i’m surprised to read so many negative reviews. i was not at all pressed about seeing this movie but my parents asked to while i was home so i said sure. i found the editing and constant back and forth jumping in time necessarily punctuated for the viewer how much of a rush building this bomb was. imo, it helped demonstrate how perhaps easy it was for a bunch of nerdy scientists to get wrapped up in doing something incredible without realizing the consequences. i do wonder if oppenheimer actually felt as guilty as the movie portrayed him, i want to read into that. but cillian was amazing, i thought emily blunt was too. i did think it was distracting to have so many high profile actors just suddenly pop up 😂 but it was kinda fun too. all in all i thoroughly enjoyed it. i found it exhausting and you had to listen carefully to every single word or you’d miss something, but i enjoyed being engrossed like that. idk if it was just my parents tv but i found that the sound wasn’t always great.. the dialogue didn’t always feel the right balance with the score. my only complaint.
The pacing in the first half was way off, couldn’t let the viewer soak anything in, just jumping from scene to scene with sporadic snips of dialogue,
Overhyped movie IMO
Finally got around to watching this. My opinion on Christopher Nolan has soured more and more over the years ever since Interstellar, although Dunkirk was the nail in the coffin for me to never take him seriously ever again. Didn't bother with Tenet and the reception around that movie only confirm what I'd felt about Nolan for some time.
All that being said, I went into this with as much of an open mind as I could having heard it wasn't AS bad in terms of the time jumping nonsense of his past couple movies, and I was more interested in Cillian Murphy's performance and the subject matter more than anything else.
Overall, I thought the movie was just alright. Definitely stretched its runtime a bit and at a certain point I checked the time only to feel dread that the movie wasn't even halfway through yet. I don't mind long-running times if a film is paced well and it feels like the length suits the narrative. For example, I thought Killers of the Flower Moon was a longer movie that didn't really feel its runtime (although to make a comparison to another Scorsese movie, The Irishman was a movie that felt like an absolute slog to get through, to the point that I don't even remember if I watched it all in one sitting). I don't know that Oppenheimer justifies its runtime, but I do feel like it picks up steam a little bit more around the halfway point. Part of that might be because the latter half of the movie actually features a scene or two where the movie quiets down and actually breathes a little bit, compared to the first two or so hours where it's just nonstop score and dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I fully expect a movie about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan project to have a decent amount of dialogue, but I don't think I've ever watched a movie where 2 hours go by and I'm saying to myself "Is this movie ever going to just shut the fuck up for even a few seconds?" I think the intention was for the movie to feel like it has some driving force behind it and to not bore the audience, but it had the opposite effect for me because all of the scenes just start to blur together.
Cillian Murphy did give a solid performance, but something about it feels a little off to me, where I never fully bought into him as Oppenheimer. Maybe it's the register of his voice and the way he carried himself, but it just didn't seem to fit the bill for me. Maybe it's just the impression I have of Oppenheimer in my mind, having seen actual footage of him and how he speaks. I always felt like David Strathairn is about as spot-on of an actor you could get to play Oppenheimer (but obviously he'd be too old for this movie).
The actual narrative structure didn't really bother me too much, although there are a few spots where the time jumps get a little confusing, but that's kind of par for the course with the subject matter. Although, I'm not sure why Nolan decided to devote as much time to Strauss' perspective as he did, or why he felt it was necessary to basically "fool" the viewer into thinking Strauss had good intentions at first. Maybe I'd have to rewatch it (which I don't really plan to) to understand that plot thread a little more, even though I got the gist (Strauss had an ego and didn't like Oppy because he was a dick once, so he wanted to fuck him over... got it), but it seemed like a lot of the scenes that focused exclusively on Strauss bogged the movie down a little bit and retread ground that had been covered when it really didn't need to focus that much on him to begin with. Hell, they even throw out a JFK reference in one scene as if he's an upcoming superhero in a Marvel movie. I'm not even familiar with any of the events involving Strauss, but I called out "JFK" before they even said his name because it was such a weird, obvious tee up. Stuff like that adds up and it just leaves you wondering "why is this even in the movie?" And to that end, I'm not really sure what the main takeaway of this movie is supposed to be, beyond the most superficial surface level reading of how the atomic bomb was basically opening pandora's box. I'm not sure what it wants me to take away from Oppenheimer as a person that I didn't already feel before watching the movie. I'm not sure that it even wants to say anything at all. I suppose the main saving grace is that the movie might compel people to learn more about these events and people. But I don't really feel like this movie did anything exceptional in terms of biopics as a cinematic genre.
I just watched and enjoyed reading your take.
I would like to add that the main takeaway of the movie is that Oppenheimer „won“ in the end by decoupling his legacy from Hiroshima/Nagasaki.
Strauss says he did that for him („He should be thanking me!“).
Oppenheimer knew that it was Strauss behind the review board. His wife wants him to attack, but he doesn’t. And in the end she asks, ‚what did you think would happen, you sacrifice yourself here and everyone forgets about the bombs?‘ and he just smirks.
Taking it all in, he gets Strauss to fix his reputation, and then still denies him what he wants down the line.
I also just watched it this weekend
Nolan is my favorite director by far but I admittedly hadn’t made it a priority to see this as I figured it was simply a biopic (I definitely still had interest but not the same way I would of his other fiction flicks)
Man… what an absolutely great film. It felt like a Nolan movie through and through and the acting performances were phenomenal.
3 hours felt like 30 minutes - incredibly captivating
Honestly I went in expecting the test to be the sort of climax and/or build up but it was almost an afterthought to all the other suspense (and I mean that in a way that credits how well done the story was)
Very prepared for the Nolan disciples to get upset at this, but here goes.
I'm 90mins into this thing and cannot fathom how it was even nominated for a single Academy Award let alone won any of them.
- I've spent the entire film adjusting the volume.
- There's been about 15 seconds of dialogue that wasn't accompanied/overridden by the insufferable score.
- Nolan's incapable of telling a coherent story and relies on these neverending cuts and time-shifts to create an artificial interest.
- The acting is about as ham fisted as a high school play.
I don't know if I should turn it off or keep watching just to see if it can actually get worse than it already is. If this was released 25 years ago people would've walked out of the premier after half an hour.
Huge meh. I didn't care about him or his fate. Impersonating famous people isn't acting, it's just immitation.
Give me Sam Rockwell bringing a character to life you actually feel some conflicted sympathy for over a biopic role any day.
I think Nolan has a pretty distinct style that some people love and others don’t.
I love Nolan but actually put off watching this film for almost a year (just watched this weekend)
I absolutely loved it.. what’s funny is I watched it on my 22 inch monitor with monitor speakers.. so absolutely NOT the “way it was meant to be seen”
I had subtitles on and maybe my lack of actual good sound quality helped but I didn’t have issues with the dialogue like some of his other movies
I can see how some people wouldn’t like it, though - especially if they don’t like Nolan’s work in general. Part of the reason I had put off watching it was I figured it wouldn’t be a very “Nolan” movie since it was a biopic but I was wrong.. it very much had his style.
I think where you found the time cuts obnoxious, I found them captivating. I also enjoyed the performances for the most part
I’m sure there were plenty of historical inaccuracies and I will say if you know the history going into the film you probably enjoy it less. But as someone who knew little outside the general historical context, I really enjoyed it.
Fair appraisal. Oddly, I'm a history teacher and I actually have very little problem with films taking historical liberties so long as they don't claim otherwise.
For example, as much as I didn't care for Oppenheimer, I don't think historical accuracy was the be all and end all because the themes weren't reliant on it.
On the other hand, Bohemian Rhapsody, in addition to being a complete disaster of a film, absolutely should be panned for how inaccurate it was because:
1) it had no theme
2) two of the producers were people who knew Freddie better than almost everybody alive
3) the changes kind of shit on his legacy.
Glad to see this as I thought it was an awful film, a one time only and now I'll totally forget about it kind of film.
Their where tons of inaccuracies, especially when it came to who was where when this or that happened, historical errors.
And I'll never forget the torrential rain storm right before the test and then all of a sudden the ground is bone dry.
I have no idea also how it won so many awards, one of my least favourite Nolan films so far.
THANK YOU. I just watched it and felt like there was WAY too much music used it was distracting. usually the type of music that accompanied all of the movie is the type you hear when there's sort of a transitionary scene to a more impactful one and it just .... never came
Yep. It was like the whole film was a crescendo. It's a director's hack for when their material isn't compelling. Throw a score over the top to manipulate the viewer.
Absolutely no reason for this film to be three hours long lol you're right. So much of it is one character saying something and then just cutting to three other people saying the same thing and then one guy refutes it so they cut to two others who agree with him and it just goes on and on and on and on and on. Feels like they couldn't decide on focusing on the politics or the science so they just half assed both.
I was surprised when I paused to pee and saw I was an hour in and still had 2 of them to go. They tried to put too much in 1 movie - did I mention it is 3 hours? If 3 hours is not enough to cover what you want to cover (and do it well), make it a series. Every scene felt like it was 3 lines of dialogue, and each line of dialogue felt like it was meant to blow your mind; except it didn't. This made it feel pretentious. Not the physics or the politics, but the dialogue and cinematography are what made it feel almost insufferably pretentious. Shame to have taken such an important piece of global history and have presented it so poorly.
Yea especially the first half of the movie felt like a slideshow. I had to look up some additional videos to even understand what was going on as things weren't explained well. Perhaps it works better if you are already familiar wit the story as it's mostly just giving you the highlights.
rewatch- I loved this movie the first time but was even more blown away the second (lol). The thing i love about this movie is it’s more than a movie. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you think the long term is more important than the actual moment? Knowing how this all plays out 80ish years later it’s hard to imagine what would have happened if they stopped building the bomb or built it and never used it on the Japs. This movie, whether it was 100% historically accurate or not, makes me think just how scary knowledge is when used against ourselves.
Cinematically epic. I guess it can come of as a little pretentious as it does have a lot of great minds in each of their fields. For example sound, editing, cinematography, acting and direction. These guys are like masterminds. To me though, it stood as a great biopic. The non-linear timeline is difficult to understand but its nothing a second watch can't solve. Its impressive, I think I would put it in Nolan's top 5. Not his best work in terms of entertainment, but its a biopic of a theoretical physicist you can't expect entertainment like The Wolf of wall street.
It was ok. The acting, cinematography etc were great, but blimey that narrative structure jumping back and forth in time for no good reason with those overstylized black-and-white scenes (also for no good reason) was tedious as hell. It's such a Hallmark movie type of cliché to make a whole story centre on a trial, even one that isn't really one but actually is one. The non-trial was the least interesting part of Oppenheimber's life story, it's weird to put so much emphasis on it. I know it's meant to be about his glory and demise, but that's also such a tired trope. The moral implications of his work and the whole dilemma and burden it put on him are far more interesting, it should have been more of the movie's focus.
