AdamAB’s review published on Letterboxd:
I have misgivings about him but few directors could make a three-hour biographical drama as awe-inspiring, nerve-shredding and of such intense spectacle as Christopher Nolan. With Oppenheimer, he has delivered his most accomplished, and uncomfortably powerful, film.
This isn’t a triumphant tale of one man’s greatest achievement. It’s a reckoning with momentous and catastrophic choices. It’s those intense feelings of guilt and uncertainty blown up for the IMAX screen, a screen often centred on Cillian Murphy’s haunted expression.
I shouldn’t imply that any character is given great depth - even Oppenheimer himself feels more like a theoretical idea than a living, breathing person - but the editing choices Nolan makes create an intensity of feeling that, while not subtle, are incredibly effective.
I am very sympathetic to the criticisms of Oppenheimer’s third hour, which is undeniably less compelling than the audacity of what came before. What it does is build to a climax that, I believe, justifies its existence.
Nolan is not my favourite director - he’s probably not even in my top 20 - but he certainly is one of a dying breed. A director of big-budget original films that attract audiences in their droves, and one utterly devoted to practical filmmaking.
That filmmaking left me riddled with anxiety in a way no piece of art has in a long time - not with concern for the events of the film, but for the potential of an apocalyptic future.
