edit: what terms i might use to justify what felt wrong to me about this movie have shifted a lot over the past half a year so i wouldn’t stand by much in this review. its still a three stars. nolan’s reaching for something and he really nearly gets there but oh- not quite.

look. this is all a very personal, left wing critique, so just keep that in mind. and its worth saying that i liked a lot about the film but that i think it’s more worthwhile to express what i didn’t like here. 

making a film mostly from oppenheimer’s perspective makes a lot of sense. it certainly makes for an engaging, entertaining and moving viewing experience, but comes with a lot of issues.

oppenheimer is depicted as a promethean figure despite being one part of an enormous process. the film gestures towards this fact, but ultimately settles into the idea that he was the singular father of the atomic bomb.

and oppenheimer obviously thought that he was this singularly responsible figure so it makes sense to engage in that kind of narrative. but the large chunks of the film that exist outside of his limited perspective never meaningfully challenge this.

a related issue for me is that the film’s priorities feel back to front. the imagery and associations of the existentially terrifying atomic bomb, along with labyrinthian politicking and invocations of mass death and destruction are used to explore a fairly interesting character, but one whose personal story ends up feeling insignificant and indulgent in the face of it all.

because what really matters is the people who died needless deaths when those bombs were dropped. and this film just isnt equipped to deal with the real systematic causes of these events and the horrifying implications of it all. i think a better film would have left oppenheimer behind in its finale or at least zoomed out a bit more before tacking on a meek warning about how scary atomic weapons are