Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

[tenia]

Multiple movies are shot at 6 or 8k, general audience couldn't care less, especially when the biggest successful blockbusters are mostly post-produced in 2k anyway and it doesn't prevent to be, well, massively successful.

[Swift]

Ugh, the only IMAX 70mm theatre in town ran into technical issues with the first showing last night and are screening it digitally for the time being. I'm hoping they get their shit together for my already booked showing next weekend.

[Farley Flavors]

Ugh, the only IMAX 70mm theatre in town ran into technical issues with the first showing last night and are screening it digitally for the time being. I'm hoping they get their shit together for my already booked showing next weekend.

Not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately, especially now the 70mm projectors are only hauled out of storage every couple of years or so.

When I saw Interstellar for the second time the 70mm projector broke down and they screened it digitally. When I went to the box office to get a refund I had to argue with the cashier, who claimed digital was not only just as good as film, but that "some people prefer the digital version". Yeah, right.

[Self]

Ugh, the only IMAX 70mm theatre in town ran into technical issues with the first showing last night and are screening it digitally for the time being. I'm hoping they get their shit together for my already booked showing next weekend.

Same for San Antonio. 2.5 hour drive, walk into the theatre and get an email refund for technical issues. They’re showing the digital as well.

[soundchaser]

I’m no great Nolan defender, but I really appreciate what he tried to do here. Stunned that the third act exists at all, even more surprised that it works as effectively as it does. It gets a *bit* overwritten towards the end, and I’m with twbb on the parts that are guilty, but I thought RDJ performed ably.

The editing in the first act started to bother me. Not sure if anyone else would have liked some more breathing space; it feels ridiculous to say about a film that’s already this long, but it’s nagging at me anyway. More Emily Blunt can only be a good thing.

[therewillbeblus]

The editing in the first act started to bother me. Not sure if anyone else would have liked some more breathing space; it feels ridiculous to say about a film that’s already this long, but it’s nagging at me anyway.

Me, though I liked how the first section was essentially an experimental film externalizing how his brain works/what attracts him to science. It would work to make Oppenheimer enigmatic from the start if the film more creatively tied its formal distance from its subject back to the subject's own distance from his 'self', but I'm not sure how effective Nolan is at accomplishing this.. nor am I even convinced that this was his goal

[beamish14]

Over 125 VFX artists weren’t credited for their contributions to the film.

[captveg]

Over 125 VFX artists weren’t credited for their contributions to the film.

The structure of this article irks me. They throw out the "Who knows?" why Universal and Nolan left off these credits, framed as some unique personal vendetta by the studio and the director, and then just a paragraph later explain that they, actually, already know: It's routine and commonplace industry practice due to a lack of union requirements that the entire staffs get on screen credit. I sympathize with the point being made, but I really dislike even mild forms of clickbait structure.

[Boosmahn]

How likely even is it Nolan handled the credits? There are two other producers for the film.

[hanshotfirst1138]

Well, I drove three hours to see this in 15/70, and the projector broke. So that was fun. Seven hours of my life, gone forever. So I saw it on regular 70mm. Go down fighting, Kodak. Anyway, I thought there were definitely pockets of inspiration from Nolan’s direction, some terrific performances, and the cinematography was dazzling, but I found it unbelievably long and too often slipping into biopic mode where the famous person does the famous thing that they are famous for doing. I like how it’s ambiguous about the moral questions it raises (especially given the criticisms of fascism thrown at the Batman movies), but it still could’ve done with some trimming in that last hour of courtroom drama. Regardless, it’s an attempt at an actual, intelligent drama for adults, and I admire the hell out it for that and am thrilled to death to see it doing good business.

[Drucker]

After talking to a friend about it, this film has grown on me a little since seeing it yesterday. But while it’s impressive and there are some amazing things about the film, I actually found it to be a mess for a good portion of its runtime. I’m just going to spoiler all of my thoughts, of which there are many.

