artistaerratico’s review published on Letterboxd:
Can't believe this laughable piece of shit won Best Picture at the Oscars.
If this is what the Academy chooses to recognise as the cream of the crop (and directed by that charlatan of cinema, Christopher Nolan, to boot) is nothing but proof what constitutes cinema in the eyes of the American elite are absolutely worthless.
Nolan is an atrocious filmmaker and his Best Director win is proof nobody really cares about the storytelling aspect of his films - cause Nolan fucks up every single film he makes through the pseudo-intellectual bent he weaponises to disguise the non-artistry of his filmmaking.
It's something that makes the chimp brained Nolanites out there grovel at his feet like they're subjects in The Emperor's New Clothes - except the difference is Nolan fans are sadly ignorant of the self awareness the Emperor's subjects had that their royal majesty was walking around with his dick out but go along with the charade lest they be thought fools. For Nolan fans, there's no doubt in their minds that their Emperor wears a fabric out of the finest material that exists.
Oppenheimer is absolutely puerile filth. Someone should have dropped a bomb on Nolan before he deigned to make this flagellating exercise in white guilt and atomic apologia, that turns Oppenheimer into a condemned hero a la the Batman of Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy that sacrifices his wellbeing for the society that wouldn't do the same for him, where he pioneers then advocates against the development of destructive nuclear technology - and is eulogised after the fact.
And even if it wasn't reprehensible enough to pat a white man on the back for making a film about how a white man feels bad after helping nuke two entire cities (the only approach Americans can make about wars and disasters is about how it affects them not how they affect others apparently), the film itself is utter dreck: poorly edited, poorly paced, with poorly written dialogue and poor sound design - all Nolan trademarks.
Everything about the structure of the film from the get-go immediately disengages the audience from the material, by opting for a quite pointless vacillation between his early studies and his post-war role, also vacillating between black and white and colour for no discernible reason beyond Nolan's cloying garden variety intellectualism.
This extends to the dialogue that is ruinous and chalked up to Nolan's propensity to explain and overexplain rather than have the confidence to reveal things visually - which is made all the more baffling by the overly Sparknotes-esque glossing over of Oppenheimer's early studies and his quantum mechanics focus, which neglects to establish any kind of build up that is tangible to an audience.
While Memento justified the nature of its unique editing style and the staccato nature of scenes unfurling nonlinearly through the character it's following, it works entirely against Oppenheimer and becomes tedious and trite in the clippy nature of scenes that allows nothing to breathe or register in any meaningful way.
And when things do slow down, as when Oppenheimer meets Florence Pugh - it becomes very cloying in the way Nolan lays allusion and metaphor on so thick that it becomes nauseating without the room for subtlety (another Nolan staple) - by having Oppenheimer say his famed quote from the Bhagavad Gita (in the middle of a stupid sex scene no less) when the line literally has no significance to him at that point in time. You can just tell Nolan was dying to depict that scene, to let his own creative style bereft of any imagination or tact assert itself.
Nolan clearly hasn't moved on from his Doctor Pavel I'm CIA days in unfurling the execution of a laughably idiotic scenario with the utmost seriousness, with actors delivering terrible dialogue and being saddled with even worse characterisation, where he thinks he's creating something amazing but it's incredibly surface level - at least back then people knew to ridicule it with memes and shitposting phenomena rather than giving the man a prestigious award for his stupidity.
The only moment when Nolan actually trusts his visuals is the one moment it matters - when the test bomb is detonated. But it is a scant moment of greatness lost in a sea of cinematically sterile turbidity, of scenes stitched together with breathlessness, streamlined lack of subtlety and a lack of cohesive identity more befitting a PowerPoint presentation that can only slot in two or three facts per slide (or scene) and has to be very on the nose.
The reason a film like Oppenheimer can win Best Picture and something like Zero Dark Thirty is snubbed, is entirely down to the approach both films take to their politics (Jason Clarke stars in both which makes the comparison even more apt) irrespective of the craft used to create it.
Oppenheimer never once stops to convince the audience that the methods of the Americans were anything but necessary - until after the fact where they can memorandise and memorialise to assuage their guilt and humanise Oppie into a tragic figure - but something like Zero Dark Thirty makes no bones about the futility of the American military might and their methods in the moment - where the film literally presents that the use of torture to gain information and gain headway was fruitless, and the interrogators learnt more and advanced more from sitting down with the captives and giving them food and drink.
This puts their methods squarely into question regarding permissibility and necessity within a more contemplative story structure, as opposed to Oppenheimer that is squarely entrenched in the established narrative of the necessity of the bomb and American adulation at its success.
In fact, the last half hour is devoted to the American military disseminating Oppenheimer's loyalty to them, and looks to his desire to prevent nuclear weapons from being developed further - delving into the hypocrisy of the use of the bomb itself with an over the top portrayal of Oppenheimer's guilt that doesn't puncture through into the guilt at the heart of the American military that weaponised his research.
Nolan's style is less nuanced and incisive than Bigelow's, and it is easier to curry favour with a more one-sided narrative that while it tangoes with tainting America, still errs on the side of celebrating American achievement that political pundits who are generally allergic to nuance (see the political commentators slamming ZDT for supposedly being pro-torture when they are oblivious that depiction ≠ endorsement) can pick up on and appraise given Oppenheimer fits the classic cycle of passionate American military intervention and decimation, followed by devout memorialisation - rather than something viciously aware of America's resounding foreign policy gaffes.
Oppenheimer at the end aims for complexity and a muted tone that attempts to intone Oppenheimer's fears for a nuclear future - but it's the same ponderous superficiality that barely scrapes the surface and has no lasting power - whereas Zero Dark Thirty ends with a similar mutedness that is actually earnt through reflecting upon seeing Maya's journey as a pivotal figure working within the strictures of the American military system (where both her and Oppenheimer's journeys revolve around the percentage certainty of success) and her unfurling awareness of America's clear mistakes in foreign policy - and a sobering ending where Maya doesn't know what to do anymore once Bin Laden is dead.
Society really has become dumber since Zero Dark Thirty in 2012 if Christopher Nolan of all people can win an Academy Award for directing, but this should be reassuring to all up and coming filmmakers out there. Just think: if someone as shit as Nolan can be nominated and win Best Director at the Academy Awards, just imagine what someone with actual TALENT is capable of achieving and being recognised for on that stage.
I was gifted this movie at Christmas, and thankfully I returned it for a different movie because I absolutely loathe this film. The thought of paying actual money for this trash and lining Nolan's pocket to finance more of his asinine garbage sends shivers down my spine.
To end with the movie's hamfisted opening allusion to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and being punished - and the complete unsubtlety of Niels Bohr straight up telling Oppie "You're an American Prometheus", I realised halfway through I wish I had been watching Ridley Scott's Prometheus instead.
At least that film ended with its horrible and hubristic creator figure at the forefront of technological transgressions actually being punished for his contemptible arrogance by the narrative and society, rather than punishing society with the reverberations of his research in the decades hence. "Oppenheimer" is about as subtle as a nuclear bomb - and ultimately neither should have been made.
Also there is absolutely zero chance the scientists at Los Alamos chanted "Oppie" over and over again in adulation after the detonation over Hiroshima like he was a high school quarterback. How utterly deranged - especially if it was intentional to highlight Oppenheimer's delusional sense of self. The man's a war criminal, and Nolan is a hack.
