Oppenheimer

[Prrambulate]

Anyone planning on seeing this when it comes out on 21st July?

I'm looking forward to a fascinating exploration of the life of the atom bomb inventor gazing at Cillian Murphy for 3 hours.

Some recent promotional stills. The horse riding one gives off Peaky vibes!

I disagree, I think they worked well in this film - there is a time and place for them if done well and there is a narrative reason for it.

Kitty was played by Emily Blunt and she didn't have any nude scenes, do you mean Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh)? Because the only scene Kitty was in with nudity was the one trial scene where it's Oppenheimer and Jean who are naked, but Kitty isn't

Yes, sorry I meant Jean. All the scenes with Jean were just weird

I was disappointed by this film after all the publicity. So many cameos packed in which were lacking any emotional depth or even explanation of who the people were beyond their names. I didn't even feel as if I really got to know Oppenheimer on any deeper level. Somehow for a really long film parts of it felt rushed as it flitted from one scene to the next, and I was relieved when it finally came to an end!

Did anyone else think Gary Oldman's Harry Truman looked like one of the Brighton hairdressers on Gogglebox?

I thought it was beautifully shot and the cinematography and sound was stunning. But overall it felt empty, soulless. The dialogue was clunky. Jean and Kitty seemed to be stereotyped as 'alluring mistress' and 'neglectful alcoholic harridan mum'. I lost track of who the characters were. RDJ began with a very subtle and convincing portrayal of Strauss, then turned into an overblown villain at the end. It was beautiful to look at but I was never moved. Several people walked out during the screening I was at, which I have never seen before.

Ah ha yes!

Went to watch this last night. I'm a film watcher - but not at all a science buff- and I was bored and confused. I honestly don't think a film should rely on audience pre knowledge of the intricacies of a once living person : it should illuminate this and this film was labyrinthine. I knew nothing about Oppenheimer , other than as a byword for nuclear horror. I'm half American and know that many Americans do see the end of the war, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki (nod to the film!) differently from us.

I did find it interesting to learn that Oppenheimer was not a warmonger but I found all the post war stuff too confusing. Loved Matt Damon because he brought clarity and some much needed with. The cast was too large and so I didn't know who anyone was when their names were being bandied about. I think that's a sign of it being adapted from a non fiction book.

I felt no connection to anyone really. I read a really interesting Forbes review which is more critical and thoughtful than most mainstream reviews.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/07/21/oppenheimer-review-christopher-nolan-is-his-own-worst-enemy-in-this-haunting-muddled-biopic/?sh=144393543792

Why are we so in awe of Pugh? I couldn't hear a lot of what she said and , having now read Wikipedia, I thought her character was unforgivably underdrawn (and Blunt's too). She was an intellectual herself and deep of conviction. Her few scenes to me showed her as a sexual being and little else. It felt like she was only in the film for what it showed us about Oppenheimer. It's not a great film for stepping outside white male stories , of course!

I do suspect after the dust has settled (sorry) this may be regarded as one of the most overrated films of all time - an arrogant male filmmaker finds an arrogant male interesting and makes an arrogantly bloated film. Some scenes were brilliant and I genuinely found the bomb development stuff gripping. But all the last hour? I just wanted to go home. Maybe I expected it to be more thriller like in its pacing , or I expected it to be more Theory Of Everything like - and definitely more about the actual bomb (I'd prepared myself for disturbing scenes and there were none: I actually found the 'what of the bomb was dropped on your friends instead of a load of faraway people really crass. I think I thought the film might have something of a Japanese perspective).

Disappointed that I'm disappointed.

Interestingly, I did not get any of that from watching the scenes with Pugh in them at all.

Same 😂

The movie literally showed none of what @melj1213 has described

I completely agree with you, especially about Pugh's character. I also left feeling disappointed.

I enjoyed it hugely. I didn’t find the timelines confusing at all and found it very satisfying and dense - I felt it really got into it.
My one criticism is also with the female characters who seem not to have their own interests beyond Oppie… Kitty was a well regarded biologist as well as heavy drinker and bad mother!
the film deserves best pic Oscar imo as it explores possibly the biggest themes of human existence on the planet so far alongside an exploration of what it means to be human, physics, courtroom drama and historical biopic. LOVED IT.

Must be honest, I found myself sighing every time it went monochrome. I did not enjoy that part, or find it dramatic.

I enjoyed it hugely. I didn’t find the timelines confusing at all and found it very satisfying and dense - I felt it really got into it.

Me too.

It was probably the most boring, tedious and overly long film I’ve ever seen. I hated the pointless and totally gratuitous nudity. Three hours of my life I’ll never get back.

I found it annoyingly drawn out in parts and then other parts felt so rushed that I wanted more. I loved the science and finding out about his personal life but the political stuff I lost interest in and hadn’t a clue who everyone was in the end. Also the black and white drove me mad.

I don’t think the nudity was gratuitous. In fact, the scenes are quite unsexy and more like jumpscares. Nolan’s films have always been quite sterile, and I assume he thought seriously about what to include and what it was meant to represent in the relationship (pure ease/comfort of two naked people chatting together, flipped then to shame when that relationship is exposed to the outside world).