SpoilerShow

So this is at least the third straight film where Nolan feels comfortable opening the film in a disorienting way. He feels comfortable dropping us in to the variety of time periods that will make up the duration of the film. Like Tenet and Dunkirk it feels at least a little intentional and disorienting. But whereas the previous two films kind of ‘lock in’ to the plot fairly quickly, I felt that took much too long with Oppenheimer. Even by the time he’s meeting Jean at a party and making love to her, I felt like I still didn’t know where we were in the story and how I was supposed to orient myself.
Once the film gets going and I could make sense of it, I felt like it’s nearly a third of the film has passed and we are in Los Alamos. At that point, the film gets really excellent. The Atom Bomb sequence was a masterful application of suspense and I could completely feel it rushing in my bones. And I actually really enjoyed the last third, the courtroom sequence as well. Unlike others I didn't think it dragged and felt the suspense there too.

But that doesn’t mean it was easy to follow and I think ultimately my problem with the film is it wasn’t as easy to follow as I felt it should have been. I wouldn’t pretend to understand every moment of the last two films from Nolan, but the spectacle and the ride itself more than made up for it. Little details are okay to miss or pick up on revisiting, because the larger point is fairly clear. But those little details feel like the entire film here. Which girl is he having an affair with? Which scientist is that? Is this one ultimate an ally or does he betray Oppenheimer? Is Rami Malek a spy for the USSR?
In Tenet the plotlines merge halfway through, and in Dunkirk maybe a little later than that if I recall correctly. The plotlines merge here so far into the film (nearly to the end of the runtime) that I was totally taken aback. Rather than the RDJ reveal as a villain to be an “of course!” moment I felt completely confused. So as enjoyable as so much of the film is, and RDJ is really a standout performance, it didn’t fully gel for me.

Ultimately, Nolan likes throwing everything at this (and all?) his film(s). We have a tense action sequence, cat and mouse spy/crime movie, and psychedelic philosophizing. I wish Nolan had chosen one direction. A single film in black and white which examines Oppenheimer as a left-wing sympathizer and Strauss as the man aiming to take him down would have been amazing. If Nolan had focused on a personal biopic of Oppenheimer, too, with those beautiful moments focused on particles and atoms, I would have been really into it.

There were some other misses too. I think revealing the content of Oppenheimer’s conversation with Einstein was a mistake and could have been better left unrevealed. I also think the Atom Bomb sequence was spellbinding, but why did Nolan have to hit us over the head with the sound of the blast? Letting the silence permeate the theater was absolutely magical. Let the silence reign I say! Nolan couldn’t help himself.

And then there’s the matter of Oppenheimer himself, which is still puzzling me. Is Oppenheimer a man so driven to personal fame and acclaim that he can only singularly focus on that goal? And will do so at the expense of his personal friendships, wife, and children? Because the film never does a great job at showing us why he’s a genius! If anything it shows him more as a marketer, or as Benny Safdie says, “a politician.” But if the portrait of Oppenheimer is one of an opportunistic politician, than what is the film telling us? I think the film wants us to picture Oppenheimer as a genius who let his drive cloud his moral code, and he didn’t know what he was unleashing upon the world until it was too late, but he just couldn’t help himself. And I just don’t think Nolan does a great job of revealing that version of the complicated man. Instead we get the heartless and charming scientist. If he’s so smart, why doesn’t he foresee how the government will use him? Why doesn’t he heed the warnings? Maybe I took away from the film what Nolan wanted, which is to paint Oppenheimer as kind of an empty person. But I have a hard time Nolan was going through all of that effort to tell me that.

