I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2023

#32 :  Oppenheimer

Flawed but extraordinary, Christopher Nolan’s account of the physicist who led the Manhattan Project captures the most agonising of success stories.

This is an interesting one on several counts - I generally like Chris Nolan's films (yes, I started with Memento), it feels like it's in my wheelhouse and it was a cultural touchpoint last year thanks to Barbenheimer. So, quite obviously, I've totally avoided it - and I've no real idea why because I'm quite looking forward to watching it.

For those who don't know, the film gives us a broad telling of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer - "the father of the atomic bomb". Unsurprisingly, it looks absolutely gorgeous and it's a true work of art - but a very, very long work of art (2 hours 50 minutes). However, it does at least have a serious story to tell because there is a lot of content here - but none of it really makes sense out of context, so there's little point in me giving you any more detail than that.

It actually tells the story in (for Chris Nolan) a reasonably straightforward manner - yes, there's some jumping around in time but the main portion of the tale is told in a pretty linear fashion. The narrative does take a bit of time to get going but once it hits its stride it doesn't really stop with the rundown to the test firing being very tense - it's an impressive piece of story-telling.

Surprisingly, for me, the film gets more interesting in the second half after the atomic bomb has been developed and used as we deal with the fall-out of Oppenheimer's doubts as to what he's achieved - the last hour or so covers two tribunals which are cleverly interlinked. It does however at times includes some very bizarre stories from Oppenheimer's life which don't really add anything to the narrative - which does make you wonder whether you've missing something.

As you'd probably expect, there's some seriously impressive acting here for a seriously impressive cast. Cillian Murphy does an excellent job expressing a whole range of emotions - his early confidence giving way to doubt and horror at what he's done, whilst at the same time having to justify his actions - he fully deserved his Oscar. Robert Downey Jr is also excellent as Lewis Strauss who is one of the more interesting characters in the story with a whole load of grievances and motivations in play - his ageing makeup is also very well done. I'm happy enough he got an Oscar, but I suspect there were others equally deserving.

Other stand-outs for me were Matt Damon who impresses in a military role which contrasts nicely with Oppenheimer's scientific approach, Jason Clarke as a banal but evil bureaucrat and Rami Malek in a small but pivotal role. Unsurprisingly, it's not a film heavy on roles for women but Florence Pugh really puts it (or, more accurately, them) out there for the role - I admire her commitment but I'm not convinced the sex scene was entirely essential to the plot. Emily Blunt is woefully underused for the first 2.5 hours of the film but does finally get a blockbuster scene which she plays very well. To give you an idea as to the depth of quality of the cast, the film also features Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Conti, Dane DeHaan, Matthew Modine and Gary Oldman!

As I've previously mentioned, it all looks absolutely gorgeous and features some great visual effects. There is also an interesting use of black and white and colour to denote different timelines - I didn't understand what criteria were used to select which scenes used which colour scheme, but I also didn't feel like it mattered!

It is a long film and there's no danger it needed to be that long, but I think it just about got away without being overly long - I found it considerably easier to watch than some sub-two hour offerings I've been made to endure. I can appreciate that some will find it a bit too "boys with their toys" for their liking but I thought it was well written, shot and acted and I'm glad I finally caught up with it. At time of writing, it's available to stream on Sky and is also, of course, available to rent absolutely everywhere.

#33 - A most peculiar film
#31 - Much better than I was expecting