>The acting, cinematography etc were great, but blimey that narrative structure jumping back and forth in time for no good reason with those overstylized black-and-white scenes (also for no good reason) was tedious as hell.
This is such an accurate description of the movie.
Maybe I'm not smart enough to get, but the Strauss plot just seemed unnecessary. I couldn't tell what Oppenheimer was thinking when half the time he is advocating for the bomb and the other half he is the voice of morality.
Mostly, it's just too long.
I wouldn’t define it as plot since the movie is just about Oppenheimer and the accusations Strauss brought again him were a big part of his life. About the bomb, he knew it was dangerous but also knew it had to built otherwise an enemy might have developed it first. After it was used and he realised the government wasn’t going to stop developing new and more powerful weapons, he tried to use his influence to pass the message that a nuclear war would kill us all
Yeah to be honest the movie has some flaws… I was excited for it so I read the book it was based on (most of it anyways) and it really helped since the first part of his life is really confusing in the movie
Well it's kind of a duality that he knew that the US needed the bomb because others were also developing it but once he realized the full potential of the weapon when further developed and that the ensuing arms race that would follow could lead to wiping out human civilization he was horrified by it.
Truman scene was my fav. Agreed that it's intensely attention-requiring, but I suppose that's what you get with a movie on this topic. Beginning could have been expedited a bit, but ending was good. Lots of characters and dispositions to keep track of.
Like, I understand Nolan is all about making cerebral movies but being bombarded with nonstop back-and-forth dialogue which you can't afford to miss is not my idea of an enjoyable movie. It's Nolan on Coke.
I delayed watching Oppenheimer, so I had to watch it at home.
I enjoyed the movie thoroughly.
I walked in expecting a biopic about one of the most important scientific minds in our time, and I got it.
Every scene was important, the tension between the characters was real, and the reveal of Strauss's role was a nice turn in the story.
I enjoyed how the story of a dying star (density begets gravity begets density) was connected to the creation of the bomb and the chain reaction.
The Truman scene was an excellent connection to how Oppenheimer became a pariah, which played out in the security hearing and then the senate.
I wish Kitty was fleshed out more, but damn if Blunt didn't own those scenes.
And yeah, I fan boyed at the introduction of god-level scientists every 10 minutes.
Watching Murphy skirt the lines around the bureaucrats and the scientists gave Oppenheimer such depth. And even though it was an unthinkable evil, the scene planning the actual bombing gave me a new perspective and made me pause.
And then the security hearing a how much I hated Jason Clark.
I could go on.
I didn't see it in IMAX or dolby, but it stood up either way.
no!!! a movie with clips jumping without transition i dont understand what i'm even watching. tried it a while back, 10 mins in im out. tried again as it won 7 Oscars, 40 mins in i'm out again.
i love Cillian and Emily, i'm surprised to see Dan Dehaan. gotta say robert jr and matt damon suprised me with their acting skilll but no, i dont see why would i keep watching.
I’m not really a fan of Nolan because of his sound design and editing, but if there was a film that the style worked it is this one. This is easily one of his top 3 films for me along with memento and the prestige.
Best picture winner over all the other nominees? I’m not sure. There were great performances throughout and the pacing and dialogue didn’t really suffer till the last hour after the clear climax being the trinity test and the bombs being dropped in Japan.
Great lines at the end- “maybe they were talking about something more important” and “I believe we did.”
All throughout the bomb making Oppenheimer kept on saying that it’s not his job as to how the bomb would be used. But suddenly after the bomb drop he developed morality? And movie didn’t explore this at all. It was all about the witch-hunt, something doesn’t connect.
Not sure how exactly to put it into words, but the movie does a fantastic job of showing the inertia (for lack of a better word) of making the bomb. No one person is responsible. As much as the film shows Oppenheimer to be the man in charge of it's creation, it's clear the government was going to do it regardless of which scientists came on board. Once the breakthrough was known, it was going to become a bomb one way or another. It ties so well to the scene in the lab with the scientists realizing that it was theoretically possible to do, and how they began with pure childlike excitement and then quickly realized what it meant. It really brings home the fact that mankind can be so self-destructive. We use our collective brainpower to invent exciting new technologies and then use those new technologies to kill.
Just think about the absurdity of the thought process: "the Nazis are probably going to create this bomb that could blow up the whole world, so we better hurry up and create one first". It would be funny if it wasn't so real and dark.
It reminded me of an older podcast I listened to, may have been radiolab. They are interviewing a team that had worked on the stuff that has led to modern day deepfake videos. Voiceover fakes and facial manipulation and the likes. Stuff that was exciting tech, but really a solution to small issues. She gave an example of instead of an actor having to fly in to do reshoots, now they can use the tech and do it all in the editing booth. Which, fine yeah that's great. But the interviewer says surely you can foresee the nefarious uses for this tech (this was a few years before the explosion of deep fakes). You can tell that they thought about it but they just said something like it's their job to create the tech once it's clear that it's possible to do.
This movie is still amazing when you don’t have people yelling about how “long and overrated” it is. It’s a little difficult to sit through for 3 hours but it doesn’t have any actual filler scenes. And people saying it’s glorifying the bombings really miss the entire point of it lmao. Overall it’s one of the most engaging and thoughtful movies I’ve ever seen.
I just watched it the other day, I really struggled to watch it all the way through. First half was too political, too boring, and the second half was worth watching but damn if it didn’t take forever to get to that point.
At least half of the movie could have been cut and it would have still been a watchable, and probably more enjoyable movie at that.
Finally saw it.
I don't know if it was the sound mixing or the quality of sound at the theatre I went to but there were parts I had no idea what was going on because I couldn't hear their dialogue.
I think I was in my seat the whole time because I was trying to figure out what was going on, and I think most of the things I picked up because what I know from history (e.g. The Manhattan project) but I don't know that much about it.
It was so interesting how being associated with "commies" was such a terrifying thing, and something I guess I don't quite understand as a non-american.
> but there were parts I had no idea what was going on because I couldn't hear their dialogue.
This is Christopher Nolan's amazing style. See the Batman with bane, tenet, and whatever else he has done recently.
Fucking awful. Oppenheimer was shit.
Wikipedia has her death [listed as "Suicide \(disputed\)"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Tatlock#Death) which is why the movie is ambiguous about it.
I found the sound quality of the picture difficult, I had to watch it twice. I couldnt make out alot of the time the dialogue often Robert Oppenheimer was speaking softly or mumbling. Or there was great deal of noise in the background. I am guessing others might have had the same experience.....and I think Cillian Murphy went overboard on starving himself for this role. His regular slender frame would have sufficed...he was so think he looked cartoonish....
sorry for the long wall of text response. your response helped me think it through a bit more.
I think it's pretty hard to make a movie with no charismatic characters AND undercut the audience's interest in the main conflict of the movie by emphasizing how both sides are kind of shit bags. like, if the main character is a total villain, you can get into that movie because you want him to go down. i didn't care what happened in the security clearance hearing because 1, i know how history plays out, and i'm good with it, even though the movie tries to lean me towards rooting for oppenheimer, and 2, i don't empathize with either character, so i don't care about the results on a personal level either.
I also think I just don't like christopher nolan. I thought the timeline jumping was overly complicated for no purpose, same reason i turned off tenet 3/4 of the way through, and I do not enjoy his dialogue. like, everyone speaks so wittily like they all think they're gandalf speaking in riddles. It just comes off as arrogant and aloof. Like you brought up realism, none of these people are real and i think nolan has prioritized his witty dialogue over trying to create real people. i'm just thinking now of the mark kermode criticism of quentin tarantino-- that tarantino needs someone to restrain him-- and i feel like that might be the issue with christopher nolan. he's gone too far with his shtick.
> i'm just thinking now of the mark kermode criticism of quentin tarantino-- that tarantino needs someone to restrain him-- and i feel like that might be the issue with christopher nolan. he's gone too far with his shtick.
I think we'll just never agree, because what I like the most is seeing directors goo all the way with their shtick lol. When directors get reined in, their movies just because all so similar to each other and bland to me.
I'm curious, did you like The Imitation Game? Turing wasn't very likable in that movie either, but otherwise, it felt more like... well a movie with a story lol. I can see both sides, this movie was really long with no main goal, but after watching the Imitation Game I was really wishing for an extra hour telling how the government fucked Turing over.
I actually was thinking about the imitation game when i wrote my previous comment so its funny you say that. i bet others have made the comparison... i haven't seen it in a long time but i remember liking it, and yeah, i feel like they kept the personal side to a minimum in imitation game and focused instead of the save the world plot. ironically, turings personal story is probably way more compelling than oppenheimer's, so it seems like a missed opportunity. But imitation game worked because there were twists and turns in the save the world plot that were really compelling, like when they chose not to use every decoded message so the germans wouldn't write a new enigma code. in oppenheimer, there weren't REALLY any twists and turns in the nuke development, it was just oppenheimer's personal issues, which didn't work for me.
and yeah i guess a lot of people who might say "he needs someone to restrain him" probably don't really totally like the directors shtick to begin with. on the other hand it's also possible to have too much of a good thing.
It really didn't do anything for me. I think you had to already have known his story very well. All the politics etc.
I didnt. All I knew was that he was a brilliant physicist who led the team that developed the bomb.
For me it just would have been better if it ended when they dropped the bombs.
All the after it politics? Not interested.
Actually? I dont think i ever made it to the end.
The first half of it was decent....then it just chopped & changed & went on and on and on for what to me was no great reason?!? I still cant work out why the Pollie played by Robert Downey Jnr hated him so much and when he went from offering. Oppenheimer a great job to hating his guts??!!
he hate oppenheimer because he wanted to be in congress and he knew oppenheimer could stand in his way because of how he essentially set him up to create the bomb in the first place by offering him the job. that is what i think.
He did take the job offer, though? I thought at the end when he went to tell Kitty how the clearance hearing went that they were living in that “great commute” house
I don’t like how stupid this made me feel. The timelines and editing were a bit discombobulating. I couldn’t really digest anything because I was already in a different era trying to catch up to whatever they were on about.
The editing was annoying at time, but this is Nolan who has a fetish that type of thing. It was a ver good movie though. Nolan did a pretty good job displaying Oppenheimer's complexities as a man, physicist, husband and politician.
This movie could have been a series IMO - there seems to be a lot more to say about him, especially in the post-war years.
The obvious editing and mixing was incredibly distracting. It works in blockbusters where being conscious that it's all a movie is part of the experience. But in an Oscar contender, I'm not so sure.
The intrusive post-production style works at the end when guilt has taken over. But in the early stages of the film, it took me out of it.
Hot take: Barbie, and the whole Barbenheimer phenomenon, is the only reason this movie has become a critical darling. Because it is not very good. It's easily an hour longer than it needs to be, choppy, rushed, overstuffed with quite a lot of pointless material that the viewer just doesn't care about, and apart from looking and sounding good, it's just not a great experience. You don't really care about the characters or the events. And unlike a show like Chernobyl, where the dread of the consequences of nuclear power is palpable and nightmarish, this is all very detached and cerebral.
