In lieu of a biopic that uses its subject's eyes as a window into their soul or out through their world, Nolan turns Oppenheimer's cold stare into a stark, harrowing mirror that reflects back the wrenching existential dread that comes from the horrifying connection between creation and destruction. He pares back his more audacious structural sensibilities (which came as a relief to me as someone who really didn't get on with Tenet), creating much more space not just to depict history, but ruminate on its terrifying cost. Yes, it's a portrait of a man, but also of a world that engineers, argues for and even celebrates its own destruction. The blast is brief, terrifying and a phenomenal piece of filmmaking craft, but what Nolan is more interested in is how much of the defining action of the piece happens after the fact. Oppenheimer's moral handwringing occurs after he's facilitated mass destruction, ditto for Strauss' push to nullify his political influence. Regardless of how one responds or why, it's all too late. It is a dirge for a dying world, a Prometheus story where everyone is punished for the misdeeds of the man who stole fire. Murphy is outstanding, completely disappearing into an inherently repulsive character and finding enough humanity to give the stacked ensemble an imposing wall of repressed emotion to bounce off of. For my money though, the real talent is behind the camera. Göransson and van Hoytema put in reliably stellar work that unlocks the size of the story, fitting its most epic and intimate moments in equal measure. But MVP is Jennifer Lame, whose work here firmly cements her as a world-class talent on the level of Schoonmaker and Sixel. Her cuts are the devastating link between time periods and in turn, between stages of knowledge and development, and the moral quandaries unlocked by discovery. Altogether it's a chilly, uncompromising piece of work that, in spite of my somewhat hit-or-miss relationship with Nolan, I found to be masterfully composed and deeply devastating. There's a scene involving a scream that is genuinely one of the most disturbing things I can recall seeing, a sterling example of the kind of immediacy that defines this as Nolan's most astonishing, affecting work to date.