Review of Oppenheimer (2023) by Muldjord — 21 Jul 2023

With Nolan's usual Nolanisms this movie does a near-perfect job at portraying the narrative surrounding Oppenheimer throughout his career. And his inner workings as well. We get an eerily grim look at what it means to be The Father of the Atom Bomb. When it comes to the character of Oppenheimer nothing escapes this movie. Everything from the moral complexities to the politics is investigated to the last detail.

Which is also the slight problem this movie has. There is a lot of "time travel" in this movie. And oftentimes scenes are cut in a way that makes it feel like the characters are having conversations with each other through the fabric of time.

It speaks well into the idea of quantum mechanics. So in that respect it's spot-on for the theme of the movie. But it is also slightly confusing to follow along with it.

And ultimately that leaves about 1 third of the movie in a bit of a weird half-confusing / dull limbo. At least to me.

I'd have liked it to focus more on the mechanics of developing the bomb itself. It didn't exactly glance over it as much as it neglected to focus on it. The parts are there but it rarely goes beyond merely mentioning their breakthroughs in conversation until we get to the initial big boom.

And that's probably a fault of my own expecting these things to be elaborated upon. The movie is called Oppenheimer and not The Manhattan Project after all.

So a heads up if you, like me, expect it to focus on The Manhattan Project. It does, but it's only a relatively short part of the movie and it is deliberately focused on Oppenheimer's character more so than the bomb itself during these parts.