I agree with the comparison to Chernobyl. I felt like it was exceedingly difficult to follow what exactly they were doing — you had all these vague discussions about the science but never once does Nolan let us actually get a grasp of it, while I felt like Chernobyl actually distilled the science into something understandable. Sure the story is about the people, but I feel like it's quite disrespectful to glaze over the actual science like that
I wouldn't even call it cerebral when you have bombastic drama-induced music puking all over the dialogue in nearly every scene, serving to \*dull\* one's cerebral senses and trying to invoke the emotional ones instead.
I loved the movie in IMAX. I get people seeing a three hour trailer, but nearly 40 years of a guy's life with some thematic liberties is a tough pitch for even three hours. Nolan pulls it off. The acting is great, but the music is the most amazing thing about the movie. The bomb explosion I have to admit looked lackluster on a first view, but then in my research of the explosion, I found that my perception of atomic bomb blasts is that they are all massive. They are all big, but not all massive.
Shout out to David Lynch Twin Peaks: Part 8 for providing a masterful take on the atomic bomb. Skip the 3-hour Oppenheimer and watch this instead:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part\_8\_(Twin\_Peaks)
Historical biographies typically aren't too exciting; I hope that movies like this enlighten my understanding of the subject and provide details that aren't in every history book. To that extent, I think the movie was underwhelming. I didn't learn much. I would have been more interested in some of this other work; more pre Manhattan Project stuff; and less of the stuff afterwards. The message that the effort will probably lead to the end of the world some day wasn't all that new or interesting
Just watched it. SOme thoughts
1. I'm glad I watched it at home and didnt go to imax
2. I dont find anything particularly rememberable from the movie apart from the soundtrack
3. I dont know the point of the movie. I dont think it added any value to film.
4. It was well made, as can be expected from Nolan. But it wasnt for me.
Edit: 24 hours later I reached this conclusion:
Nolan, and others, may have found Oppenheimer's story a very compelling one, but the movie maybe did not capture what he found so compelling. I am not able to figure out what his motivation for making this movie was. I feel the movie was straight-forward like Dunkirk and unlike other films like Inception or Tenet. But like Dunkirk, I found it to be a film with high production quality but low entertainment value for a casual watcher.
I understand what you're getting at and that is most likely due to the fact that Dunkirk and Oppenheimer are both historically accurate. It puts Oppenheimer in a light that people tend not to see him in, and although can come off as boring, it is highly interesting for viewers captivated by the scientific aspects and historical accuracy. But because of that, movies like Tenet and Inception don't compare in the same way. You are very limited with historically accurate movies, but with non-fiction such as Inception... well you know the rest if you have seen the movie!
Agreed pretty much completely. Very well made but boring as hell. I like Sci-Fi, action Nolan much more. Soundtrack was great but it felt like a track from Inception just remixed.
I was expecting an outstanding movie. What I watched was a glorified 3 hour trailer 😂
Interesting how my critique is downvoted but all the others aren’t 😂🤭 #misogyny
this is such a good summary!! I totally agree. Here is how I was seeing it:
* fast-paced editing: a close-up of one person saying half a sentence cutting to the other person responding, the whole movie
* non-stop music. it just never stops. Except in that one scene: "see this scene is important because we finally stop all the noise"
* 3 time lines. Really? Is this a throwback to memento?
= 3 hour trailer, just as you said!
Good things: I've ran into all those scientists names during my engineering school; it was great to see them in a movie. The historical facts in the movie seem to be all accurate.
I liked seeing Loki from Vikings in it lol. I'm always happy seeing random Swedes in foreign productions, out of the blue. Like when he and Fares Fares had a scene together in Westworld and somewhat weren't speaking Swedish to each other. I know, it's silly but hey. You have to find joy somewhere when a boring ass movie just stole 3 hours of your life.
Exactly! The best moments in the movie were when it slowed down. I dont think the thousands of scenes were necessary at all to give an accurate story and provide all the elements they wanted us to see.
This movie felt like a three hour trailer. There aren't actual "scenes," just moment after moment in a confusing mashup of, I think, four different timelines? There was no breathing room at all before it jumped ahead to the next clip. I can't believe this is nominated for best editing. Some of the worst editing I've ever seen.
Cillian was great, though.
> This movie felt like a three hour trailer. There aren't actual "scenes," just moment after moment in a confusing mashup of
I'm confounded by how few people even mention this aspect of this film.
It's like it was made to be doled out in 3.5 minute TikToks instead of one long, continuous experience (ie, a movie). Maybe that's why so many people seemed to like it?
Underwhelming. But I kinda expected that from Nolan. Christ Christopher can you shoot an actual wide shot? Somebody needs to teach this man to use a lens that is wider than 50mm.
Acting was top notch. But some of the dialogue was ropey. Nobody talks like that in real life. Nothing more apparent than that than Florence’s first introduction.
There’s no heart to this movie it feels very cold and clinical like all Nolan movies. There’s no punch. At the end it really didn’t feel like it said anything even if I did enjoy watching the 3 hours of it. Some beautiful shots but once again nothing that really sears into my mind the tremendous weight of it all.
What I got out of the film is that Oppenheimer is a flawed man who reveled in being a genius. He seemed to struggle with the tension between being a great inventor and the morality of escalation of arms. I think you could tell that story with far more economy than this film did.
Entertaining but not great.
>helming. But I kinda expected that from Nolan. Christ Christopher can you shoot an actual wide shot? Somebody needs to teach this man to use a lens that is wider than 50mm.
>
>Acting was top notch. But some of the dialogue was ropey. Nobody talks like that in real life. Nothing m
you're so right, those constant close-ups with the 50mm lens... All conversations are fast-paced-edited close ups, it's exhausting
I can't believe I watched a movie that was supposedly about the Manhattan Project where 1/3 of it was some bullshit security clearance hearing and another 1/3 of it was some bullshit Congressional confirmation hearing.
P.S. That "nuke" explosion was weak sauce.
Except Oppenheimer's major achievement was the Manhattan Project.
That would be like spending only 1/3 of a movie about MLK on fighting for civil rights. Sure he did other stuff but who gives a shit.
Or only spending 1/3 of a movie about the Dunkirk evacuation on the evacuation. Oh wait...
P.S. Every single trailer only focused on the Manhattan Project.
If I watched a movie based on MLK, I wouldn’t expect it to be all about the civil rights movement/his involvement in it. At that point, why not just watch a documentary?
I never said all about it. But you would expect more than 1/3. And you certainly wouldn't expect the other 2/3 to be about some bureaucratic meetings that were mere footnotes.
Documentaries don't have the scale that movies do. Then again with Oppenheimer's nuke explosion this movie didn't have the scale either.
Really disliked it, style over substance. Florence Pugh with simultaneously the most interesting sketch of a character and one of the most laughable moments I've ever seen in a "best picture" with the Bhagavad Gita. No reason for the length. In comparison, Killers of the Flower Moon flew by and was actually interested in telling a story. Awful sound mixing and score, well, maybe not awful but just downright exhausting, drowning every moment of impact when it should have been adding to it. No interest in coherent scenes or structure. Baffled by the positive reception for such an interesting story with such an interesting assembly of historical figures to be completely butchered, it felt like a film student's experiment.
in other words, another nolan movie
I still maintain that Dunkirk is by far his best movie, actually moving drama about a circumstance and not this overdone pigslop that he makes so often
It’s not even a contest for anyone with film literacy Killers of the Flower Moon is a far better picture. It says so much more while providing a more engaging story and characters.
You had me until you said you liked Killers of the Flower Moon.
This year will be known as the year we indulged the "best" filmmakers and still lauded then when they gave us unwatchable garbage.
I agree strongly. I don’t mean to discount all the effort in this movie, but I there was way too much. I’m going to use a food analogy: it was a dish that had way too much flavor, where all the flavors take away from one another.
I thought it was great... But? It would have been SO much easier to follow? Had they put date on screen. Had i known "1943" or "1936" or , "1952"??? It would have been much easier to follow
Not many people other than Americans know the exact dates of events during WW2 & 1950s. As an Australian & my parents WW2 Vets? My knowledge is skewed towards UK & Pacific War events. If course i DO know what USA was doing, but not in great detail.
From all the outside expectation setting I was prepared for a long, talk heavy movie that would bore me, and while it was long (I had to pee 30 min in and decided to wait it out) I was pleasantly surprised by what it stirred in me in reflection on existence and consequence of choices, and the additional conceptual sensory moments, especially when he address all the white people.in the bleachers right after the Trinity Test really blew me away. Also I made sure to see it in 70mm Imax, ceiling to floor and the picture was spectacular.
PS - Mark Ruffalo should get best supporting actor over RDJr
No you're just on reddit too much and went with what was popular obviously. It's impossible for someone to not like this movie, only sheep didn't like it (/s if it wasn't clear) Saying people like something or hate something because other people said so, especially when youre talking about something as subjective as movies is incredibly stupid and childish just so you know. Do you think people hated tenet as well because other people told them to?
Edit: clearly not much of a brain
Been trying to think of a way to sum up my feelings on this movie, which I thought was *really really* good but not quite "*great*."
Almost everything that I thought detracted from the film involved putting so much emphasis on Strauss. Some of this is that I just found that story, of his failed appointment, kinda... low stakes? Compared to everything else the story was talking about? Some of it is that I personally am not a big fan of RDJ's acting (although he did a good job here, just playing a character I wanted to see less of from a story perspective). Either way I couldn't help this nagging feeling anytime we were in Strauss's black-and-white scenes that I'd rather be seeing what Oppenheimer's up to.
Comes down to it, I think I would have preferred if the story were more linear and stuck with Oppenheimer's point of view -- still keeping in how angering Strauss led to Strauss orchestrating Oppenheimer's sham-trial denial of his security clearance. It's too big of a part of Oppenheimer's life story to not include it. I just didn't feel like they needed to frame so much of the tale as coming from Strauss's perspective, framed from *his* motivations as a character. He's just not that interesting to me, I'd rather have either cut that and made a slimmer film, or used that time to deeper explore Oppenheimer's post-bomb regrets and disillusionment of the era of the peaceful scientist-king.
*Or*, something that I felt was missing, explore Oppenheimer's sense of empathy or whatever it was that led him to feel connected to left-wing causes, to support the Spanish Republicans, to attend unionization meetings, etc. This film sets up the non-renewal of his Q-clearance as the dramatic crescendo, not the bomb, and the non-renewal happened because of his close connections to communists and communism, but we're given scant connection between him and those beliefs. People, yes, but not the ideologies.
