BestVista’s review published on Letterboxd:
Christopher Nolan is, as we all know, fond of non-linear modes of storytelling, but, apart from 'Oppenheimer's many other accomplishments, with this movie he's also achieved his most audacious chronology-bending result to date - 'Oppenheimer' has now retrospectively made 'Tenet' into a much better film. Previously 'Tenet' felt rote and secondhand, like a wannabe trying to make their folk-image of a 'Christopher Nolan Movie' rather than it simply being a Christopher Nolan movie. But now, 'Tenet' looks like a fascinating warm-up act for the main event, with its quotations from Oppenheimer himself, the invention of a deadly new algorithm that could ultimately doom humanity, and the key line in 'Tenet' ('It's a statement of faith in the mechanics of the universe') is one that could fit seamlessly into the discourse of 'Oppenheimer',.particularly when it comes to Oppenheimer's faith that the Trinity Test wouldn't set fire to the atmosphere and destroy the world, and that the existence of nuclear arms would instead ensure an eternal state of global peace.
In fact, 'Oppenheimer' in a macro sense plays like a culmination, Nolan marshaling all of his craft, every trick of the trade, and instinct in the service of the story that he was always born to tell. His first widespread use of black and white since 'Following'. The same basic ending as 'Dunkirk' (a fiery conflagration that cuts to a solitary close-up freighted with portent) is pre-empted by the film's expansive deployment of 'Dunkirk's triple-timeline dramatic structure. There's the careful use use of elements as recurring visual motifs throughout the narrative. 'Oppenheimer' opens with concentric ripples of rainwater spattering onto a lake, and it's intruiging that water is as important a player in the film as fire, right down to its most tragic moment.
Never before in his career though, has Nolan managed to juggle the grand and the granular so intoxicatingly in his filmmaking. 'Oppenheimer' comes sold to us as the vastest, most IMAX-y visual spectacle you've ever seen. But a good third of the film takes place in a single ten-foot-by-twenty-foot meeting room. This is a movie so huge that it contains not one, not two, but three consecutive recent Best Actor winners in a row, and I wasn't aware that any of them were in it going in. We marvel and hold our breath during the immense set-piece depicting the Trinity Test itself, but we're also holding our breath just as much late in the film as we wait to see if Kitty Oppenheimer will accept or decline to shake a particular person's hand. Total moviemaking that serves all masters big and small equally.
If 'Oppenheimer' is a throwback to the days of major studios betting big on mad-bastard visionary epics like 'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind', 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Right Stuff', then let's hope that its success only leads to more of the same, because you can't just milk existing IP forever. And is it just me, or do the sequences of Oppenheimer and Kitty on horseback in the desert as they look over Los Alamos not bear a striking resemblance to the scenes of Chuck and Glennis Yeager riding out in the desert in 'The Right Stuff'? Coincidence? You decide.
A more subtle parallel, though, with the black and white, the pervading air of Mccarthyite paranoia, the smoking, and Robert Downey Jr.'s presence, is to George Clooney's 'Good Night, And Good Luck'. In fact, between 'Good Night, And Good Luck', 'Oppenheimer', and his highly touching documentary 'Sr.', it's becoming a weird recurring theme that Downey always does his best work in black and white. Perhaps Marvel could have learned a thing or two from that and made even more money.
After watching 'Oppenheimer', I did something I rarely do. I came home and couldn't settle. I had to go for a walk. A long walk. I got Ludwig Gorannson's soundtrack straightaway, headed straight out, and listened to the score as I pounded the pavement for ages. I don't even remember where I went. Just processing, ruminating, turning 'Oppenheimer' over and over in my noggin. I must have returned home at some point, but I don't remember doing so. I'm still processing and still ruminating on 'Oppenheimer' now. I don't know precisely what that means, but it's a useful indicator that I've experienced a movie that I'm going to be watching and wrestling with for many years or decades to come.
