Movie Review: Oppenheimer

I’ve been watching a lot of movies these days (as well as reading) and I’m thinking of adding movie reviews to my blog. Hope you enjoy these!

Title: Oppenheimer
Director: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Epic Biographical Thriller
Date Released: July 21, 2023
Date Watched: July 23, 2023

Oppenheimer is a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer from his studies at Harvard to becoming a professor at UC Berkley and eventually to building the atomic bomb. The actor, Cillian Murphy played Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock (Oppenheimer’s first girlfriend), Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer (Oppenheimer’s wife), Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves, and more. There were so many big-name actors in the film, and I loved that!

There was so much I loved about this movie, but what stood out the most was the acting, the cinematography, and the clothing/fashion. I thought they did excellent with the accents of that time. I think I caught a bit of the CGI that most people might not have. There were moments when Cillian would speak, and his mouth didn’t move much but the words were clear. There is no way someone can speak so clearly without moving the muscles of their face. I believe that was meant to be an art, to show his serious expressions, but in doing that, it didn’t match. However, I didn’t find that an issue.

Another thing that I loved was that Nolan never showed images of the impact of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were no clips of the after effects on Japan, which I was really grateful for. However, what he did was use sound and expressions to show the damage, and it was amazingly done. There was a scene where Oppenheimer and his team were watching the damage on televison and the camera zoomed in slowly on Oppenheimer’s face as he was staring at the television and then turned away because it was just too much for him. You can literally feel his pain and his mistake. Before that, when they were testing the bomb, you could feel the power of the explosion. There was a moment when the bomb exploded when everything went silent on the screen with just the visuals and the whole auditorium also went quiet. It felt like everyone held their breath. They also showed the bright light with winds and Americans with radiation exposure all while Oppenheimer was doing a congratulatory speech to show the effects of the bomb as a way of saying, it’s what Oppenheimer imagines the bomb did to Japan without showing Japan. All the scenes from the final test to the real thing had me in tears and I’m still very emotional from that. That was just a very sad moment in our history, in the whole of the world’s history during WWII.

Also, some of the phrases spoken were awesome. There was one where Oppenheimer told one of the guys that he didn’t want to be a killer and the guy said something like “If you don’t destroy first to show them by killing some, they will destroy first and kill all.” Another one I really liked was when Oppenheimer was talking to President Truman and he said something like, “They’re going to remember me as a killer. I’ve got blood on my hands.” And President Truman said, “You’re a nobody. They don’t know who you are, but they know me. They’ll know I’m the one who did this.”

Overall, I enjoyed this movie. I loved it for the art. It was a beautifully made movie with an excellent cast. There were things about it that I really didn’t care for like the clip jumps between three different time periods. I didn’t mind the switching so much. It was that the clips didn’t really provide much details the way it was done. I think that was the point but doing that felt like a lot of important information was missed. I also didn’t care much for the love scene between Oppenheimer and the girlfriend (played by Florence Pugh). However, I know that was for shock value and I can’t say I favor it or not. What it did (in my opinion) is limit younger people from watching it. I think the way the movie was made with minimal information was not only for the art, but for the newer generations. It sort of fits the style of social media where information is taken in via short clips, where this generation doesn’t have a long attention span. It’s meant for them, and I find it fascinating that a movie could actually mimic how this generation takes in information. That was well done.

I also want to sneak this in and say, Einstein was in it! OMG.

There is so much I could say about this movie from the art point of view to the technical stuff and the CGI. It’s one great movie worth watching and debating about.

Who should watch this movie: If you enjoy historical movies, biographical movies, thrillers, time periods, artistic cinematic works including excellent actors, etc., this is for you. If you’re a hardcore history buff and not an ounce of you care for the artistic direction of a movie, or if you’re a huge math/physicist person and you take your work seriously, I would not recommend this for you. This movie is a work of art. It captures the beauty and heartbreak of a time period more so than the math and science aspect of it.