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The Nuclear Age Grimly Descends in “Oppenheimer”

Christopher Nolan’s somber biopic is the antithesis of summertime studio popcorn. 

Vanity Fair BY RICHARD LAWSON, JULY 19, 2023

The director Christopher Nolan has never told a true story. His 2017 war film, Dunkirk, dealt with real things, but Nolan’s work has largely been less about people than about the spectacle swirling around them, the awe and terror they experience as reality bends and new consciousness blooms. (He’s also made some Batman movies.) Which perhaps makes J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb, a perfect subject for Nolan’s first venture into fact-based character drama. (Opening on July 21.)

…………………………..the sorry horror at the center of Oppenheimer’s story: that his particular genius, his avid and productive curiosity about the nature of life and its surroundings, could be fashioned into a weapon.

…………………. we get to know our subject—first as a brilliant but troubled student, then as a respected academic, and finally as the main architect of perhaps the worst invention of all time. 

…………………………………….At its best, Oppenheimer is a bracing wonder of heavy talk and ticking-clock suspense. As played by Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer is a commanding, eerie figure—haughty and saturnine, haunted and consumed. His political conflicts—a dabbler in Communism and an avowed progressive, Oppenheimer was often regarded suspiciously by military and governmental brass—are nestled convincingly alongside his personal struggles.

…………………………………………… Oppenheimer is not a film that exists to demonstrate the might of the bomb. It is more of a fraught character piece than perhaps the advertising has suggested, as concerned with what happened to Oppenheimer after the war as it is with what he built during it.  The film uses a framing device to hold Oppenheimer’s story in historical context: a security hearing that took place in 1954, when Oppenheimer’s enemies had him stripped of his security clearance, effectively removing him from government for the sin of questioning the advancement of the US nuclear weapons program.

………………………..Oppenheimer has the temerity to be a drama of ideas staged on a massive scale, at a time when such things are out of vogue. ……………. more https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/oppenheimer-christopher-nolan-review

July 21, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | media