‘Oppenheimer’ review: Dir. Christopher Nolan (2023)
thehollywoodnews.comChristopher Nolan films are never easy, are they? Whether it’s the metaphysics of Interstellar, the subconscious weaving of Inception, or Tenet‘s palindromic rules, they’re complex narratives that often require multiple viewings to unpack.
And they still don’t come close to Oppenheimer, which may just be the most dense and towering of Nolan’s filmography to date. Based on American Prometheus, the biography of theoretical physicist J.
Robert Oppenheimer (played here by Cillian Murphy in a remarkable turn), Nolan’s biopic recounts the story of the “father of the atomic bomb” as he headed up the Manhattan Project and the emotional fallout that comes with cultivating a weapon of mass destruction.
Unfolding across two narratives and several decades – “Fission” in technicolour documents the lead-up to the Trinity Test while “Fusion” plays out in monochrome and focuses on Oppenheimer’s relationship with Admiral Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) and the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the film’s focus never wavers in the sprawling 180-minute runtime.Despite its length, the film is surgically paced with deft writing and characterisation that never lets up and keeps you riveted from the off.
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