Honestly, this one almost didn't happen, as all the cinemas in the city had almost every seat of this booked out in every showing that evening, but we managed to get some seats in the front rows so here we go...
THE BARBENHEIMER DOUBLE BILL
PART TWO
[part one here]

Might be worth knowing where I stand with Nolan before proceeding, I would probably call myself a fan of his work but I feel that some Nolan-isms that have always been in his work just keeping getting worse film to film and that has meant on a whole, I've been enjoying his later films slightly less as they've gone on (I thought Tenet was good but I've got complicated feelings on Dunkirk). Going into this, I was worried the Nolan-isms would interfere with the story he's trying to tell, notably his excessive use of time and non-linearity and his treatment of his female characters. Oddly, I've found that I was very right about this but also forgot how damn compelling Nolan can be at telling grand scale epic narratives of stories that are ultimately simple at heart!
As I said, I didn't love the way time is played with in the presentation of the story (we'll get onto my other complaint shortly) BUT I found myself completely overlooking that after the first 30 mins or so and just being sucked into the linear core narrative! Its a grand story of borderline Greek Mythological scale, of someone cracking the code of the universe to bring a huge cursed weapon into existence and how that ultimately destroyed his life afterwards...but its also not, at its heart being just a tale of male egos! And its that simple heart to the crazy real world events being protrayed on screen that makes this one of the most fascinating STORIES I've seen on screen in a while. I know fairly little of the story of the Manhattan project and even less of the events that followed the war, so the story was entirely fresh to me and utterly engrossing! Look, the film is too long, yes, but how it tells this narrative made me almost entirely forget about it until the last 20 mins or so!
The cast! Wow! The main three performaces are the film's best: Cillian Murphy is breathtakingly great carrying most of the movie on his shoulders; Matt Damon is incredible, loving this more character actor focused era of his career; then Robert Downey Jr gives a genius performance that finally breaks the stereotype of roles he's being playing for the last 15 years of his career. Other cast highlights include Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Josh Hartnett and Jason Clarke - but the cast is utterly stacked with some incredible actors (mostly white men tho...).

Now, you may have noticed I've left two cast members off there (one of whom you know is a favourite actor of mine if you're a regular reader) but that just brings me to the film's biggest problem...its treatment of women! People may excuse this with it being 'accurate to the time' (lame and wrong excuse btw) or accurate to Oppenheimer's womanising or that they aren't relevant to the film's tale of male ego...but honestly if that were the case, I'd rather it not feature any female characters than to do what it did! Florence Pugh's character (after this and Dont Worry Darling, she needs a new agent!!) is by far the most poorly done, getting a handful of superfluous lines but mostly treated by the script as a sex object before being fridged (I know that you cant change history and she did die but don't need to actually fridge her in the script and use it as motivation for the male characters) but Emily Blunt's character only fares marginally better, with barely any lines or time on screen (especially not outside of a blindly supporting character to either aid or obstruct the protagonist) until the final act, where she does get some great lil moments in the hearing. Look, it may be a hot take and it may get some flack from the Nolan fanboys but I really do just hate how women were represented here, which is a shame as I genuinely loved a lot of what this movie did!

Much like the man, the movie is a little complicated but its ability to tell a story just makes this a fascinating watch! Maybe not a top Nolan film but certainly an impressive one!