[Yakushima]

I watched "Oppenheimer" in XD format at a local Cinemark theater in NJ, and it was a stunning experience. Such a brilliant film, and Cillian Murphy's performance is one for the ages. A towering acting achievement in a film of many memorable performances. The filmmaker's adherence to the historical accuracy is also commendable. Going in I did not know much about Oppenheimer personally, but I knew the story of Manhattan Project in broad strokes, and some details from Richard Feynman's memoirs, and other sources. Interestingly, quite a few anecdotes from the Feynman's book actually made it into the movie.
The movie brought to my memory a story professor Jacques Fresco, my boss at Princeton University, told us ones. When Jacques has just started teaching Molecular Biology at Princeton in the early 1960s, Oppenheimer, who was a director of the Institute for Advanced Study at the time, decided that the theoretical physicists needed to expand their horizons and would benefit from delving into other disciplines, in particular molecular biology. He asked professor Fresco if it would be OK for the nuclear physicists (some of whom have participated in Manhattan Project) to attend his lectures. Jacques said he was terrified at the thought - these guys were brilliant physicists, but they did not know the first thing about biology. He agreed, nevertheless and prepared for the first lecture with trepidation. At this point Jacques made a dramatic pause, and then with a mischievous glint in his eyes continued: "And you know what? They were the best students I have ever had, and they asked the best questions".
Back to the film. If I had to nitpick, I would say that the aspects of the film that did not work for me quite as well were editing, which at times felt rushed, and the use of music in some parts. Nolan seems to have a propensity to use music as a blunt tool, and I thought the movie could really benefit from more quiet moments. Having said that, the score was superb and very fitting to the story.
I am going to watch it again tomorrow.

[ntnon]

SpoilerShow

I wish Nolan had chosen one direction. A single film in black and white which examines Oppenheimer as a left-wing sympathizer and Strauss as the man aiming to take him down would have been amazing. If Nolan had focused on a personal biopic of Oppenheimer, too, with those beautiful moments focused on particles and atoms, I would have been really into it.

Do you think it would be possible to split those two storylines out from the finished film and create two shorter, coherent, pieces along those lines..? Or would those decisions have needed to have been made during filming for that to ever be possible?

[therewillbeblus]

SpoilerShow

I think revealing the content of Oppenheimer’s conversation with Einstein was a mistake and could have been better left unrevealed. I also think the Atom Bomb sequence was spellbinding, but why did Nolan have to hit us over the head with the sound of the blast? Letting the silence permeate the theater was absolutely magical. Let the silence reign I say! Nolan couldn’t help himself.

SpoilerShow

I was worried that revealing the conversation would risk spoiling ambiguity, like showing us if the totem of Inception fell or not, but it actually worked at furthering the ambiguity for me (Nolan has compared the two films' endings in interviews). By giving us a glimpse at Oppenheimer's 'modern' fear with hindsight, we're left with the enigmatic man we've been following, who's as much a stranger to himself and his comprehension of the world at large as we are to him, sitting with the ultimate ambiguity: Are we doomed, and did he ignite that doom? He's finally ready to face that question, but cannot locate an answer because there isn't one yet. He's always been good at focusing on the tangibles, chasing the next stage of science, but he can't lean into the nebulous consequences.

I felt this was tremendous restraint from Nolan re: the silence, and the wave of the blast didn't feel like Nolan being unable to "help himself" - but a thematic signifier. We were able to hold onto the awe of that moment, that "success" we just watched the "heroes" work towards for so long... and now the consequences set in, the balloon pops, and we're sobered to the noise and chaos this will bring. The catharsis is fleeting. To withhold the boom would be to thematically remain in delusion, at least in terms of film grammar signifying consciousness. Personally, I thought it was the cleverest and most striking use of sound in Nolan's career by a country mile.

SpoilerShow

And then there’s the matter of Oppenheimer himself, which is still puzzling me. Is Oppenheimer a man so driven to personal fame and acclaim that he can only singularly focus on that goal? And will do so at the expense of his personal friendships, wife, and children? Because the film never does a great job at showing us why he’s a genius! If anything it shows him more as a marketer, or as Benny Safdie says, “a politician.” But if the portrait of Oppenheimer is one of an opportunistic politician, than what is the film telling us? I think the film wants us to picture Oppenheimer as a genius who let his drive cloud his moral code, and he didn’t know what he was unleashing upon the world until it was too late, but he just couldn’t help himself. And I just don’t think Nolan does a great job of revealing that version of the complicated man. Instead we get the heartless and charming scientist. If he’s so smart, why doesn’t he foresee how the government will use him? Why doesn’t he heed the warnings? Maybe I took away from the film what Nolan wanted, which is to paint Oppenheimer as kind of an empty person. But I have a hard time Nolan was going through all of that effort to tell me that.

