Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

I don't say this lightly: Oppenheimer may be the most important film of the year. It may not tackle the social and gender issues of Barbie or the touching human drama of Past Lives and Aftersun, nor is it as grand a spectacle as John Wick: Chapter 4 or the latest Mission: Impossible.

No, Oppenheimer is important because it feels like the ultimate wake-up call. Technological advancements keep moving forward at a faster pace, wars are fought with countless innocent lives destroyed in the shuffle, and people in power get greedier. All of this while the world is literally burning up.

Yes, the film is beautifully put together (Those shots! The vibrant editing! The booming soundtrack!) and the cast does a stellar job (Murphy's finest turn, with memorable moments from Blunt, Damon, Blair, Clarke, Downey, Pugh, Ehrenreich, Krumholtz... too many to name them all). But the sheer horror of it all that Nolan accomplished left me speechless: Oppenheimer, his team, and the American government came so close on many occasions to stopping a horrible invention from being created and tested.

Instead of stopping, moved by hubris and hunger for knowledge, they went ahead, and unleashed an evil that is still deeply present in the world nearly 80 years later. There's a reason that David Lynch links the Trinity Test to the birth of B.O.B. in Twin Peaks, the embodiment of everything there is rotten in humanity.

The Trinity Test may be his most exhilarating and finely directed sequence, but the final moments in Oppenheimer are the most haunting ones in Nolan's entire career. Impossible to leave the screening without a feeling of doom for the human race, but also the will to try to stand up and do some good. Having this film released on my birthday in Italy is the best cinematic gift I could have asked for! Only a rewatch will solidify it as the masterpiece of historical human drama that it likely is.