!

A real pulse-pounding, palm-sweating "thriller" (if you can really call it that) and by far my favorite Nolan film.  Deserves to be seen in IMAX so you can really feel the overwhelming depth of the explosions.  People who wait for streaming will get a less-than-ideal experience, though the movie is exceptional enough that "less-than-ideal" is still a 5-star movie in this case.

It's a dense and complex psychological drama that tells the story non-linearly - more or less focusing on the post-war scrutiny of Oppenheimer's communist sympathies, but still telling the whole story of the development of the bomb and its aftermath on Oppenheimer's life and American politics.  It's largely focused on Oppy's perspective, but it does a great job of laying out the details without a whiff of finger-wagging whether you sympathize with him or despise him.  I found myself largely sympathetic towards his perspective, but his detractors make some pretty compelling arguments near the end that make you wonder if they're actually right about him. But the film leaves it up to you to decide if you're sympathetic to him or consider him a monster.

The visuals and music are exceptional, and the movie even dabbles in a little bit of psychological horror in some places.  It'll require another watch or two for me to fully digest everything the movie has to offer, but I'm looking forward to picking up a physical copy once this hits 4K.

Naturally, after the credits started rolling, a teenager a few seats down called out "That was really boring!"  Maybe one day, young grasshopper. 

EDIT - Forgot to mention, holy crap is it nice to see Robert Downey Jr. acting again.  He was incredible in this film.

[Gusington]

Awesome - I was even considering leaving my bunker to go out into the world to see it but your comment about the teenager pushed me back.

[GDS_Starfury]

just tell it to stop being a stupid fuck.
seems to work for me.

[SirAndrewD]

It's a dense and complex psychological drama that tells the story non-linearly

Wait, Nolan told a story non-linearly?  That's madness!

[al_infierno]

Awesome - I was even considering leaving my bunker to go out into the world to see it but your comment about the teenager pushed me back.

Mercifully, everyone in the theater managed to keep their mouths shut during the film itself!

[Gusington]

^Impossible 

[al_infierno]

The music in this film is just incredible.  I've relistened to this track probably a dozen times since the movie ended.

[al_infierno]

Now that I've had some time to digest the film, I can criticize is the visual representation of the Trinity test.  It was visually underwhelming and could have benefited from just a little bit of CGI enhancement.  The dramatic framing of the explosion was A+, and in my book that's what really counts.  But if you're looking for a seriously visually authentic Trinity recreation, this isn't exactly gonna deliver.  It looked more like a crapton of TNT than a proper nuclear explosion.

[JasonPratt]

Speaking of a crapton of TNT -- the IMAX(?) film narrated by William Shatner from, gosh probably 20 years ago now, has excellent footage of the history of nuclear detonations up until the Chinese get into the game, and it starts with the setup and test detonation of a crapton of TNT!

The various formats listed by Amazon (some not available, or like Blu pretends to be available  ) :

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Trinity+and+beyond&i=movies-tv&crid=14R7WO1MF4WJN&sprefix=trinity+and+beyond%2Cmovies-tv%2C104&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

The Prime version is probably the one to watch, as it upscales to Blu quality (or tries to) and widescreen (ditto).

While the film (and its rather good musical track) works hard to demonstrate the beauty of the events, the writers carefully subvert and criticize the desensitization of the public (and professional) attitudes toward the weapons: it becomes business as usual, when it should be horrifying, and even the editing toward the end emphasizes this -- you'll probably get bored with yet more announcements and footage of detonations. The wryly triumphant coda at the end as China detonates its first bomb, rushing a cavalry battalion in a fighting charge underneath it, is... kind of hard to accurately describe!

Highly recommended.

[GDS_Starfury]

[Sir Slash]

I don't want my fingerprints anywhere near that one. 

[al_infierno]

One thing I find powerful about the ending of this film is how it illustrates Oppenheimer reckoning with his soul. The third act largely revolves around him being persecuted by his contemporaries and society as a whole. In the final scene, he speaks with Einstein and mentions an equation discussed earlier in the film which could theoretically cause a chain reaction that destroys the entire world.

Einstein says, "What of it?" and Oppenheimer replies "I believe we did." This is the final line of the film as Einstein just turns his back on Oppy and walks away, leaving him to simmer with the consequences of what he's created.  The ending montage of nuclear missiles firing and the world burning (notably starting with North America) with Destroyer of Worlds playing is a nice dramatic representation of Oppy being left alone to face to spiritual/philosophical/etc consequences of what he's created.

To wrap up my nonsensical ramblings, I find that sequence a great cinematic representation of Oppy coming to terms with the black mark he's put on his soul.

[Windigo]

"Albert, remember when I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world? ...I believe we did."

[al_infierno]

"Albert, remember when I came to you with those calculations, we thought we might start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world? ...I believe we did."

"I believe we did" is one of the all-time best ending lines.  I would put it up there with "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."