Oppenheimer

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on March 7, 2024.

(MA15+) ★★★★★

Director: Christopher Nolan.

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Dylan Arnold, Tom Conti, James D'Arcy, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich.

"Why yes - we do look dashing in black and white!"

What's left to be said about Oppenheimer that hasn't been said already?

It won all the awards, and deservedly so. 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 Nolan's best film since Inception. 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 was basically waiting for him to get the formula right, and Oppenheimer does that. Here -have an Oscar or seven.

In case you've been living under a rock, Oppenheimer is the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Murphy), the father of the atomic bomb. It details his quest to develop the A-bomb through the Manhattan Project, his complicated relationship with his two great loves (played by Blunt and Pugh), his grappling with the destruction his genius wrought on a predominantly innocent populace in Japan, his later anti-nuke campaigning, and the post-WWII efforts in the US to besmirch his name. 

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 few quiet moments in this film. There are just some moments that are less intense than some other ones, but only by comparison.

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 US bombs Nagasaki and Hiroshima, you might look at your watch and wonder what's left to tell, but the film never stops being compelling.

It would be easy to attribute this to the subject matter, but it would also be very easy to make this dull.  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's insistence on doing things the old school way - practical effects, big-arse film cameras - feels a bit like making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself in a digital age, but there's no disputing how good it looks, so maybe Nolan's on to something. 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.

And then there's the cast. There are no weak links. Murphy is immersed in Oppenheimer, chain-smoking his way to utter believability. Downey Jr, Blunt, Pugh, Damon, Hartnett etc are all as great as they usually are. It's no surprise how great this cast is, nor is it a shock that their performances are top notch.

Nolan is a great director and this is up there with his best. It's the bomb.

Sorry.