Unrelenting tension

There are only a few directors in the movie industry that can leave you so awestruck with their films that you can spend days on end processing what you just watched. Denis Villeneuve with Dune, Ari Aster with Hereditary and of course, Christopher Nolan with Oppenheimer. When I first watched Oppenheimer, I almost decided I shouldn't make a review on it. One because I didn't think I had the knowledge to pick apart such an incredible film and story, but more because the film is essentially 3-hours of fast paced dialogue and even if I wanted to pick that apart, I knew I needed to see it a second time. So here we are. Yesterday I had my second viewing of Oppenheimer. Can I say that the second viewing gave me the insight I needed to write this review? Probably not. But I'd like to give it a shot.

The film is seemingly split up into two halves, the build up to the Trinity test where they set off the bomb and the court hearings that preceded it. The first being Fission (subjective) and the second Fusion (objective). Fission is a more broadly told narrative about the upbringing of Robert J. Oppenheimer and the events that led to the Trinity test. I would say it's the stronger of the two halves. Fusion is about the consequences that Oppenheimer had to face after his contribution to the atomic bomb, both from his own morality and the legal system.

The way that Christopher Nolan, in many of his other films, is able to mend together different timelines and make it make sense, needs to be studied. With each movie he makes, his ability to do so just keeps getting better and better. And with this long unrelenting tension filled story, I believe it was necessary. Could he have written a story about just the trinity test? Yeah he could've. What about the courtroom drama of Fusion? That would've been good too. But with both of these stories together, and with the way he told it, it's better off because of it. I will say though, you will need to see the movie at least twice to make sure you didn't miss anything. A lot of vital information gets tossed around and it's easy to miss if you're not paying attention. And that's probably one of my biggest criticisms of the film. If you're not actively paying attention to each word that's being said, you will miss something. That and sometimes the dialogue mixing can be a little bad, where all other noises will drown it out and just simply can't hear dialogue.

My favorite part about the film is just how beautiful it is. Every single shot is just simply gorgeous. My favorite two shots being the opening shot where Oppenheimer is staring at a puddle and the second being the cover photo of this review, where he's staring at a painting. They're both so simple, but within the context of the entire film, they become beautiful.

If you're still deciding whether or not you should see the film, please go watch it before it's out of the theaters. Unless you have an amazing film setup at home, you will miss out on an incredible experience that you can only find in the theater.