I just don’t think those scenes were executed as well as should above been. I also wished for more character development for the women.

I really enjoyed it. I did know a reasonable amount of the background so that helped and interestingly my 15 yo went with his friends and they all liked it too.
I thought it raised interesting questions around the cult of genius (many renowned experts are not particularly nice people) and the reality that once something is discovered it can’t be undiscovered.
It’s not a flawless film and I think the female roles were weak until Kitty was allowed a bit of a voice.
I would be amazed if there aren’t multiple Oscar nods including CM for best actor and RDJ for best supporting actor.

I thought it was very good but I wasn't blown away by it. I knew nothing about Oppenheimer and deliberately didn't read anything about him so I would find it interesting, which I did. I didn't think the sex scenes or nudity were gratuitous at all, in fact there is a scene where Jean and Robert were talking and were both naked (only top half visible), and there was nothing sexy about it at all, she wasn't posed or lit in a seductive way, she just wasn't wearing clothes. Robert Downey Jr was the stand out performance for me, after Cillian Murphy of course.

RDJ already has 2 Oscar nominations and various other wins and nominations. I really wouldn’t be surprised to see him get the Supporting Actor award. I think the Committee may feel it really is his turn.

I saw it last night and genuinely enjoyed it. I wish there had been more shown about the women in his life - both Jean and Kitty were educated thinking women and that wasn’t brought out enough. The Manhattan project, and physics in general, was male dominated at the time and so the lack of other female characters isn’t that surprising.

i found it interesting how Oppenheimer wrestled with the morals of his creation, and how he tried to use his fame and notoriety to influence politics to prevent nuclear proliferation. I also found it interesting the way that ‘the authorities’ turned on him, and how his friends and relations were used against him.

it’s going to win Oscar’s, and it deserves to. It’s an uncomfortable film in many respects, it’s long but I’m not sure what you could trim from it to make it shorter.

Went to watch this last night. I'm a film watcher - but not at all a science buff- and I was bored and confused. I honestly don't think a film should rely on audience pre knowledge of the intricacies of a once living person : it should illuminate this and this film was labyrinthine

I disagree - I love the way Chris Nolan doesn't patronise the audience by spelling every little detail out because he assumes people have some knowledge of the subject base, this is not a new thing it's a staple of his filmmaking. This isn't a fiction movie where you're expecting to go in with absolutely no information of who/what/where/when things will happen except for a short synopsis, this is a historic biopic of a real person so nobody is going into it with no idea how it's going to end.

This is definitely a film where the more you know going in the better the watching experience will be - both because it's a Nolan film and because it's based on historical events. I went in with a science background and having read the biopic the film is based on and there were still some bits that left me with questions so I went away to research; a friend of mine who studies science at Caltech and has studied the work of Oppenheimer (and Heisenberg) loved everything as they have an extensive knowledge of both the people and the science; another friend who has no interest in science or Oppenheimer and only a basic knowledge of the history of the atomic bomb and basically wanted to come so she could watch Cillian on the big screen for 3hrs enjoyed it as she let the science go over her head and found that the questions the film left her with prompted her to research a bit more of the history and she learned a lot more because of the film.

I have seen other Christopher Nolan films!

Your knowledge definitely seems well above and beyond the basic knowledge - that's like watching ,say Atonement having read the book a few times : a different kind of spectatorship. Of course I knew who Oppenheimer was and about Los Alamos. Not knowing anything about physics did not bother me at all (as it also didn't during The Theory of Everything, for example) It was the stuff about Strauss that I could have done without. The actual making of the bomb bit was quite absorbing.

Genuinely, I do not agree that you should need and more than basic knowledge to watch a biopic. I learnt lots I didn't know about the Civil Rights Movement watching Selma , for example.

Not being a signed up member of the Cillian Murphy fanclub , I didn't get that distraction either!

Which just shows that different people will get different things from the film based on the information they go in with - I had a working knowledge of the relationships Oppenheimer had with Jean and Kitty so whilst I wasn't actively searching for the themes in the film, I definitely noticed them and connected the dots a lot faster within the nuances of the performances than someone going in cold with no background of the complexities of their relationships.

This film was written about Oppenheimer, Nolan wrote the script in first person, based on the American Prometheus biopic, and it was never going to focus on anyone in any great detail outside of their relationship to Oppenheimer - the film was already 3hrs long just focussing on his story and people, including yourself, have said it was too long and complicated already yet you also want it to go into more detail to expand characters like Jean/Kitty..

You can't have it both ways - either it sticks with Oppenheimer and his entire story or you start looking at his wider relationships, flesh those characters out and include all of their important life events and the film either ends up 5hrs long or cuts important parts from Oppenheimer's story to accommodate.

In short, it wasn't the science that 'went over my head', it was the internecine US politics about a guy (Strauss) who I had never heard of and still couldn't care les about!

I feel a bit like this film is the new 'you are somewhat intellectually and cinematically inferior if you didn't enjoy it' film?