SpoilerShow

I got into this a bit above and in my own writeup after my viewing, but I think Oppenheimer -like nearly all of Nolan's protagonists- is meant to be relatably emotional and fallible, but also a stranger to himself in some fashion. Oppenheimer is (at times, frustratingly) enigmatic in the film -a jack of all trades, who moves from cause to cause, is open-minded and sees peripherally one moment and is rigid and myopic the next. Like, a regular person. I think it's misguided logic to assume, "If he's so smart, why doesn't he foresee how the government will use him" for a few reasons: first, there are various forms of intelligence, and just because someone is great at quantum physics does not mean they are socially or politically savvy. Or even if they are, that doesn't mean they will be flawlessly agile as godlike climbers, future-seers, etc. The film does a good job at showing us stuff that we know with our hindsight, and allows Oppenheimer to realize this with his own hindsight, but even then he throws up defenses: rationalization, suppression, intelluctualization, avoidance, etc. The best part of the film was also its most agitating quality: We get this person who is a grab-bag of so many different passions, and engages in eclectic types of thinking, and oscillates between acknowledging and confronting or dodging the culpability he has or the reality of the situation in objective terms, even as it's in process... so he remains enigmatic but is also broadly relatable. Who would be able to think objectively and gain distance from something they have such an integral role in that impacts the entire world? The notion that he should have been able to simply use his "smarts" to zoom out assumes he's not an emotional being who will feel those strong feelings of guilt or anxiety of potential philosophical and corporeal implications first, which are so unbearable that he suppresses them, of course. Seems like normal human behavior to me.

Also, I don't think he was portrayed as some political opportunist - he was clearly genuinely interested in science and discovery. Discovery was his primary moral code - whether it was new truths about science in theory, possible ways to manipulate and apply theory, new ways to approach world politics - which were evolving through the course of the film, just as his responses to them were. That's another criticism I don't understand - the 'he should've known better' angle. The film does a great job at showing how culture and views evolve over time, whether they're his wife's feelings towards communism or Oppenheimer's optimism about how governments would use nuclear weaponry. Right now we're cancelling people based on current bars set, not bars that were always set. Things change, and the film showed how tragic it is when you wake up to realize something that you didn't have the tools to realize earlier, only to find that you can't control the past or the future and have to sit with those stains on your conscience. I think everyone can relate to that - Nolan just used the most extreme example to relay that existentially horrifying experience.

Plus Oppenheimer kinda ‘did’ know the government was using him, but he didn’t allow himself to care/dwell because it would’ve been a waste of resources at that point and he was an optimist - he half-knew they weren’t to be trusted but, due to the dire circumstances where they had to build the bomb first, and given that the US govt was more of an alley for a Jew than the other side (Nazi Germany..), he chose to believe that maybe, just maybe this would end war, maybe the US govt could be trusted. But either way, it was a scenario of bad and less bad, and he focused inward toward the glory of apolitical science to cope - we all do something to cope with the political and social and personal things outside our control. Again, an imperfect but human response.

I'm not convinced Nolan handles all of this effectively either, but I do think he was going for that balance of enigma and human relatability, as well as using film language to communicate the fluctuation between psychologically-defensive obfuscation and clear-eyed sobriety - to both the project's various perceived positive values in a vacuum, as well as the larger negative implications from multiple perspectives (and in layers - what does this mean for society, the current political landscape, future generations, his egocentric definition of self and how that impacts his value from where/when he's looking..)

