Nolan's "Oppenheimer" is a momentous achievement, an engrossing film stunning in its art direction, cinematography, musical score, and sound direction; rhetorically clear though its narrative is dense and circuitous at times, and successful in bringing to life the paradoxical achievements, complex personality, and flesh and blood humanity of one of the 20th century's most brilliant, driven, and controversial scientists.
Through a non-linear story that moves forward despite numerous flashbacks and flashforwards over three hours, the film holds its center by using a tremendously talented ensemble cast of scientists, spouses, and bureaucrats to illustrate the race to beat Germany in developing a weapon that would end World War II.
As Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) says to a young Oppenheimer, shown as a floundering graduate student in experimental physics at Cambridge University, you don't have to read the score if you can hear the music when encouraging the young scientist to not worry about his lack of skills in complex mathematics, the audience doesn't need to understand the equations of quantum physics to follow the story of a world-altering scientific achievement and the resulting political fallout.
Cillian Murphy is mesmerizing as the egotistical, self-absorbed, ambitious yet compassionate, charming, and brooding genius who is troubled by visions of a universe governed by probabilities as much as physical laws, concerned with the plight of workers, intellectually curious well beyond his chosen field, and reckless and naïve in his romances and friendships. Supporting roles are well played by Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Alden Ehrenreich, Matt Damon, and a nearly unrecognizable Robert Downey Jr., who is superb in a supporting role.
Expect numerous Oscar nominations and several wins for this latest project by writer/director Nolan who, perhaps more than any writer/director of his generation other than Denis Villeneuve, so skillfully melds 20th-century cinema staples of location, staging, costuming, music, photography, and great storytelling with 21st-century technology.
Through a non-linear story that moves forward despite numerous flashbacks and flashforwards over three hours, the film holds its center by using a tremendously talented ensemble cast of scientists, spouses, and bureaucrats to illustrate the race to beat Germany in developing a weapon that would end World War II.
As Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) says to a young Oppenheimer, shown as a floundering graduate student in experimental physics at Cambridge University, you don't have to read the score if you can hear the music when encouraging the young scientist to not worry about his lack of skills in complex mathematics, the audience doesn't need to understand the equations of quantum physics to follow the story of a world-altering scientific achievement and the resulting political fallout.
Cillian Murphy is mesmerizing as the egotistical, self-absorbed, ambitious yet compassionate, charming, and brooding genius who is troubled by visions of a universe governed by probabilities as much as physical laws, concerned with the plight of workers, intellectually curious well beyond his chosen field, and reckless and naïve in his romances and friendships. Supporting roles are well played by Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Alden Ehrenreich, Matt Damon, and a nearly unrecognizable Robert Downey Jr., who is superb in a supporting role.
Expect numerous Oscar nominations and several wins for this latest project by writer/director Nolan who, perhaps more than any writer/director of his generation other than Denis Villeneuve, so skillfully melds 20th-century cinema staples of location, staging, costuming, music, photography, and great storytelling with 21st-century technology.
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