Angelee’s review published on Letterboxd:
Took a lot of energy to get through this, so I’ll just leave a few observations. I fully understand why Oppenheimer was marketed with “see this on the biggest screen possible!” and it’s a shame I never got around to it. I personally like biopics, but people are hard on the genre these days. Yet Nolan’s work is somehow immune to criticism of the same tropes and conventions that were fully on display here. Why? Perhaps viewers feel the end justifies the means. Nevertheless, I did learn a lot about this central figure through Murphy’s sincere commitment to embodying him.
For some reason, my favorite performance was Jason Clarke’s turn as Roger Robb. He brought a guns blazing, agent-of-the-state energy that grounded a narrative at times lost in the theoretical back down to the real stakes of dirty politics and power. And while I know the art vs. craft argument has grown cheap over the years, this entire exercise felt fully of the latter. Said absence of the former was what left me a bit cold, and I think it’s because my expectations were too personal. My entire young life was divided precisely by the moment I first learned about the bomb. There was the carefree ignorance of the “before” and the persistent existential dread of the “after” that I do my best to push though each day. All I wanted from Oppenheimer was an acknowledgment of that delineation imposed upon humanity, and it never fully tapped into the harrowing gravity of that for me. The final scene got close, though, albeit through a melodramatic closing line. But I’ve given 22 years (and counting) of my life to obsessing over the bomb. I don’t have much more to give this movie by extension.
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