Oppenheimer (2023)

”How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?”

Sting -Russians (1985)

Oppenheimer rocks I said, after seeing it last night...

(My Romanian chronicle here.)

Christopher Nolan's first film for Universal after the debacle with Warner Bros. over TENET,  it's a very ambitious one. Based on the American Prometheus book it's written for the screen by Nolan in sole credit. Biopic, thriller, political film, historical, meta-phorical, all in one person POV, tough ride clocking at 3 hours and a career best for Cillian Murphy as Robert J. Oppenheimer. I guarantee Oscars next year for Murphy, supporting Robert Downey Jr. and Nolan might win as well. It has a brilliant cast with so many great actors, I'm not gonna mention them here, but it's been the best ensemble cast in a looong time. Still, Tom Conti, man....

Interesting score by Swede Ludwig Goransson (second film for Nolan after Tenet), wall to wall music and a grand sound design and editing, shot in IMAX by Dutch Hoyte Van Hoytema, his fourth flick for Nolan after Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet) and a last year great photography on Nope.

No, I haven't seen it in IMAX  as I didn't go to Bucharest for this but I strongly advice anyone who has that opportunity to do it, it's worthy as he shot it on 70 mm film and IMAX even printed a black and white stock for the 1st time ever!

Anyway you take it, in these hard times at the Movies (the year of (klaus)-Barbie ;() it's a brave film and I am amazed the audiences are rooting for it, full houses no less, in Romania and all over the world, and on imdb it went straight to #3 in theirs Top 25, where Nolan has three films in Top 25 positions now. Metascore of 89, I guess it will also be a good commercial success as opposed to Tenet or this summer's Indy V and M:I 7 (Part One) which failed to connect with moviegoers :(

4 out of FIVE, 8 out of TEN (I'll go for a 9 but I gotta see the film again and then conclude:)

I tried to watch again Fat Man and Little Boy (1989), about the same subject, with Paul Newman as general Groves and Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer, but it's almost unwatchable now, after this new and definitive endeavor on the Manhattan project and R.J. Oppenheimer's life. Even with music by Ennio Morricone, photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond and directed by Roland Joffe (who right now directs a mini-series in Romania!!!)

*Paul Schrader described the film as the "best, most important film of this century" after he attended the New York premiere of the film.