I went to see Oppenheimer yesterday. I much preferred it to Barbie! It was a very well-acted and interesting film, with layers of complexity, lots of talking points, and which is definitely worth going to see in my opinion. I saw it on an IMAX screen, which was a novelty for me, and that added to my enjoyment of the film.
I don’t know very much about Oppenheimer’s life and can’t really comment on the veracity of much of the story it told, although I guess all biographies are a matter of interpretation anyway. Despite my enjoyment here are a few more critical random thoughts:
- The opening scenes promised a much more complex and in-depth film about the mind of Oppenheimer, and his ethical and political dilemmas, than was actually portrayed subsequently in most of the film.
- The two court battles that take up much of the film sometimes come across as rather flat in my opinion, despite director Christopher Nolan playing around with linearity. I felt there was a lack of dramatic tension here, and in much of the first two-thirds of the film, which only really changes and develops towards the end.
- A lot of the film was based around the intrigue and personal jealousies between Oppenheimer and Lewis Strauss, about which I knew little (and for this at least I would have liked more contextualisation early on). As it was I couldn’t help but feel the film didn’t really nail the way the American state came for Oppenheimer in the post war years, despite his heroic status as ‘father of the atom bomb’.
- The devastating effects of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are only shown through the prism of Oppenheimer’s mind. So we only get a glimpse of the flayed skin Oppenheimer envisions in the faces of the audience at a meeting he attends. The full deadly and horrific effects of the bombings are not shown, and I thought the film was much less powerful for this omission.
- The portrayal of women in the film is very weak. The characters and biographies of Jean Tatlock and Kitty Oppenheimer are really very interesting politically and personally – and although this is hinted at in the film, these two characters are not given the time or depth they deserve (despite being well-acted by Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt)
- Cillian Murphy really does have the most piercingly blue eyes (at least on the IMAX screen).
- Tom Conti as Einstein was too cartoonish to be credible.