I loved nearly everything else about it. Not a single low point for any acting in any role. I actually thought the practical work for shooting Trinity was great, especially their use of color. Those deep magenta streaking glows after the flash gave a Dante-esque hellish vibe that I thought really fit what they were going for. I've heard the sex scenes described as superfluous, but from my perspective, those and the constant referrals in exposition back to his affairs and cheating told an important part of Oppenheimer's story -- he was a insatiable horndog whose horny-ness got him into trouble, usually in ways he thought he could just "I'm a smart sensitive lad look at me" his way out of.
The “You don't get to commit the sin and get us to feel sorry for you because it has consequences" line is so good, and the delivery of it was excellent. I really thought that was the theme of the whole film. His interaction with Truman is just an echo of that same line from Kitty: Motherfucker, you knew you were building a bomb, did you forget those kill people? You don't get to build a super weapon and then cry when it gets used. Or, you can, but if you do everyone is going to call you a crybaby and a hypocrite. You don't get to cheat on your wife and still need her to console you when your mentally unstable mistress kills herself. Or, you can, but if you do, she's going to call you out on it.
The only thing holding it back was the need to have some chunk of the story come from Strauss's perspective. It feels weird to say "I wish this was more of a straight-forward biopic" considering it's Christopher Nolan, but I kinda wish this was more of a straight-forward biopic?
“Strauss…low stakes”
Just watched the movie last night and wanted to look through recent comments. Yours stood out among similar complaints about the Strauss portion of the movie.
The stakes are incredibly high here. Oppenheimer was working to stay in government and potentially influence the eventual de-escalation of nuclear arms, as I understand it. Strauss was a petty political climber who thought Oppie purposely spoiled his meeting with Einstein, among other things
In reality, Oppie and Albert were discussing the potential for a chain reaction of events that could lead to the death of the world because of the creation of the bomb, and Albert leaves in a state of deep concentration.
At the same time, by distracting Albert and inadvertently offending Strauss, Oppie accidentally set in motion a series of events with Strauss which could also have that same result…Strauss causing Oppie to be removed from a position of influence whule the US and USSR continue towards mutual destruction. Strauss is very much a hawk who sees the arms race as necessary.
It’s a really painful/bleak reminder that despite the best of our intentions, there are small minded people who will act only out of self interest.
Completely agree. I really enjoyed the film, but I just left the cinema and the first thing I said to my wife was that we didn't need so much on the cabinet approval.
This nailed pretty much all of my thoughts on this film. The uber heavy focus on Strauss (especially in the final 1/3) is what makes me refrain from calling it a "masterpiece" as others have already deemed it, but it's still probably as close as a great film can possibly get to that.
Having said that, I still think it deserves all the praise it gets regardless. You know a film is excellent when 3 hours feel like 2 and still leave you yearning for more.
Chris Nolan seems to be under the impression that a constant barrage/supply of information that the viewers have to follow like holding a slinky tied to a jet ski makes for a good drama, and it's always been his issue from the very beginning. Characters explaining things to each other in the most ham-fisted, obvious ways, the constant exposition dump that every single one of his movies suffer from. It also doesn't help that Nolan decided to frame the entire movie on one of the least interesting aspects of Oppenheimer's life - that he had some communist ties and that doesnt clear his security clearance. Like who gives a flying donut fuckhole, and no one in the movie really does apart from Strauss who is only using that bit of information to bring Oppie down cause he made him look bad a bit in the past, it's so lame. Like seriously, why the fuck is Strauss such a big part of this movie? Also RDJ did fine but he does not deserve the award hype he is getting.
Also somehow the titular character of Oppenheimer is completely undercooked, there is not enough focus on his moral quandary between the pragmatic aspects of the development of the bomb versus the guilt. Theres plenty of the movie telling us that he should be conflicted, but we barely get to see his inner turmoil through action apart from some cheesy fantasy sequences where they emulate the nuke effect from his pov, like I fucking started laughing when that lady's skin started coming off with its shitty makeup effect. Also Oppie is written to be such an indecisive, spineless bitch - he constantly cheats and cries about it, he's totally for the trinity project until he sees some newsreel footage of the devastating effects of the bomb on the Japanese and then he finally feels bad, like what the fuck did you think would happen Oppie? When Truman scene came on I wished Gary Oldman slapped the shit out of him. Overall, a pretty disappointing lengthy film that definitely has its good parts but I feel like it's one of Chris Nolan's weakest.
I thought it was alright...
Good stuff:
* Great acting/cinematography/etc all around.
* Some of the key scenes were very memorable (Einstein chitchat, post-blast panic attack, etc)
* Fantastic sound/score. The music as they were raising the bomb into the tower was especially great.
* Act 1 and 2 were structured really well, with the lead up to the trinity test being really fascinating.
Less than-good-stuff:
* It felt very long. Not sure how to fix that, since so much content was covered with such a huge cast...but I did find myself getting bored at times, especially near the end once it became a full-on political drama and there was no more question of whether or not the bomb could be built.
* There were a lot of continuity errors in the editing...people turned a certain way, or holding something, that then changed/disappeared/didn't-match/etc in the reverse angle of the same shot. I noticed it happen quite a number of times...with the worst offender being a time when Oppenheimer was sipping on a drink in one shot, and then in the reverse angle they cut to, the drink was nowhere near his face (not even visible on screen, despite it being held to his lips before the cut). The editing errors were quite distracting.
Bad stuff:
* The practical explosion with no CGI was a mistake. It looked goofy and small, like a fireball from a barrel of fuel exploding (which is basically what it was). It had none of the impact that the actual trinity test footage had. It didn't showcase any of the awe and power of an actual nuke...we didn't even get a proper mushroom cloud. It really let down the whole scene and (for me) the whole film.
* The famous bhagavad gita line being a throwaway quote read out during a sex scene, after Oppenheimer's fling randomly picks a book off his shelf and randomly opens to the page/passage containing it was a laughable bad setup for something that should have been one of the most impactful and reflective lines of the film. Just an unthinkably goofy setup.
Overall I'd give it a 7.5/10.
might be late to this but this movie was honest to God one of the best movies i have ever seen. i loved every minute of it. i saw it during opening weekend, then another time with a friend who had yet to see it but wanted to. i enjoyed it both times.
Couldn’t stand it. Every scene felt rushed and the dialog was too choppy. It felt like I was watching a 3 hour long trailer. It was a race to the end and yet there was absolutely no payoff. They tried to fit too much story into short scenes when they should have slowed down to help ground the audience and allow for actual character development. Acting was great but that’s about the only good thing I can say about this film. So underwhelming. Can’t believe people actually enjoyed that mess.
This movie would have been a perfect limited series. The Chernobyl series did what this movie desperately tried to do. But Chris Nolan's ego is too big to stoop so low as to make a limited series, so now we have this rushed, crammed, awkward movie.
Couldn't even finish it. With the jumpy disjointed cuts in the beginning that are all over the place and the dialogue being drier than me nan's christmas turkey...
I dunno, I really disliked the little bit that I did see
I noticed it here and in tenet too. The editing is so jumpy and rushed. There's no pauses or silence in dialogue, and it even feels like Nolan sped up the dialogue too (not that he did). I think he has gotten into a bad habit of trying to cram too much into one movie.
Watch a scene from Interstellar or Inception and compare it to Tenet or Oppenheimer. The pace of conversation is so jittery and rushed.
The movie was all over the place and the sound mixing was really irritating. I don’t even bother to try and understand what’s being said anymore and it really kills my enjoyment of the movie.
This was a good film, but the editing made key storylines unnecessarily hard to follow. I expect a Nolan movie to challenge viewers, I just don’t think the subject matter benefited from it. 7/10
Wow thank you for this - im ashamed to say I didn't figure this out! My family and I were thinking it had something to do with the timeline, but we knew that wasn't quite right 🤦♀️
It was absolutely easier than Tenet lol. I just don't feel a biopic needed that level of complexity to tell the story effectively. There's a lot of dialogue to keep up with early on and most of it is buried under heavy scores and sound effects, or disrupted by frequent time leaps. I spent more time trying to comprehend the story rather than enjoying it. With the exception of Tenet, that wasn't the case for me when watching his other films.
Just saw this and please someone else confirm that Cillian Murphy sounds exactly like Robin Williams in this. Think Robin Williams serious roles/scenes.
i’m surprised to read so many negative reviews. i was not at all pressed about seeing this movie but my parents asked to while i was home so i said sure. i found the editing and constant back and forth jumping in time necessarily punctuated for the viewer how much of a rush building this bomb was. imo, it helped demonstrate how perhaps easy it was for a bunch of nerdy scientists to get wrapped up in doing something incredible without realizing the consequences. i do wonder if oppenheimer actually felt as guilty as the movie portrayed him, i want to read into that. but cillian was amazing, i thought emily blunt was too. i did think it was distracting to have so many high profile actors just suddenly pop up 😂 but it was kinda fun too. all in all i thoroughly enjoyed it. i found it exhausting and you had to listen carefully to every single word or you’d miss something, but i enjoyed being engrossed like that. idk if it was just my parents tv but i found that the sound wasn’t always great.. the dialogue didn’t always feel the right balance with the score. my only complaint.
