Went to watch this opening weekend by myself at an AMC theatre in IMAX. This is how Christopher Nolan wants his movies to be watched and I was happy to oblige. I also became an “AMC A-List Member” for the month of July to watch Oppenheimer, Barbie, Mission Impossible and maybe a few others. 

I feel like we are approaching a point of “theatre-going” where there are few movies or directors that can generate the same amount of hype surrounding a premier as Nolan can. Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, LOTR all used to be able to get people fired up about an opening weekend, but that subject matter is now so over saturated that I personally am wholly uninterested in new content. It might be the case that Nolan and Tarantino are the only two directors that can generate this kind of “theatrical hype”. The reason for this is that they practice moderation. They release passion projects every several years and do so sparingly. 

Another preamble I want to journal is that I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey on a street called “Einstein’s Alley” in the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) Neighborhood. Growing up walking those trails, routinely circling the pond and experiencing this “ultra think tank” campus through all seasons has always felt very profound. There is a quite and stillness to the IAS that amplifies the magnitude of the thinkers that have passed through those spaces. The reality that some of the greatest minds in our world have spent time thinking in those woods and on that campus has never been lost on me. To see the IAS on the IMAX screen for about 5-7 minutes of critical plot time moved me and gave me the chills. To think that Oppenheimer and Einstein had exchanges about the probability that a chain reaction might never stop and that the detonation of the nuclear bomb started something else that could never be stopped, right on campus, is just so damn cool. I knew Nolan was filming on Princeton’s campus (saw a couple of other familiar places) but I did not realize that they spent time filming at the IAS. 

Jumping into the movie, Oppenheimer seemed to be divided into three acts. I am just kind of guessing, but each act seemed to be roughly an hour. Nolan played around with some temporal elements, hoping back and forth between the future and the past. Admittedly this was a little hard to follow in a first viewing, but I have the feeling this won’t be the last time I see this movie and try to straighten it all out. The first act was Robert’s ascendence through academia. This was marked by stints in Europe and out at Cal Berkley. While I enjoyed Nolan’s setup of the character, I did find that some of the science explained was a bit heavy handed, which felt unusual for a Nolan film. For example, the realization that the Atom could be split left us with a dramatic “they must be building a bomb” realization that was kind of obvious. Some of Cillian’s portrayal of Oppenheimer’s scientific knowledge made it a little plain that Cillian is lacking in scientific acumen. In other words, it was clear that Cillian was acting in these instances. The second act consisted of Oppenheimer assembling the team and support to build and detonate the bomb. This buildup was well paced and kept the audience locked in through the meat of this film. The onscreen, CGI free, explosion did not disappoint. Kind of throughout these first acts there’s a lot of skipping around and character building. It feels like throughout the entire film there is both an internal and external struggle to define who Oppenheimer is as a man. The underlying thread is this prosecution of Oppenheimer’s character that is happening at a future date. The concluding act of the movie rounds out these prosecutorial proceedings, but the flash forwards serve to inform some of Oppenheimer’s past and character development. That final act is essentially a political medley of a post World War II, pre Cold War communist which hunt. It serves to demonstrate the concluding message of the film that unleashing the Nuclear Weapon really did set us on a course that forever changed the world. 

Throughout these 3 Acts there is an embarrassment of riches from a performance perceptive. So much stellar acting and talent oozing onto the screen at nearly every turn. Everyone wants to be in a Nolan film and he did a remarkably good job of reeling it in, but sometimes the film feels a little too smart and a little too jumpy. The amount of cuts from one set of events to another is a little hard to initially keep up with and wrap ones head around. That being said there was a swath of cameos, smaller performances, shock value breasts, various excellent onscreen chemistry and expertly delivered dialogue. For example, there’s a very small role with a handsome and well put together high ranking military official that looked slightly familiar to me. He kind of has a “whine” and boyish delivery that I couldn’t put my thumb on, it was right on the tip of my tongue. Low and behold it’s David Ford (Casey Affleck) from Jesse James! If I am not mistaken, Nolan has publicly said he loved that movie. I wonder if this tiny little Oppenheimer role had any traces back to Affleck’s performance in the Jesse James movie. I certainly sniffed it out. Matt Damon’s character was also particularly enjoyable. It reminded me a little bit of Nick Fury’s character whence assembling the Avengers. 

A paragraph for our lady performances. Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh were pretty exceptional. Nolan’s female characters are pretty consistently secondary, but he’s had some good ones. I think in general he just knows how to write men better, but Blunt as Kitty is complex yet strong. Pugh is a heartbreaking character, but both of these women do so well to inform who Oppenheimer is as a man. Womanizer, Politician and Scientist. That line resonated with me from the movie was when one of Oppenheimer’s colleagues said that Oppenheimer had left science behind and had become a politician. This thread of regret and forbidding is carried through the entire movie. 

Bottom line, Oppenheimer is an entertaining and thought provoking film. The production value and vast scope are top notch as is always the case in a Nolan film. By that I mean that the shots are beautiful, the world feels huge and the vision for the film is masterful. The undertaking of a bio-pic seems like a new project for this director and I thought he did a solid job of executing. He was able to develop the character with minimal childhood references. This is definitely not my favorite Nolan film due to some of the “jumpy” elements, but I was locked in and it did not feel like a three hour movie. Things I will remember are the IAS, Cillian and Florence Candid conversation in the Hotel Room and the scenes at the Los Alamos. Knocking it half a star, but this is a film I will revisit and an instant classic.