This film won a lot of awards and it deserved every
single one of them. Matt Neal said in his review, “While I would've loved Poor
Things to have pulled off a surprise best picture win at the Oscars, this was
Oppenheimer's year. In 2023, Barbie won the memes, Oppenheimer won the awards,
and Barbenheimer won our hearts.”
“Oppenheimer” is Christopher Nolan’s best film since “Inception.”
Neal noted, “It's easy to wonder why Nolan hadn't won a best film or best
director Oscar before now, but his greatest films never fit the Academy Award
mould - Memento was too early in his career, Inception was too actiony, and The
Dark Knight was too superheroey.” The Academy must have been waiting for Nolan
to get the formula right, and “Oppenheimer” did that.
For those who don’t know the story, “Oppenheimer” is
the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, the father of the
atomic bomb. It shows us his journey to develop the A-bomb through the
Manhattan Project, his difficult relationship with the two women he fell in
love with, played by Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh, his struggle with the
damage his intelligence brought on a predominantly innocent society in Japan,
his later anti-nuke campaign, and the post-WWII efforts in the USA to damage
his name.
Neal mentioned, “Nolan squeezes all of this into a
propulsive three hours. If I have one criticism, it's that Oppenheimer rarely
takes a breath - Ludwig Göransson's score is relentless, giving every scene the
feeling like its meant for the trailer.” There are a few quiet moments in this
film. There are just some moments that are less intense than others, but only
when comparing them.
Neal admitted, “This is not a big deal, and I'm
exaggerating slightly, but this is actually why Oppenheimer never feels like
three hours long.” When the Manhattan Project test is successful and the USA
bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima, you might think what’s left to tell, but the film
never stops being fascinating.
It would be easy to feature this to the topic, but it
would also be very easy to make this boring. Neal said, “The script, adapted
from the Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J.
Sherwin, sings every step of the way. Nolan even makes the dry physics
entertaining with dazzling visualisations of things that I can only assume are
dry physics.”
Nolan wanting to film this with the previous methods –
practical effects, large film cameras – feel a little like making things
superfluously difficult for people in a digital realm, but there’s not denying
how good it looks, so maybe Nolan was doing the right thing. Neal noted, “Cinematographer
Hoyte van Hoytema has always made things look amazing, going back to Let The
Right One In, and this, his fourth collaboration with Nolan, looks stunning.”
Then we have the cast, who are all amazing. Murphy really
embodies Oppenheimer, chain-smoking his way to a point you believe him in the role.
Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Casey
Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, David Dastmalchian, Dane
DeHaan, Josh Peck, Jack Quaid, James Remar, Gary Oldman, and everyone else are
all as great as we normally see them. This isn’t a surprise with how great the
cast is, nor shocking that their performances are the best.
Nolan is a great director and this is one of best
films to have come out last year.
If you haven’t seen this movie, and you have Prime,
check it out. Yes, it’s a three-hour movie and if you can’t sit through the entirety
in one sitting, then you can take breaks. I watched this while I was
exercising, and it took a couple of weeks, but I managed to watch the whole
thing. Check it out and enjoy this film. It may not be completely accurate, but
I can’t think of a biographical film that is.
Thank you for joining in on this review tonight. Stay
tuned this Friday for the continuation of “Beverly Hills Cop Month.”
No comments:
Post a Comment