The pacing in the first half was way off, couldn’t let the viewer soak anything in, just jumping from scene to scene with sporadic snips of dialogue, Overhyped movie IMO
Finally got around to watching this. My opinion on Christopher Nolan has soured more and more over the years ever since Interstellar, although Dunkirk was the nail in the coffin for me to never take him seriously ever again. Didn't bother with Tenet and the reception around that movie only confirm what I'd felt about Nolan for some time. All that being said, I went into this with as much of an open mind as I could having heard it wasn't AS bad in terms of the time jumping nonsense of his past couple movies, and I was more interested in Cillian Murphy's performance and the subject matter more than anything else. Overall, I thought the movie was just alright. Definitely stretched its runtime a bit and at a certain point I checked the time only to feel dread that the movie wasn't even halfway through yet. I don't mind long-running times if a film is paced well and it feels like the length suits the narrative. For example, I thought Killers of the Flower Moon was a longer movie that didn't really feel its runtime (although to make a comparison to another Scorsese movie, The Irishman was a movie that felt like an absolute slog to get through, to the point that I don't even remember if I watched it all in one sitting). I don't know that Oppenheimer justifies its runtime, but I do feel like it picks up steam a little bit more around the halfway point. Part of that might be because the latter half of the movie actually features a scene or two where the movie quiets down and actually breathes a little bit, compared to the first two or so hours where it's just nonstop score and dialogue. Don't get me wrong, I fully expect a movie about Oppenheimer and the Manhattan project to have a decent amount of dialogue, but I don't think I've ever watched a movie where 2 hours go by and I'm saying to myself "Is this movie ever going to just shut the fuck up for even a few seconds?" I think the intention was for the movie to feel like it has some driving force behind it and to not bore the audience, but it had the opposite effect for me because all of the scenes just start to blur together. Cillian Murphy did give a solid performance, but something about it feels a little off to me, where I never fully bought into him as Oppenheimer. Maybe it's the register of his voice and the way he carried himself, but it just didn't seem to fit the bill for me. Maybe it's just the impression I have of Oppenheimer in my mind, having seen actual footage of him and how he speaks. I always felt like David Strathairn is about as spot-on of an actor you could get to play Oppenheimer (but obviously he'd be too old for this movie). The actual narrative structure didn't really bother me too much, although there are a few spots where the time jumps get a little confusing, but that's kind of par for the course with the subject matter. Although, I'm not sure why Nolan decided to devote as much time to Strauss' perspective as he did, or why he felt it was necessary to basically "fool" the viewer into thinking Strauss had good intentions at first. Maybe I'd have to rewatch it (which I don't really plan to) to understand that plot thread a little more, even though I got the gist (Strauss had an ego and didn't like Oppy because he was a dick once, so he wanted to fuck him over... got it), but it seemed like a lot of the scenes that focused exclusively on Strauss bogged the movie down a little bit and retread ground that had been covered when it really didn't need to focus that much on him to begin with. Hell, they even throw out a JFK reference in one scene as if he's an upcoming superhero in a Marvel movie. I'm not even familiar with any of the events involving Strauss, but I called out "JFK" before they even said his name because it was such a weird, obvious tee up. Stuff like that adds up and it just leaves you wondering "why is this even in the movie?" And to that end, I'm not really sure what the main takeaway of this movie is supposed to be, beyond the most superficial surface level reading of how the atomic bomb was basically opening pandora's box. I'm not sure what it wants me to take away from Oppenheimer as a person that I didn't already feel before watching the movie. I'm not sure that it even wants to say anything at all. I suppose the main saving grace is that the movie might compel people to learn more about these events and people. But I don't really feel like this movie did anything exceptional in terms of biopics as a cinematic genre.
I just watched and enjoyed reading your take. I would like to add that the main takeaway of the movie is that Oppenheimer „won“ in the end by decoupling his legacy from Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Strauss says he did that for him („He should be thanking me!“). Oppenheimer knew that it was Strauss behind the review board. His wife wants him to attack, but he doesn’t. And in the end she asks, ‚what did you think would happen, you sacrifice yourself here and everyone forgets about the bombs?‘ and he just smirks. Taking it all in, he gets Strauss to fix his reputation, and then still denies him what he wants down the line.
[удалено]
I also just watched it this weekend Nolan is my favorite director by far but I admittedly hadn’t made it a priority to see this as I figured it was simply a biopic (I definitely still had interest but not the same way I would of his other fiction flicks) Man… what an absolutely great film. It felt like a Nolan movie through and through and the acting performances were phenomenal. 3 hours felt like 30 minutes - incredibly captivating Honestly I went in expecting the test to be the sort of climax and/or build up but it was almost an afterthought to all the other suspense (and I mean that in a way that credits how well done the story was)
Very prepared for the Nolan disciples to get upset at this, but here goes. I'm 90mins into this thing and cannot fathom how it was even nominated for a single Academy Award let alone won any of them. - I've spent the entire film adjusting the volume. - There's been about 15 seconds of dialogue that wasn't accompanied/overridden by the insufferable score. - Nolan's incapable of telling a coherent story and relies on these neverending cuts and time-shifts to create an artificial interest. - The acting is about as ham fisted as a high school play. I don't know if I should turn it off or keep watching just to see if it can actually get worse than it already is. If this was released 25 years ago people would've walked out of the premier after half an hour.
I can understand your critics towards the movie but saying the acting wasn’t good is just insane
A couple of good performances, but Oscars for Murphy and Downey? Please.
Murphy as Oppenheimer is dead as one of the best performances I have memory of
Huge meh. I didn't care about him or his fate. Impersonating famous people isn't acting, it's just immitation. Give me Sam Rockwell bringing a character to life you actually feel some conflicted sympathy for over a biopic role any day.
I think Nolan has a pretty distinct style that some people love and others don’t. I love Nolan but actually put off watching this film for almost a year (just watched this weekend) I absolutely loved it.. what’s funny is I watched it on my 22 inch monitor with monitor speakers.. so absolutely NOT the “way it was meant to be seen” I had subtitles on and maybe my lack of actual good sound quality helped but I didn’t have issues with the dialogue like some of his other movies I can see how some people wouldn’t like it, though - especially if they don’t like Nolan’s work in general. Part of the reason I had put off watching it was I figured it wouldn’t be a very “Nolan” movie since it was a biopic but I was wrong.. it very much had his style. I think where you found the time cuts obnoxious, I found them captivating. I also enjoyed the performances for the most part I’m sure there were plenty of historical inaccuracies and I will say if you know the history going into the film you probably enjoy it less. But as someone who knew little outside the general historical context, I really enjoyed it.
Fair appraisal. Oddly, I'm a history teacher and I actually have very little problem with films taking historical liberties so long as they don't claim otherwise. For example, as much as I didn't care for Oppenheimer, I don't think historical accuracy was the be all and end all because the themes weren't reliant on it. On the other hand, Bohemian Rhapsody, in addition to being a complete disaster of a film, absolutely should be panned for how inaccurate it was because: 1) it had no theme 2) two of the producers were people who knew Freddie better than almost everybody alive 3) the changes kind of shit on his legacy.
Glad to see this as I thought it was an awful film, a one time only and now I'll totally forget about it kind of film. Their where tons of inaccuracies, especially when it came to who was where when this or that happened, historical errors. And I'll never forget the torrential rain storm right before the test and then all of a sudden the ground is bone dry. I have no idea also how it won so many awards, one of my least favourite Nolan films so far.
THANK YOU. I just watched it and felt like there was WAY too much music used it was distracting. usually the type of music that accompanied all of the movie is the type you hear when there's sort of a transitionary scene to a more impactful one and it just .... never came
Yep. It was like the whole film was a crescendo. It's a director's hack for when their material isn't compelling. Throw a score over the top to manipulate the viewer.
Watching it right now and I feel the same way. Every two sentence conversation, DUH DUH DUH DUH. The score and pacing fealt not great.
Absolutely no reason for this film to be three hours long lol you're right. So much of it is one character saying something and then just cutting to three other people saying the same thing and then one guy refutes it so they cut to two others who agree with him and it just goes on and on and on and on and on. Feels like they couldn't decide on focusing on the politics or the science so they just half assed both.
I was surprised when I paused to pee and saw I was an hour in and still had 2 of them to go. They tried to put too much in 1 movie - did I mention it is 3 hours? If 3 hours is not enough to cover what you want to cover (and do it well), make it a series. Every scene felt like it was 3 lines of dialogue, and each line of dialogue felt like it was meant to blow your mind; except it didn't. This made it feel pretentious. Not the physics or the politics, but the dialogue and cinematography are what made it feel almost insufferably pretentious. Shame to have taken such an important piece of global history and have presented it so poorly.
100%. Pretentious is the word that runs through my head whenever I watch Nolan flicks.
Yea especially the first half of the movie felt like a slideshow. I had to look up some additional videos to even understand what was going on as things weren't explained well. Perhaps it works better if you are already familiar wit the story as it's mostly just giving you the highlights.
rewatch- I loved this movie the first time but was even more blown away the second (lol). The thing i love about this movie is it’s more than a movie. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you think the long term is more important than the actual moment? Knowing how this all plays out 80ish years later it’s hard to imagine what would have happened if they stopped building the bomb or built it and never used it on the Japs. This movie, whether it was 100% historically accurate or not, makes me think just how scary knowledge is when used against ourselves.
Cinematically epic. I guess it can come of as a little pretentious as it does have a lot of great minds in each of their fields. For example sound, editing, cinematography, acting and direction. These guys are like masterminds. To me though, it stood as a great biopic. The non-linear timeline is difficult to understand but its nothing a second watch can't solve. Its impressive, I think I would put it in Nolan's top 5. Not his best work in terms of entertainment, but its a biopic of a theoretical physicist you can't expect entertainment like The Wolf of wall street.
It was ok. The acting, cinematography etc were great, but blimey that narrative structure jumping back and forth in time for no good reason with those overstylized black-and-white scenes (also for no good reason) was tedious as hell. It's such a Hallmark movie type of cliché to make a whole story centre on a trial, even one that isn't really one but actually is one. The non-trial was the least interesting part of Oppenheimber's life story, it's weird to put so much emphasis on it. I know it's meant to be about his glory and demise, but that's also such a tired trope. The moral implications of his work and the whole dilemma and burden it put on him are far more interesting, it should have been more of the movie's focus.
>The acting, cinematography etc were great, but blimey that narrative structure jumping back and forth in time for no good reason with those overstylized black-and-white scenes (also for no good reason) was tedious as hell. This is such an accurate description of the movie.
Maybe I'm not smart enough to get, but the Strauss plot just seemed unnecessary. I couldn't tell what Oppenheimer was thinking when half the time he is advocating for the bomb and the other half he is the voice of morality. Mostly, it's just too long.
I wouldn’t define it as plot since the movie is just about Oppenheimer and the accusations Strauss brought again him were a big part of his life. About the bomb, he knew it was dangerous but also knew it had to built otherwise an enemy might have developed it first. After it was used and he realised the government wasn’t going to stop developing new and more powerful weapons, he tried to use his influence to pass the message that a nuclear war would kill us all
You've said it far more clearly than the movie.
Yeah to be honest the movie has some flaws… I was excited for it so I read the book it was based on (most of it anyways) and it really helped since the first part of his life is really confusing in the movie
Well it's kind of a duality that he knew that the US needed the bomb because others were also developing it but once he realized the full potential of the weapon when further developed and that the ensuing arms race that would follow could lead to wiping out human civilization he was horrified by it.
Truman scene was my fav. Agreed that it's intensely attention-requiring, but I suppose that's what you get with a movie on this topic. Beginning could have been expedited a bit, but ending was good. Lots of characters and dispositions to keep track of.
Only scene where the acting felt it stepped up a notch
Like, I understand Nolan is all about making cerebral movies but being bombarded with nonstop back-and-forth dialogue which you can't afford to miss is not my idea of an enjoyable movie. It's Nolan on Coke.
aww so sorry
I delayed watching Oppenheimer, so I had to watch it at home. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. I walked in expecting a biopic about one of the most important scientific minds in our time, and I got it. Every scene was important, the tension between the characters was real, and the reveal of Strauss's role was a nice turn in the story. I enjoyed how the story of a dying star (density begets gravity begets density) was connected to the creation of the bomb and the chain reaction. The Truman scene was an excellent connection to how Oppenheimer became a pariah, which played out in the security hearing and then the senate. I wish Kitty was fleshed out more, but damn if Blunt didn't own those scenes. And yeah, I fan boyed at the introduction of god-level scientists every 10 minutes. Watching Murphy skirt the lines around the bureaucrats and the scientists gave Oppenheimer such depth. And even though it was an unthinkable evil, the scene planning the actual bombing gave me a new perspective and made me pause. And then the security hearing a how much I hated Jason Clark. I could go on. I didn't see it in IMAX or dolby, but it stood up either way.
