Oppenheimer
Swartacus

Review by Swartacus Patron

Oppenheimer 2023

★★★★★

Watched 30 Jul 2023

Viewed on 70mm at Willow Creek, just off highway 169, Minnesota, USA

“God doesn’t play dice.”

For hardcore cinephiles the name Christopher Nolan tends to dredge up a bevy of opinions. For every die hard disciple of Dunkirk or Memento, there’s always one or two of his films that induce aggressive hatred. Whether it be as simple as the hokey ending of The Dark Knight Rises (and thus his Batman trilogy as a whole) or the “Murph” mumbo jumbo of Interstellar or the circuital contrivances of Tenet… there’s always a “but, what about…” section of his filmography. 

Oppenheimer is something much different though - a historical puzzle box recreated for mass consumption and maximum oomph. You take the fanciful popcorn “hidden genius” aspect of A Beautiful Mind or a Good Will Hunting and then marry it to the dark philosophical napalm of Apocalypse Now. Mix in large handfuls of Ollie Stone’s JFK-style delirium and you have yourself an explosive device capable of wrecking the minds of everyone from the hardened 80 yr old cynic to the naive nineteen year old. 

Truly powerful, melodic, angry, whimsical and elliptical cinema. For the first time since Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey… Nolan, or any filmmaker for that matter, has attempted and nearly succeeded in touching the face of God.

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