My Review - Oppenheimer
My Rating Ten plus 10/10
In Cinemas now
If there were to be a movie to represent the last one hundred years of existence on our planet to be placed in a time capsule and opened in 100 years time if by any chance our planet is still in existence it should be Oppenheimer.
This is truly an astonishing achievement in Cinema storytelling covering a wide arc of world events and the personalities that played pivotal roles in the 20th Century that affect us today many that are still responsible for the fear and instability around the Globe.
Oppenheimer written and directed by Christopher Nolan is a chilling disturbing but engrossing movie to sit through 3 hours but it's very so very enlightening.
I found it Shakespearian in its portrayal of human folly and the pursuit of power that corrupts when jealousy and lies spread like cancer to undermine reputations .
Detestable characters like Hitler, J Edgar Hoover , Senator Joseph McCarthy ,Mussolini are mentioned to establish a timeline by name but don't appear in Oppenheimer however their influence and the consequences of their tyranny is obvious as we examine the life of Julius Robert Oppenheimer from 1927 when he studied physics in Germany returning to America where he was eventually recruited in 1942 to work on the Manhattan Project.
In 1943 Oppenheimer was appointed director of the Manhattan project situated in the desert of New Mexico where the Los Alamos Laboratory and town was specifically built for one purpose. The personnel at Los Alamos under Oppenheimer were tasked with developing the first nuclear weapons, four years after the start of the German nuclear weapons program.
The second half of Oppenheimer I found the most compelling as the inventor of the most destructive force ever unleashed on our planet is sidelined and vilified after the terrible and deliberate destruction of the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan that ended one war but as we know today did nothing to end war on our volatile planet.
The Oppenheimer quote appearing at the beginning of the movie -, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds", sums up his suspicion guilt and fear after the destruction of the two cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that President Harry Truman chose to destroy while glibly commenting that he would spare Kyoto because it's a beautiful city that he and his wife shared a wonderful honeymoon .
After these events Oppenheimer is vilified and investigated by the Communist witch hunts of the 1950's when many of his ego driven and powerful adversaries summon him to testify at hearings to prove he's not a traitor.
The performances in Oppenheimer are all stunning what a cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr. ,Matt Damon ,Kenneth Branagh , Tom Conti, Josh Harnett, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek and Casey Afffleck.
The four standout performances for me were from Irish actor Cillian Murphy in the title role of J Robert Oppenheimer his is truly an Oscar worthy performance . He is so impressive as the quiet but complex scientist whose problematic wife Kitty played by Emily Blunt in one of her finest performances has moments in this movie that should also earn her an Oscar nomination.
The other standouts for me are Robert Downey Jr. As Lewis Strauss a vindictive and complicated associate of Oppenheimer who betrays his friend for the sake of ambition.
The look of this movie is also impressive especially on a huge screen like our local GMax . Interestingly Oppenheimer is the first ever IMAX film partially shot in 65mm black and white celluloid which Kodak developed and the first ever film stock for IMAX as a process in order for the black and white footage to look the same quality as the rest of the movie.
I can only sum up by saying Oppenheimer for me is the finest and most interesting biography movie I've seen in the cinema in many years and congratulate Christopher Nolan on what I think is his greatest movie yet.