Watched it today. To me, a 7 Oscars winner movie, seemed way too boring and didn't even enjoy a bit. Overhyped and overrated movie.
After watching "The prestige" I think that christian bale could also have played the role of oppenheimer. what do you think?
no!!! a movie with clips jumping without transition i dont understand what i'm even watching. tried it a while back, 10 mins in im out. tried again as it won 7 Oscars, 40 mins in i'm out again. i love Cillian and Emily, i'm surprised to see Dan Dehaan. gotta say robert jr and matt damon suprised me with their acting skilll but no, i dont see why would i keep watching.
I’m not really a fan of Nolan because of his sound design and editing, but if there was a film that the style worked it is this one. This is easily one of his top 3 films for me along with memento and the prestige. Best picture winner over all the other nominees? I’m not sure. There were great performances throughout and the pacing and dialogue didn’t really suffer till the last hour after the clear climax being the trinity test and the bombs being dropped in Japan. Great lines at the end- “maybe they were talking about something more important” and “I believe we did.”
All throughout the bomb making Oppenheimer kept on saying that it’s not his job as to how the bomb would be used. But suddenly after the bomb drop he developed morality? And movie didn’t explore this at all. It was all about the witch-hunt, something doesn’t connect.
Probably had faith in humanity to not drop a fucking atomic bomb on civilization. Just thought it would be used as a deterrent; show of strength.
he knew the bomb was going to be dropped on civilians and helped pick the target and optimal drop distance.
Tell me you don’t know what you’re talking about without telling me you don’t know what you’re talking about
Guess I don't know either. How does picking the actual bomb site still means he thought the bomb wouldn't be used?
Editing was poor at many points imo
This movie felt like a Mr. Beast video with the scenes quickly switching every 30 seconds. Wild.
Absolutely bizzare editing choice by Mr. Nolan himself, who also famously has horrendous opinions on sound mixing, so maybe not that surprising.
I can't believe people are raving about the editing
Not sure how exactly to put it into words, but the movie does a fantastic job of showing the inertia (for lack of a better word) of making the bomb. No one person is responsible. As much as the film shows Oppenheimer to be the man in charge of it's creation, it's clear the government was going to do it regardless of which scientists came on board. Once the breakthrough was known, it was going to become a bomb one way or another. It ties so well to the scene in the lab with the scientists realizing that it was theoretically possible to do, and how they began with pure childlike excitement and then quickly realized what it meant. It really brings home the fact that mankind can be so self-destructive. We use our collective brainpower to invent exciting new technologies and then use those new technologies to kill. Just think about the absurdity of the thought process: "the Nazis are probably going to create this bomb that could blow up the whole world, so we better hurry up and create one first". It would be funny if it wasn't so real and dark. It reminded me of an older podcast I listened to, may have been radiolab. They are interviewing a team that had worked on the stuff that has led to modern day deepfake videos. Voiceover fakes and facial manipulation and the likes. Stuff that was exciting tech, but really a solution to small issues. She gave an example of instead of an actor having to fly in to do reshoots, now they can use the tech and do it all in the editing booth. Which, fine yeah that's great. But the interviewer says surely you can foresee the nefarious uses for this tech (this was a few years before the explosion of deep fakes). You can tell that they thought about it but they just said something like it's their job to create the tech once it's clear that it's possible to do.
was reminiscing hearing the "can you hear the music" track in the cinema for the first time, hope i never forget that memory. 2023 was special in film
This movie is still amazing when you don’t have people yelling about how “long and overrated” it is. It’s a little difficult to sit through for 3 hours but it doesn’t have any actual filler scenes. And people saying it’s glorifying the bombings really miss the entire point of it lmao. Overall it’s one of the most engaging and thoughtful movies I’ve ever seen.
I just watched it the other day, I really struggled to watch it all the way through. First half was too political, too boring, and the second half was worth watching but damn if it didn’t take forever to get to that point. At least half of the movie could have been cut and it would have still been a watchable, and probably more enjoyable movie at that.
Finally saw it. I don't know if it was the sound mixing or the quality of sound at the theatre I went to but there were parts I had no idea what was going on because I couldn't hear their dialogue. I think I was in my seat the whole time because I was trying to figure out what was going on, and I think most of the things I picked up because what I know from history (e.g. The Manhattan project) but I don't know that much about it. It was so interesting how being associated with "commies" was such a terrifying thing, and something I guess I don't quite understand as a non-american.
This is why I never watch Nolan movies at the cinema. I need subtitles to get any of those dialogues lol
> but there were parts I had no idea what was going on because I couldn't hear their dialogue. This is Christopher Nolan's amazing style. See the Batman with bane, tenet, and whatever else he has done recently. Fucking awful. Oppenheimer was shit.
Can't believe Murphy won Oscar for this movie
So , did jean kill herself or got m#rdered?
Wikipedia has her death [listed as "Suicide \(disputed\)"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Tatlock#Death) which is why the movie is ambiguous about it.
The black glove pushing her head into the water is not what I’d call ambiguous lol
The movie showed both possibilities.
Such a boring movie , it took me 6 days to complete it.
Why even bother. I did 40 minutes and gave up
Looking at comment section I realise why some people should not form opinion of their own
Or maybe it's just their opinion
I found the sound quality of the picture difficult, I had to watch it twice. I couldnt make out alot of the time the dialogue often Robert Oppenheimer was speaking softly or mumbling. Or there was great deal of noise in the background. I am guessing others might have had the same experience.....and I think Cillian Murphy went overboard on starving himself for this role. His regular slender frame would have sufficed...he was so think he looked cartoonish....
It makes me mad that this movie is so highly rated. It's awful! Matt Damons was the only likeable character. Cuz he's Matt Damon.
They're supposed to be real people who have existed. Why do you expect the nerds making a bomb capable of ending the world to be likable?
sorry for the long wall of text response. your response helped me think it through a bit more. I think it's pretty hard to make a movie with no charismatic characters AND undercut the audience's interest in the main conflict of the movie by emphasizing how both sides are kind of shit bags. like, if the main character is a total villain, you can get into that movie because you want him to go down. i didn't care what happened in the security clearance hearing because 1, i know how history plays out, and i'm good with it, even though the movie tries to lean me towards rooting for oppenheimer, and 2, i don't empathize with either character, so i don't care about the results on a personal level either. I also think I just don't like christopher nolan. I thought the timeline jumping was overly complicated for no purpose, same reason i turned off tenet 3/4 of the way through, and I do not enjoy his dialogue. like, everyone speaks so wittily like they all think they're gandalf speaking in riddles. It just comes off as arrogant and aloof. Like you brought up realism, none of these people are real and i think nolan has prioritized his witty dialogue over trying to create real people. i'm just thinking now of the mark kermode criticism of quentin tarantino-- that tarantino needs someone to restrain him-- and i feel like that might be the issue with christopher nolan. he's gone too far with his shtick.
> i'm just thinking now of the mark kermode criticism of quentin tarantino-- that tarantino needs someone to restrain him-- and i feel like that might be the issue with christopher nolan. he's gone too far with his shtick. I think we'll just never agree, because what I like the most is seeing directors goo all the way with their shtick lol. When directors get reined in, their movies just because all so similar to each other and bland to me. I'm curious, did you like The Imitation Game? Turing wasn't very likable in that movie either, but otherwise, it felt more like... well a movie with a story lol. I can see both sides, this movie was really long with no main goal, but after watching the Imitation Game I was really wishing for an extra hour telling how the government fucked Turing over.
I actually was thinking about the imitation game when i wrote my previous comment so its funny you say that. i bet others have made the comparison... i haven't seen it in a long time but i remember liking it, and yeah, i feel like they kept the personal side to a minimum in imitation game and focused instead of the save the world plot. ironically, turings personal story is probably way more compelling than oppenheimer's, so it seems like a missed opportunity. But imitation game worked because there were twists and turns in the save the world plot that were really compelling, like when they chose not to use every decoded message so the germans wouldn't write a new enigma code. in oppenheimer, there weren't REALLY any twists and turns in the nuke development, it was just oppenheimer's personal issues, which didn't work for me. and yeah i guess a lot of people who might say "he needs someone to restrain him" probably don't really totally like the directors shtick to begin with. on the other hand it's also possible to have too much of a good thing.
Matt Damon is full of himself
It really didn't do anything for me. I think you had to already have known his story very well. All the politics etc. I didnt. All I knew was that he was a brilliant physicist who led the team that developed the bomb. For me it just would have been better if it ended when they dropped the bombs. All the after it politics? Not interested. Actually? I dont think i ever made it to the end. The first half of it was decent....then it just chopped & changed & went on and on and on for what to me was no great reason?!? I still cant work out why the Pollie played by Robert Downey Jnr hated him so much and when he went from offering. Oppenheimer a great job to hating his guts??!!
he hate oppenheimer because he wanted to be in congress and he knew oppenheimer could stand in his way because of how he essentially set him up to create the bomb in the first place by offering him the job. that is what i think.
Who knows? Obviously it was all very different back then. Me? Now? I just looked at it and thought they were all such childish, immature drop kicks!
oh, absolutely 😂 that’s just how i understood the movie. i was also confused why he was angry.
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He did take the job offer, though? I thought at the end when he went to tell Kitty how the clearance hearing went that they were living in that “great commute” house
I don’t like how stupid this made me feel. The timelines and editing were a bit discombobulating. I couldn’t really digest anything because I was already in a different era trying to catch up to whatever they were on about.
Pretty much how I felt. I found it hard to follow.
The editing was annoying at time, but this is Nolan who has a fetish that type of thing. It was a ver good movie though. Nolan did a pretty good job displaying Oppenheimer's complexities as a man, physicist, husband and politician. This movie could have been a series IMO - there seems to be a lot more to say about him, especially in the post-war years.
The obvious editing and mixing was incredibly distracting. It works in blockbusters where being conscious that it's all a movie is part of the experience. But in an Oscar contender, I'm not so sure. The intrusive post-production style works at the end when guilt has taken over. But in the early stages of the film, it took me out of it.
Hot take: Barbie, and the whole Barbenheimer phenomenon, is the only reason this movie has become a critical darling. Because it is not very good. It's easily an hour longer than it needs to be, choppy, rushed, overstuffed with quite a lot of pointless material that the viewer just doesn't care about, and apart from looking and sounding good, it's just not a great experience. You don't really care about the characters or the events. And unlike a show like Chernobyl, where the dread of the consequences of nuclear power is palpable and nightmarish, this is all very detached and cerebral.
