Noah Cassidy’s review published on Letterboxd:
"We were worried that we'd start a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world."
"I remember it well. What of it?"
Saw this again last night, wanted to give myself another day to wrestle with my many thoughts, as well as have time to write this review, look over it again, and still make sure I believed whatever I would end up typing by the time I posted it. I have two significant announcements to share with Oppenheimer. I'm going to start with the one that I think is less significant, which should be saying something for the eventual reveal of what the second is: I now think Oppenheimer is the "best" film ever made. I alluded on Twitter after my first viewing that I would have to consider if this film would overtake Jaws as my answer for that highly contested label. Like how John Wick: Chapter 4 went from "maybe" being the best action film to on second viewing just becoming the best action film to me, this is that on a much grander scale. With the over four thousand six hundred movies, shorts, and some scattered TV shows and miniseries that I am able to log on Letterboxd, I in my heart of hearts do not think I have seen anything I want to call "better." This just is the apex of the medium in my eyes. I've never really been one to be too wary of recency bias. In my eyes, when you're watching something from however long ago for the first time, it's still your first time. 12 Angry Men can be as "new" as Barbie. I do my best to trade blows between wanting to articulate why certain art compels me so much, as well as knowing when I should just "trust my gut." If it feels right, I can ride that all the way to the bank in the right circumstances. (Tenet sure is a perfect example of that phenomena.) Breaking down cinema to its foundations, the multitude of pieces that go together for "sight and sound," and here "fission and fusion," all elements feel so intricately tuned here. What's perfect is perfect, and what's imperfect finds its value from imperfection. It's, like quantum physics, a paradox. What should be contrary to itself can still exist harmoniously. I think Oppenheimer has such a deft hand not just aesthetically but thematically with how it goes about its eponymous subject. J. Robert Oppenheimer both didn't deserve what he got, and yet he probably deserved far worse in other facets of his life. Others have taken note of it, Oppenheimer was surrounded by very selfish people in his life, but his core flaw wasn't selfishness. He was not an evil man. He was a coward. Cowardice was his fatal flaw. He felt an earnest sense of remorse and guilt only after the grave sin, and while we cannot exactly reasonably have expected full clarity in his situation, what good do all of these negative feelings do after a sin so (literally) earth-shattering? The guilt is shared among the masses, he is not the only one who felt sorry, yet we all feel equally powerless in even so much as attempting to reckon with what we all collectively contributed to and continue to live in the fallout of. The particles continue to ripple, to this day. I think I somehow had an even more visceral reaction this time to the detonation of the bomb. I feel comfortable enough sharing that I think I teetered on the very edge of a panic attack during the reactions that immediately follow the actual sound of the bomb. I remain attached to Oppenheimer's own reaction after the explosion. His eyes tell the truth of his feelings, they swell with tears, they know what they saw, yet his body and the situation surrounding him compels him to bury that truth immediately in favor of bombastic but hollow celebration. My face during that scene and the auditorium rally does that thing where you're almost smiling, but it's because your face is really contorting, the side of your lips are scrunching into your teeth, and your eyeballs feel like they want to sink into your eye sockets. It's as transparent as I can be when I say that this is a movie that can make me feel that level of overwhelming stimulation, and as I'm writing this review, I'm already mentally making plans about when I want to see this a third time. The rapid heartbeats and sweat that this film pulls out of me comes from a different, more enticing source of stress than the type of stress that I otherwise receive from life. When I find myself living in a world that can sometimes waver in a sense of purpose and direction, a film like this scoops me up for three hours and allows this to be my primary focus. My mind can still wander, I can think about what I need to do for the next handful of days here and there, but with a giant IMAX screen in front of me and close to a couple hundred people around me, I can't check my phone, and my mind can't wander for too long. Where it counts, it's this story, these characters, the palpable weight of their lives and actions that take center stage. Like Nolan (rather brilliantly) made it a point to write the screenplay of this film from a first-person perspective, the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer becomes my own. Our own particles mix, he is me, and I am him. (Do I know what it's like to have created the atomic bomb? No. Do I know what it's like to pussyfoot on some of my seemingly "hard-set" beliefs and royally fumble someone who I would have wanted to say meant the world to me? You betcha.) There is, after three hours of roller coaster filmmaking and character drama, a single word that helped solidify the complexities of this movie for me. During the finale exchange between Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, the latter says to the former that he will have to "suffer the consequences of your achievement." That phrase normally goes "suffer the consequences of your actions," right? It's then the singular word "achievement" that evokes so much to me. An action can be individual. Even with a few put together, they can seemingly in and of themselves be put under an appropriately light to be properly "forgiven" and allow constructive change. An "achievement" feels different. It sounds more like a plan. There's a process that was undergone. There were moments where he could have stepped away, taken his hands off the steering wheel, let someone else drive, or tried to destroy the one-way street this car was going on. Instead, he justified, constructed, even constricted himself and others into a fiery "inevitability" that was, truly, a chain reaction. You've done it. You accomplished what seemed to be where your entire life was leading. Now, you have to breathe every subsequent breath that comes after this achievement, and reap what you sow for the world around you as much as you're seeing the further ripples of your own life. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. So, on that note, it's time for that second announcement. I have run this through my head over and over to make sure I want to say it, because I know how I would feel if I start committing to it, and then have to reel it back. As certain as one can be with something this monumental, I believe I am there. This year has felt as foundational as about any I have experienced. I both have needed to change and understand that I will in the future require many more changes. I am evolving. I will continue to do so. Big alterations, instead of being ignored, must to the best of my ability be embraced. Despite everything, when I say or think I am a "different" person, I am still that "same" person, just always going forward, always shedding old skin to be something new. Today, I tightly grasp, then say goodbye, to yet another part of me that I was thinking would be with me forever. It is a big, bold decision to think of Oppenheimer as the "best" film of all-time. It is then a life-changing decision to say to myself, and to you, that Oppenheimer is now my favorite film of all-time. Mary and Max, still my sweet, beloved little treasure, will remain the movie I revisit yearly for my birthday. That cannot and will not be taken away. However, its days on the throne have (for now) come to an end. A blazing watershed. We knew the world would not be the same.
"I believe we did."
10/10