Like most all of mankind, Oppenheimer isn't as robotically 'logical' as we may suspect we are/he is, and that he sees himself as. Emotions drive us, and sometimes the scariest thing is that we aren't as sure of what those are and how they operate, compared to external 'logic' - hence why we focus outward out of mistrust of our own psyches. That's what the film seems to be about in many respects, making space for supreme validation of evading that state and the drastic consequences of living our lives that way

[Mr Sausage]

People have a tendency to think of intelligence as this all or nothing thing. The moment there's some lapse and, well, how could someone do that and be smart? Isn't there some kind of ruse going on? I remember someone on the forum years ago dismissing Good Will Hunting's portrayal of genius because Will pronounces Nietzsche the American way, NEET - chee, and not the proper German way, NEET - chuh. Maybe it's because most people don't spend enough time around the immensely smart to see how dumb they can be. Or they spend too much time watching tv and movies and confuse intelligence with being savvy or clever. Having immense processing speed and a deep capacity for abstract thought does not make someone perceptive or canny.

One of the interesting ambiguities the film raises is whether Oppenheimer did in fact know the government was going to pillory him, and didn't do enough to avoid it because he felt he deserved it as a penance for his role in the bomb. His wife saw enough to know that he wasn't properly fighting it, and kept demanding to know why.

Oppenheimer doesn't spent a lot of time on why Oppenheimer was a genius physicist. It spends more time on what a talented and canny manager and organizer he was. Edward Teller's crack about Oppenheimer being a politician is layered with irony. First, because Teller was so phenomenally bad at working with other human beings that of course he'd think Oppenheimer a politician: any compromise for the sake of unity such as the head of a project must engage in would seem politicking to a man like Teller for whom ideas alone are the thing. Second, because Oppenheimer was pretty bad at actual politics. He always got into trouble when he tried his hand at it. Men like Lewis Strauss are the politicians. Oppenheimer was too naive or arrogant to see that a great ability to understand scientists does not grant an ability to understand politicians.

There is a question of whether Oppenheimer's openmindedness, the openmindedness that led him to consider so many avenues in physics and elsewhere and to understand how to manage such a project with so many prickly intellects, didn't sometimes become a kind of emptymindedness, an inability to decide on things. Hence he finds himself in such contradictory positions, or engaged in such bizarre decision making. That's interesting. Weird to see it used as evidence that the movie presents an empty political robot or something.

[therewillbeblus]

Right, I mentioned it before, but it's interesting to liken it to our current climate where people are highly politicized but both myopic and engaged, or see the issues as grey and present as "open-minded" but can also use that as a form of disengagement as well as engagement towards more ideas, only from a distance. Lots of paradoxes, but resonant ones.

I had to laugh because I have several clients who, every week like clockwork, will get angry at someone's decision to do something different than they would do, and chalk it up to intellect (i.e. "He was always the smart one, why would he do that?") when it's either an emotional response the person can't fathom, or it's a way for the person to cope with their emotional response by relying on a dominant cognitive part. Either way, it's wildly misguided.

[Big Ben]

People have a tendency to think of intelligence as this all or nothing thing.

I think this is one of the things that a lot of people forget about intelligence and it shows in certain peoples reaction to the film. One of the things I think Oppenheimer does really well is it shows us a who's who of intelligent people still being entirely human and flawed. Physics as you all know, particularly quantum physics is some of the most counter-intuitive stuff on the planet (Universe?) and the kinds of people necessary to really sit down and understand some semblance of it all is very unique. While we can certainly lay the creation of the Atomic Bomb at the feet of Oppenheimer he most certainly had help making it. Edward Teller for instance, the character played by Benny Safdie suggested we bomb Alaska as possible test site. Smart guy! But not exactly an entirely moral one. The Los Alamos project was filled with people who were willing to destroy the entire planet to stop Fascism in Europe/Asia and while the film sort of jokes around this concept it was a very real fear at the time. The film is also littered with moments like:

SpoilerShow

The official suggesting the United States not bomb Kyoto because he and his wife had visited there before. It's a statement made by an intelligent man but also one who has no problem killing hundreds of thousands of civilians so as long as it doesn't impede upon something sacrosanct in HIS worldview.

Human intelligence is not uniform and we all fall prey to human weakness. And when it's something like the Atomic Bomb, the consequences are very, very real for everyone. All it will take is one real idiot, or one real idiotic mistake to ruin it for absolutely everyone. This isn't exactly a new thing to say about nuclear weapons of course, but I think the film is incredibly effective at communicating this.

