Nick’s review published on Letterboxd:
FINALLY got to see this beautiful work of art & in the ideal format to boot. And it more than met the hype.
The entire cast is amazing. I won’t list them all because there’s some surprise cameos that made me double take at the screen & I’m grateful the trailers didn’t spoil them. But everyone on the screen at any given time was excellent. Might as well write in Cillian Murphy & Robert Downey Jr for acting Oscar nominations with thick sharpie now. Emily Blunt gave a tough tough performance (& I mean that as praise). Florence Pugh was also great too.
The pacing is electric. For a 3 hour movie but moreso for a movie centered on such a heavy & complicated piece of history. Didn’t feel the runtime one bit. The editing overall was just dynamite too, especially in the last hour when they start going back & forth more often.
Ludwig Goransson did it again too. I absolutely loved his score for Tenet. It was just so intense for lack of a better term. And his work here is just as good or better yet so different. It felt a lot more subtle yet still really heightened the tension and simulated the eery feeling of anxiety similar to what everyone involved in the Manhattan Project was feeling.
This was also as much of a spectacle visually as advertised. I hope van Hoytema and Nolan never break up. I could gush on & on about how beautiful this film was. The shifting between color and black & white was striking. Seeing this in 70mm imax was just *chef’s kiss* too. An experience I’ll always be grateful for & will never forget.
I’ve said this before & I’ll say it again: one of the things I love most about Nolan’s movies is the pure scale of what he does. This might be biased since I got to see this in 70mm imax but the way he essentially turned a biopic into such an enormous project without ever losing control is unmatched. Everything is still so calculated.
Much has been made about the sound design in Tenet & some of other Nolan’s movies but even that facet has moments to shine in this. In an attempt to avoid spoilers I won’t elaborate other than to highlight the Trinity test and the gymnasium scene afterwards as two examples that come to mind. Reading snippets online about what went into this & other parts of the movie only furthers the fascination too.
Also, only Nolan could put the Trinity test around hour 2, an event many would assume to be the climax of the movie, and pivot completely to the pure political side of the aftermath and still craft it in such a way as to not lose any momentum or engagement. It’s a drastic shift yet it still felt smooth/seamless.
Not sure if I’ll get grilled for this take or not but what keeps this movie from being higher in my Nolan rankings is similar to how I felt about Tenet: the lack of a strong emotional component. Now in Tenet you could blame that on the writing & the fact it’s basically a spy movie but I think in this case it has more to do with the story. This is at its core a biopic after all and I think with that comes limitations that some of Nolan’s other work didn’t have.
Don’t get me wrong. This has an emotional aspect to it. It’s about the creation of the atomic bomb after all and grappling with the guilt of being the creators of such a devastating weapon. Even Emily Blunt’s character arc can be tough to watch thanks to her performance. Plus other aspects of this I won’t risk spoiling. I just think it’s not to the same depth as his top work. Interstellar and Inception deal more with the loss of family & to me that carries more of a profound emotional impact than the ethics, science, and politics on display here. Fair or not, the former matters more to me as a viewer albeit they both carry their own significant weight.
BUT, despite the rant, I want to emphasize that that is a hella minor nitpick. All the positives listed before were far more crucial to the experience. This is still undoubtedly a top tier movie in general that’s an explosive spectacle to behold & getting to experience it in 70mm imax is something I’ll always treasure. I want to see it in 70mm imax again but in Fort Lauderdale it’s completely sold out for another 2 weeks, which makes me happy.
Nolan, Ranked (#5 out of 11)
Seen in Theaters 2023 (I’ve been very blessed this is my 41st watch in cinemas so far this year)
2023 Releases, Ranked (New #1 & I’m not expecting this to be topped)
Watched in 2023, Ranked (Seeing this in 70mm imax just barely gave this the edge for #1)
