The Trinity Test sequence will go down as the most memorable moment in cinema this year. The tension building up to pressing the button for the first time, as the clock ticks, the explosion happens, rocking the screen with a gorgeous yet terrifying visual, Enhanced by a haunting score. There’s a build to silence, and then the sound hits you, the expertly crafted sound design rocking your cinema screen as the pure effect of the atomic bomb is felt. Oppenheimer, the story of the creation of the atomic bomb and the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), has been described as Christopher Nolan’s magnum Opus, a return to form for the director that has been putting on some slight middle of the road movies (Tenet) for a short whole, but it is also a cinematic event, a 3 hour epic that must be seen in cinemas. 

3 hours sounds like a long time to spend in a movie of this nature, but my god is the pacing of this movie exceptional. It doesn’t feel that long at all, the movie moves at a blistering pace that tells such a grand and years spanning story in a engaging and concise way, giving you all the pieces of information you need if you aren’t familiar with the story. As someone who was only familiar with the basics of the Oppenheimer story, this was a fascinating film to watch, and easily one of Nolan’s best scripts. Every line of dialogue is crafted to peak necessity to the story, whether it’s giving you information needed, infusing these real people with vibrant personalities or delivering some actually effective humour. There’s so many great quotes from this movie, that really drive home the morale of the story, what does it mean to hold power? Should we feel guilty for the things that we help to create? And are we the ones that are gonna destroy ourselves or prosper? It’s an effectively dramatic film that really lets you dwell in this powerful message, sucking you into a suffocating message where you can’t help but as feel as isolated as everyone in the film does. 

On a technical level, this is easily Nolan’s best. The movie looks absolutely gorgeous, with so many sweeping shots of Desert outbacks, haunting closeup shots to display emotion and disorienting shaky cam to build the tension needed. I will never be able to understand how Nolan pulled off the things that he done in this film, the actual bomb looks amazing and is a cinematic marvel, displayed with all the haunting magnitude that it should be conveyed with. Them actually making real sets helps this movie feels alive and lived in, Nolan is a man that clearly doesn’t back down from making as much practical stuff as he can and it’s very appreciated. There’s a lot of black and white photography here that I also enjoyed, the movie is displayed in a nonlinear timeline so it helps to show audiences which era you are exploring, and when those timelines overlap it is super effective. The big standout here for me though is the sound mixing, editing and everything to do with so, this film wouldn’t work without the magnitude of the sound. The effect of the bomb is only felt when you feel the boom, the tension is only felt when you feel the tapping of the feet booming loud, and the crescendo can only be felt when the film cuts sound and lets you dwell in the horror. Big shoutout to Ludwig Goransson on the score as well, my god did he craft something so frightening and haunting, this movie feels like a horror film with his score. 

A large cast rounds out the film, with every scene feeling like it’s introducing a new actor to give them a few minutes to shine, and shine they do. Robert Downey Jr is easily my favourite standout of the supporting cast, happy to see him in a dramatic role again after Marvel, the layers pull back on his character as the movie goes on and there’s a super solid breakdown scene at the end, pure pick for Best Supporting Actor right now. Matt Damon is wonderful as well, gives off a lot of funny lines, Tom Conti is wonderful as Einstein and Kenneth Branagh’s short runtime is beneficial. A lot of complaints to prior Nolan films follow around his lack of interesting female characters (they operate more as props in his prior films), but rectify this has he for sure. Emily Blunt gives a wonderfully subdued performance, a performance filled with so much rage and sorrow that builds to a solid conclusion, and the always reliable Florence Pugh is harrowing here. Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, David Dastmalchian, Jason Clarke, Dane DeHaan and Alden Ehrenreich are more standouts to mention, I couldn’t surely mention everyone but they all play an effective role each. 

Of course, you can’t end a review of Oppenheimer without mentioning the main star, and this is his shining moment. Cillian Murphy is tremendous here, a truly harrowing portrayal of a historical figure that was such a clearly broken man, a man fractured by his own grief for what he done and his attempts to bury himself away from feeling those emotions. There’s a large cast here but you never forget that it’s his movies, you’re seeing the world from his eyes, and a particularly harrowing scene where he imagines a room full of his students being incinerated is a great showing of this. There’s a lot of great facial acting here from Murphy here, those final shots of the film will never leave you for a long time. 

‘You don’t get to sin and make everyone feel sorry for you’ 
‘Do you want them to tar and feather you in hopes they’ll forgive you for what you’ve done?’ 
‘You have created a weapon that may destroy them and they will congratulate you’ 
‘I believe we did’ 

10/10