SpoilerShow

And I think that's what's so devastating about the final scene. Oppenheimer is a genius for sure. But he's still human, just like the rest of us and that fallibility and shortsightedness has enabled the very real possibility of complete annihilation.

[MichaelB]

I've seen more than one person with a PhD behave in ways that by any sensible yardstick are breathtakingly stupid. And I suspect I'm far from the only person here who can make that claim.

[Persona]

There are so, so many valid ways to criticize this film... and yet for all its loudness, its text over subtext, its frequently heavy-handed dialogue, its bombast and overreach, its structural dynamism and fever montage rhythm that toe the line between brilliant and messy -- I can't help but appreciate the density and richness of the written and performed work here, plus the technical virtuosity. But what really hits is the heavy aesthetic and thematic impact. It's a bomb of a film, to be honest, in whatever positive way I can mean that. The unknowability of others, the space of rhetoric and politicism that allows unthinkable actions, the self-destructive bent of man in microcosm and mankind in macro -- these elements and more are coursing like so many waves of hyper-charged particles through the film's rapid-fire synapses. All that energy in turn swirling around and getting sucked into the central black hole event, the experience of the Trinity test (massively important that Nolan included the Donne quote), where the film forces all the talking (and, for a long moment, noise itself) to stop and lets the incredible imagery express both beauty and dread, a primal reaction to what you find when you scratch away at the fabric of the universe.

The central character is sufficiently complex, too, and Cillian Murphy's performance so good and so layered, that even if I were to look at this film purely as an over-long character study, I think it works, particularly because the subject drives the study in several directions at once: philosophical, psychological, relational, moral. All arcing and intertwined, arranged by Nolan and editor Jennifer Lame in a rather original way that subverts the traditional process of conveying a character's journey without undermining the final effect and resonance of that journey.

It's been a while since I have been in a theater where a movie that is aiming for impossibly big feelings, thoughts, and sensations actually imparted the power of that ambition in my experience of it. For all and whatever its flaws, OPPENHEIMER did that for me. And it apparently did that for most of my audience, too. 3 hours of heady talking in a bleak biopic that ended late on a Monday night and my audience clapped at the end (I can't remember the last time I heard applause for a movie, that it should happen after a film such as this seems quite strange).

It's a doozy.

[Mr Sausage]

The guy Einstein is walking in the forest with during his first meeting with Oppenheimer, the one afraid of being poisoned by the nazis—was that Kurt Gödel?

[Yakushima]

The guy Einstein is walking in the forest with during his first meeting with Oppenheimer, the one afraid of being poisoned by the nazis—was that Kurt Gödel?

Yes, this is correct.

[Mr Sausage]

Did they actually mention his full name in the film and I just missed it? Because I only now realized it must’ve been him, a full two weeks after I saw it.

[Big Ben]

Did they actually mention his full name in the film and I just missed it? Because I only now realized it must’ve been him, a full two weeks after I saw it.

Yes it's mentioned in the film but it's a very passing reference ("You know Kurt Gödel don't you?"). His paranoia about food is mentioned too. He developed quite a close friendship with Einstein when he was alive and it was really cool of Nolan to include it in the film. He's another one of those people we could talk endlessly about his brilliance but being undone by a character flaw. For those who aren't in the know he starved to death once his wife passed away as he didn't trust anyone else to prepare his food. Nolan's inclusion of him in the film felt very intentional to me, if only because it at first glance it feels trivial but it adds thematically to the film when considering all his brilliance couldn't help him overcome his own personal flaws in the end.

Brilliant guy. If anyone is interested in learning more about him here's a short primer on how Gödel "broke" math. Here's a more complex look if you're REALLY into that sort of thing.

[Walter Kurtz]

Yes, this is correct.

Proof?

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, Gödel’s also famous for telling Einstein right before his own American citizenship hearing that he had discovered a fatal loophole in the constitution that would allow America to be turned into a fascist dictatorship. There has been much speculation ever since about what this loophole might actually be.