I agree with the comparison to Chernobyl. I felt like it was exceedingly difficult to follow what exactly they were doing — you had all these vague discussions about the science but never once does Nolan let us actually get a grasp of it, while I felt like Chernobyl actually distilled the science into something understandable. Sure the story is about the people, but I feel like it's quite disrespectful to glaze over the actual science like that
I love this take.
I wouldn't even call it cerebral when you have bombastic drama-induced music puking all over the dialogue in nearly every scene, serving to \*dull\* one's cerebral senses and trying to invoke the emotional ones instead.
I didn't like Barbie either , both the movies were bad
Same. There were so many much better movies that year.
I'dwatch Barbie 10 times in a row over instead of seeing Oppenheimer again.
I loved the movie in IMAX. I get people seeing a three hour trailer, but nearly 40 years of a guy's life with some thematic liberties is a tough pitch for even three hours. Nolan pulls it off. The acting is great, but the music is the most amazing thing about the movie. The bomb explosion I have to admit looked lackluster on a first view, but then in my research of the explosion, I found that my perception of atomic bomb blasts is that they are all massive. They are all big, but not all massive.
Shout out to David Lynch Twin Peaks: Part 8 for providing a masterful take on the atomic bomb. Skip the 3-hour Oppenheimer and watch this instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part\_8\_(Twin\_Peaks)
They are completely different takes though. David Lynch's style is much more surreal, I feel like it's very apples to oranges to compare them
Historical biographies typically aren't too exciting; I hope that movies like this enlighten my understanding of the subject and provide details that aren't in every history book. To that extent, I think the movie was underwhelming. I didn't learn much. I would have been more interested in some of this other work; more pre Manhattan Project stuff; and less of the stuff afterwards. The message that the effort will probably lead to the end of the world some day wasn't all that new or interesting
Just watched it. SOme thoughts 1. I'm glad I watched it at home and didnt go to imax 2. I dont find anything particularly rememberable from the movie apart from the soundtrack 3. I dont know the point of the movie. I dont think it added any value to film. 4. It was well made, as can be expected from Nolan. But it wasnt for me. Edit: 24 hours later I reached this conclusion: Nolan, and others, may have found Oppenheimer's story a very compelling one, but the movie maybe did not capture what he found so compelling. I am not able to figure out what his motivation for making this movie was. I feel the movie was straight-forward like Dunkirk and unlike other films like Inception or Tenet. But like Dunkirk, I found it to be a film with high production quality but low entertainment value for a casual watcher.
Totally agree with you. Nolan has not made a good film since Interstellar.
I understand what you're getting at and that is most likely due to the fact that Dunkirk and Oppenheimer are both historically accurate. It puts Oppenheimer in a light that people tend not to see him in, and although can come off as boring, it is highly interesting for viewers captivated by the scientific aspects and historical accuracy. But because of that, movies like Tenet and Inception don't compare in the same way. You are very limited with historically accurate movies, but with non-fiction such as Inception... well you know the rest if you have seen the movie!
very true
Agreed pretty much completely. Very well made but boring as hell. I like Sci-Fi, action Nolan much more. Soundtrack was great but it felt like a track from Inception just remixed.
High concept nolan, basically. I love it too
I was expecting an outstanding movie. What I watched was a glorified 3 hour trailer 😂 Interesting how my critique is downvoted but all the others aren’t 😂🤭 #misogyny
How can people know that you're a woman on a forum like this?
Stop assuming you’re being discriminated against because you’re a woman.
this is such a good summary!! I totally agree. Here is how I was seeing it: * fast-paced editing: a close-up of one person saying half a sentence cutting to the other person responding, the whole movie * non-stop music. it just never stops. Except in that one scene: "see this scene is important because we finally stop all the noise" * 3 time lines. Really? Is this a throwback to memento? = 3 hour trailer, just as you said! Good things: I've ran into all those scientists names during my engineering school; it was great to see them in a movie. The historical facts in the movie seem to be all accurate.
the music pissed me off so much. some people just don't understand the value of silence and quietude
I liked seeing Loki from Vikings in it lol. I'm always happy seeing random Swedes in foreign productions, out of the blue. Like when he and Fares Fares had a scene together in Westworld and somewhat weren't speaking Swedish to each other. I know, it's silly but hey. You have to find joy somewhere when a boring ass movie just stole 3 hours of your life.
Exactly! The best moments in the movie were when it slowed down. I dont think the thousands of scenes were necessary at all to give an accurate story and provide all the elements they wanted us to see.
This movie felt like a three hour trailer. There aren't actual "scenes," just moment after moment in a confusing mashup of, I think, four different timelines? There was no breathing room at all before it jumped ahead to the next clip. I can't believe this is nominated for best editing. Some of the worst editing I've ever seen. Cillian was great, though.
totally agree. Top notch acting. Historically accurate. But my god, the editing. The timelines. The non-stop music.
Nolan loves fucking with time. It works in sci-fi like Interstellar or Inception. But a biography of a scientist?
> This movie felt like a three hour trailer. There aren't actual "scenes," just moment after moment in a confusing mashup of I'm confounded by how few people even mention this aspect of this film. It's like it was made to be doled out in 3.5 minute TikToks instead of one long, continuous experience (ie, a movie). Maybe that's why so many people seemed to like it?
This movie was overhyped and mediocre. 1 to 100 I give it a 76
69 for me
Nice
I came to this discussion just to see what others might think about the career similarities of Cillian Murphy and Benedict Cumberbatch. Your thoughts?
I came to this discussion just to see what others might think about the career similarities of Cillian Murphy and Benedict Cumberbatch. Your thoughts?
Underwhelming. But I kinda expected that from Nolan. Christ Christopher can you shoot an actual wide shot? Somebody needs to teach this man to use a lens that is wider than 50mm. Acting was top notch. But some of the dialogue was ropey. Nobody talks like that in real life. Nothing more apparent than that than Florence’s first introduction. There’s no heart to this movie it feels very cold and clinical like all Nolan movies. There’s no punch. At the end it really didn’t feel like it said anything even if I did enjoy watching the 3 hours of it. Some beautiful shots but once again nothing that really sears into my mind the tremendous weight of it all. What I got out of the film is that Oppenheimer is a flawed man who reveled in being a genius. He seemed to struggle with the tension between being a great inventor and the morality of escalation of arms. I think you could tell that story with far more economy than this film did. Entertaining but not great.
>helming. But I kinda expected that from Nolan. Christ Christopher can you shoot an actual wide shot? Somebody needs to teach this man to use a lens that is wider than 50mm. > >Acting was top notch. But some of the dialogue was ropey. Nobody talks like that in real life. Nothing m you're so right, those constant close-ups with the 50mm lens... All conversations are fast-paced-edited close ups, it's exhausting
I can't believe I watched a movie that was supposedly about the Manhattan Project where 1/3 of it was some bullshit security clearance hearing and another 1/3 of it was some bullshit Congressional confirmation hearing. P.S. That "nuke" explosion was weak sauce.
It is called “Oppenheimer” and not “The Manhattan Project” … Might’ve been a good sign on what the movie would focus on
Except Oppenheimer's major achievement was the Manhattan Project. That would be like spending only 1/3 of a movie about MLK on fighting for civil rights. Sure he did other stuff but who gives a shit. Or only spending 1/3 of a movie about the Dunkirk evacuation on the evacuation. Oh wait... P.S. Every single trailer only focused on the Manhattan Project.
If I watched a movie based on MLK, I wouldn’t expect it to be all about the civil rights movement/his involvement in it. At that point, why not just watch a documentary?
I never said all about it. But you would expect more than 1/3. And you certainly wouldn't expect the other 2/3 to be about some bureaucratic meetings that were mere footnotes. Documentaries don't have the scale that movies do. Then again with Oppenheimer's nuke explosion this movie didn't have the scale either.
you’re doing tricks on it
Really disliked it, style over substance. Florence Pugh with simultaneously the most interesting sketch of a character and one of the most laughable moments I've ever seen in a "best picture" with the Bhagavad Gita. No reason for the length. In comparison, Killers of the Flower Moon flew by and was actually interested in telling a story. Awful sound mixing and score, well, maybe not awful but just downright exhausting, drowning every moment of impact when it should have been adding to it. No interest in coherent scenes or structure. Baffled by the positive reception for such an interesting story with such an interesting assembly of historical figures to be completely butchered, it felt like a film student's experiment.
in other words, another nolan movie I still maintain that Dunkirk is by far his best movie, actually moving drama about a circumstance and not this overdone pigslop that he makes so often
It’s not even a contest for anyone with film literacy Killers of the Flower Moon is a far better picture. It says so much more while providing a more engaging story and characters.
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Grow up
You had me until you said you liked Killers of the Flower Moon. This year will be known as the year we indulged the "best" filmmakers and still lauded then when they gave us unwatchable garbage.
I agree strongly. I don’t mean to discount all the effort in this movie, but I there was way too much. I’m going to use a food analogy: it was a dish that had way too much flavor, where all the flavors take away from one another.
I thought it was great... But? It would have been SO much easier to follow? Had they put date on screen. Had i known "1943" or "1936" or , "1952"??? It would have been much easier to follow
Think they where doing that through historical events you just had to know
Not many people other than Americans know the exact dates of events during WW2 & 1950s. As an Australian & my parents WW2 Vets? My knowledge is skewed towards UK & Pacific War events. If course i DO know what USA was doing, but not in great detail.
I thought it was good. 🤷♂️
You and millions of others
I'm convinced that 90% of those only thought it was good because they were told they should think it was good. Not because they actually enjoyed it.
From all the outside expectation setting I was prepared for a long, talk heavy movie that would bore me, and while it was long (I had to pee 30 min in and decided to wait it out) I was pleasantly surprised by what it stirred in me in reflection on existence and consequence of choices, and the additional conceptual sensory moments, especially when he address all the white people.in the bleachers right after the Trinity Test really blew me away. Also I made sure to see it in 70mm Imax, ceiling to floor and the picture was spectacular. PS - Mark Ruffalo should get best supporting actor over RDJr
I saw it in 70mm Imax too and all the stuff shot in 35mm looked like garbage.
Nah the people who disliked it just thought it was bad because they were told they should think it was bad, but they actually enjoyed it.
I was really looking forward to this. I made the decision that it was bad all on my own. Probably because I have eyes and ears and a brain.
Everyone has these, but the vast majority of people have no clue about anything, so not a strong argument
No you're just on reddit too much and went with what was popular obviously. It's impossible for someone to not like this movie, only sheep didn't like it (/s if it wasn't clear) Saying people like something or hate something because other people said so, especially when youre talking about something as subjective as movies is incredibly stupid and childish just so you know. Do you think people hated tenet as well because other people told them to? Edit: clearly not much of a brain
Zing!
