anubhav2804’s review published on Letterboxd:
During World War II, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. appoints physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years developing and designing the atomic bomb.
Oppenheimer is a deeply interrogative character study and a sprawling historical document that unleashes its most incendiary blows when its scorching depiction of political overreach takes precedence over the race for atomic armament. As it tracks the exceptional mind who directed the Manhattan Project to build the bomb that ended World War II, our subject is methodically vilified for vocalizing earned concerns that contradict America’s arms-race mentality.
Nolan is a filmmaker who has unequivocally earned his stripes for his visual mastery of the medium rather than his skills as a cinematic dramatist. His sheer command of spectacle and style has dominated many a year’s film discourse, and that’s very much the case here. Yet, with Oppenheimer, he crafts a science epic that is just as deafening in its quiet moments as its loud ones. The film is best described as a thicket of captivating conversations, and though it can threaten to drag — especially in scenes featuring mid-century men engaged in heated, deeply complicated conversations about quantum mechanics — Nolan gives them immense force with his signature chronological interweaving.
Every property in Nolan’s filmmaking is operating at a virtuoso level, finding a cinematic alchemy between performance, sound, image, and narrative structure in the editing process. Shooting on 70 mm film, Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography is richly textured and does wonders in high-contrast scenes and when holding on actors’ faces in a hearing room. Ludwig Göransson’s insistent, portent-heavy score and the sound design are flawlessly matched with choices in editing and sound editing to startling and alive effect. A scene with a crowd rapturously cheering and stomping on bleachers for Oppenheimer’s achievement is just one example that takes a chilling, overwhelming turn and acts as a shorthand to depict the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
However, Oppenheimer’s strongest element is Cillian Murphy. It is evident that the international actor has surrendered himself to Nolan’s vision, bringing the haunting personality to life. While he delivers a flawless performance throughout the movie, my favourites are when his thoughts and the science around him overtakes the voices in the room. The anxiety and the guilt which engulfs him slowly creeps under your skin and makes you empathies for him.
Matt Damon shines in the film. He delivers a subtle but powerful performance. His on-screen rapport with Cillian is entertaining and you’d find yourself craving for more of them together. Another star that is outstanding in the film is Robert Downey Jr. RDJ sheds his Marvel mantle and goes back to his acting roots to deliver a stellar, Oscar-worthy performance while Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer steals the show during the twilight moments of the film.
The narrative's fragmented structure gives way to some of Nolan's most distinctively discomfiting imagery in years, including one scene between Murphy, Pugh, and Blunt that speaks to the depth in which we are in Oppenheimer's fractured psyche. These feelings of discomfort give way to abject horror, moments that are compounded by Nolan's symphony of chaos — sparks colliding, atoms splitting, feet stomping, stars imploding, desert dust sweeping against the landscape.It's a crescendo of all his stylistic flourishes and, in one fell swoop, Nolan brings about devastation and heart-pounding excitement.
Oppenheimer is a cinematic achievement of blinding brilliance, achieves a sublime combination of visual grandeur, technical flair, emotional intimacy and an examination of the limits of human endeavour and ambition. Through all the layers that constitute the film, what peeps out most prominently is the director's unambiguous acknowledgement of the ethical questions that surround the brilliant American theoretical physicist's legacy. But in a way, Oppenheimer is like atomic physics in the end: Each tiny spark interlocks to create a massive, breathtaking, terrifying, conflagration.