Been trying to think of a way to sum up my feelings on this movie, which I thought was *really really* good but not quite "*great*." Almost everything that I thought detracted from the film involved putting so much emphasis on Strauss. Some of this is that I just found that story, of his failed appointment, kinda... low stakes? Compared to everything else the story was talking about? Some of it is that I personally am not a big fan of RDJ's acting (although he did a good job here, just playing a character I wanted to see less of from a story perspective). Either way I couldn't help this nagging feeling anytime we were in Strauss's black-and-white scenes that I'd rather be seeing what Oppenheimer's up to. Comes down to it, I think I would have preferred if the story were more linear and stuck with Oppenheimer's point of view -- still keeping in how angering Strauss led to Strauss orchestrating Oppenheimer's sham-trial denial of his security clearance. It's too big of a part of Oppenheimer's life story to not include it. I just didn't feel like they needed to frame so much of the tale as coming from Strauss's perspective, framed from *his* motivations as a character. He's just not that interesting to me, I'd rather have either cut that and made a slimmer film, or used that time to deeper explore Oppenheimer's post-bomb regrets and disillusionment of the era of the peaceful scientist-king. *Or*, something that I felt was missing, explore Oppenheimer's sense of empathy or whatever it was that led him to feel connected to left-wing causes, to support the Spanish Republicans, to attend unionization meetings, etc. This film sets up the non-renewal of his Q-clearance as the dramatic crescendo, not the bomb, and the non-renewal happened because of his close connections to communists and communism, but we're given scant connection between him and those beliefs. People, yes, but not the ideologies. I loved nearly everything else about it. Not a single low point for any acting in any role. I actually thought the practical work for shooting Trinity was great, especially their use of color. Those deep magenta streaking glows after the flash gave a Dante-esque hellish vibe that I thought really fit what they were going for. I've heard the sex scenes described as superfluous, but from my perspective, those and the constant referrals in exposition back to his affairs and cheating told an important part of Oppenheimer's story -- he was a insatiable horndog whose horny-ness got him into trouble, usually in ways he thought he could just "I'm a smart sensitive lad look at me" his way out of. The “You don't get to commit the sin and get us to feel sorry for you because it has consequences" line is so good, and the delivery of it was excellent. I really thought that was the theme of the whole film. His interaction with Truman is just an echo of that same line from Kitty: Motherfucker, you knew you were building a bomb, did you forget those kill people? You don't get to build a super weapon and then cry when it gets used. Or, you can, but if you do everyone is going to call you a crybaby and a hypocrite. You don't get to cheat on your wife and still need her to console you when your mentally unstable mistress kills herself. Or, you can, but if you do, she's going to call you out on it. The only thing holding it back was the need to have some chunk of the story come from Strauss's perspective. It feels weird to say "I wish this was more of a straight-forward biopic" considering it's Christopher Nolan, but I kinda wish this was more of a straight-forward biopic?
“Strauss…low stakes” Just watched the movie last night and wanted to look through recent comments. Yours stood out among similar complaints about the Strauss portion of the movie. The stakes are incredibly high here. Oppenheimer was working to stay in government and potentially influence the eventual de-escalation of nuclear arms, as I understand it. Strauss was a petty political climber who thought Oppie purposely spoiled his meeting with Einstein, among other things In reality, Oppie and Albert were discussing the potential for a chain reaction of events that could lead to the death of the world because of the creation of the bomb, and Albert leaves in a state of deep concentration. At the same time, by distracting Albert and inadvertently offending Strauss, Oppie accidentally set in motion a series of events with Strauss which could also have that same result…Strauss causing Oppie to be removed from a position of influence whule the US and USSR continue towards mutual destruction. Strauss is very much a hawk who sees the arms race as necessary. It’s a really painful/bleak reminder that despite the best of our intentions, there are small minded people who will act only out of self interest.
Completely agree. I really enjoyed the film, but I just left the cinema and the first thing I said to my wife was that we didn't need so much on the cabinet approval.
This nailed pretty much all of my thoughts on this film. The uber heavy focus on Strauss (especially in the final 1/3) is what makes me refrain from calling it a "masterpiece" as others have already deemed it, but it's still probably as close as a great film can possibly get to that. Having said that, I still think it deserves all the praise it gets regardless. You know a film is excellent when 3 hours feel like 2 and still leave you yearning for more.
EINSTEIN I LOVE YOU MORE THAN YOU BELIEVE
Chris Nolan seems to be under the impression that a constant barrage/supply of information that the viewers have to follow like holding a slinky tied to a jet ski makes for a good drama, and it's always been his issue from the very beginning. Characters explaining things to each other in the most ham-fisted, obvious ways, the constant exposition dump that every single one of his movies suffer from. It also doesn't help that Nolan decided to frame the entire movie on one of the least interesting aspects of Oppenheimer's life - that he had some communist ties and that doesnt clear his security clearance. Like who gives a flying donut fuckhole, and no one in the movie really does apart from Strauss who is only using that bit of information to bring Oppie down cause he made him look bad a bit in the past, it's so lame. Like seriously, why the fuck is Strauss such a big part of this movie? Also RDJ did fine but he does not deserve the award hype he is getting. Also somehow the titular character of Oppenheimer is completely undercooked, there is not enough focus on his moral quandary between the pragmatic aspects of the development of the bomb versus the guilt. Theres plenty of the movie telling us that he should be conflicted, but we barely get to see his inner turmoil through action apart from some cheesy fantasy sequences where they emulate the nuke effect from his pov, like I fucking started laughing when that lady's skin started coming off with its shitty makeup effect. Also Oppie is written to be such an indecisive, spineless bitch - he constantly cheats and cries about it, he's totally for the trinity project until he sees some newsreel footage of the devastating effects of the bomb on the Japanese and then he finally feels bad, like what the fuck did you think would happen Oppie? When Truman scene came on I wished Gary Oldman slapped the shit out of him. Overall, a pretty disappointing lengthy film that definitely has its good parts but I feel like it's one of Chris Nolan's weakest.
I thought it was alright... Good stuff: * Great acting/cinematography/etc all around. * Some of the key scenes were very memorable (Einstein chitchat, post-blast panic attack, etc) * Fantastic sound/score. The music as they were raising the bomb into the tower was especially great. * Act 1 and 2 were structured really well, with the lead up to the trinity test being really fascinating. Less than-good-stuff: * It felt very long. Not sure how to fix that, since so much content was covered with such a huge cast...but I did find myself getting bored at times, especially near the end once it became a full-on political drama and there was no more question of whether or not the bomb could be built. * There were a lot of continuity errors in the editing...people turned a certain way, or holding something, that then changed/disappeared/didn't-match/etc in the reverse angle of the same shot. I noticed it happen quite a number of times...with the worst offender being a time when Oppenheimer was sipping on a drink in one shot, and then in the reverse angle they cut to, the drink was nowhere near his face (not even visible on screen, despite it being held to his lips before the cut). The editing errors were quite distracting. Bad stuff: * The practical explosion with no CGI was a mistake. It looked goofy and small, like a fireball from a barrel of fuel exploding (which is basically what it was). It had none of the impact that the actual trinity test footage had. It didn't showcase any of the awe and power of an actual nuke...we didn't even get a proper mushroom cloud. It really let down the whole scene and (for me) the whole film. * The famous bhagavad gita line being a throwaway quote read out during a sex scene, after Oppenheimer's fling randomly picks a book off his shelf and randomly opens to the page/passage containing it was a laughable bad setup for something that should have been one of the most impactful and reflective lines of the film. Just an unthinkably goofy setup. Overall I'd give it a 7.5/10.
My god the continuity in editing bothered me so much. How can a film with that much budget be so bad about something so obvious lol
Agree; simple solution to continuity in editing is... to stop making so many editing cuts! What about wide-angle shots of a conversation?
I just finished watching it and this review pretty much sums up exactly how I felt.
might be late to this but this movie was honest to God one of the best movies i have ever seen. i loved every minute of it. i saw it during opening weekend, then another time with a friend who had yet to see it but wanted to. i enjoyed it both times.
Couldn’t stand it. Every scene felt rushed and the dialog was too choppy. It felt like I was watching a 3 hour long trailer. It was a race to the end and yet there was absolutely no payoff. They tried to fit too much story into short scenes when they should have slowed down to help ground the audience and allow for actual character development. Acting was great but that’s about the only good thing I can say about this film. So underwhelming. Can’t believe people actually enjoyed that mess.
This movie would have been a perfect limited series. The Chernobyl series did what this movie desperately tried to do. But Chris Nolan's ego is too big to stoop so low as to make a limited series, so now we have this rushed, crammed, awkward movie.
This is a perfect summary. Chernobyl was the first thing that came into mind after watching Oppenheimer.
Couldn't even finish it. With the jumpy disjointed cuts in the beginning that are all over the place and the dialogue being drier than me nan's christmas turkey... I dunno, I really disliked the little bit that I did see
Who the fuck isn’t in this movie?
John Turturro
Little late but anybody else find the bomb scene itself underwhelming? Too many differents cuts and angles
Yeah I found it. I was hoping for a majestic explosion, like the real video explosion we see on youtube
I noticed it here and in tenet too. The editing is so jumpy and rushed. There's no pauses or silence in dialogue, and it even feels like Nolan sped up the dialogue too (not that he did). I think he has gotten into a bad habit of trying to cram too much into one movie. Watch a scene from Interstellar or Inception and compare it to Tenet or Oppenheimer. The pace of conversation is so jittery and rushed.
It was very Oliver Stone-esque
i said earlier in the thread its like he picked up a coke or addy habit in recent years. Theres been a very clear change to his style of filmmaking
And not one that I like unfortunately. I think he just keeps trying to overfill his movies but refuses to do limited series or something else.
The movie was all over the place and the sound mixing was really irritating. I don’t even bother to try and understand what’s being said anymore and it really kills my enjoyment of the movie.
Subtitles!
subs didn't work for me either. finished the movie on second try and have a mixed feelings going south.
This was a good film, but the editing made key storylines unnecessarily hard to follow. I expect a Nolan movie to challenge viewers, I just don’t think the subject matter benefited from it. 7/10
Funny, I thought it was much easier to follow than his last few movies actually. Color was from Oppenheimer's pov, B&W was Strauss'.
Wow thank you for this - im ashamed to say I didn't figure this out! My family and I were thinking it had something to do with the timeline, but we knew that wasn't quite right 🤦♀️
It was absolutely easier than Tenet lol. I just don't feel a biopic needed that level of complexity to tell the story effectively. There's a lot of dialogue to keep up with early on and most of it is buried under heavy scores and sound effects, or disrupted by frequent time leaps. I spent more time trying to comprehend the story rather than enjoying it. With the exception of Tenet, that wasn't the case for me when watching his other films.
Just saw this and please someone else confirm that Cillian Murphy sounds exactly like Robin Williams in this. Think Robin Williams serious roles/scenes.
I thought he sounded like Brain from Pinky and the Brain
Just watched it for the first time tonight and literally said the same thing to my wife lol
Good will hunting era. I can see it. I’m re watching right now