Thanks for this - great review. Maybe it would have served better as a short series like Chernobyl ?Originally Posted by HCZ_Reborn
Oppenheimer - bought it on Apple a few weeks ago and watched it (not all in one sitting the bloody thing is three hours long)
I always like watching Mark Kermode’s film review after watching a film and where we agree and disagree. Kermode like myself thought that Cillian Murphy was excellent in the film (I didn’t expect any less, despite the fact that the series is not as good as it was his performance as the tormented Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders, alone makes it worth watching). He does a great job in the title role playing a deeply complicated and conflicted man.
Kermode also like me, found the film fractured and confusing in the timeline presentation, and it’s not really until the end of the film that you are fully able to get a grip on what’s going on.
It’s a good film in my view, a film that’s largely about conversation and not action it is able to engage its audience over an extensive run time and that’s no mean feat.
The film is less about the process in creating the atomic bomb at Los Alamos (which id have preferred) and more a character biopic of Oppenheimer and the shabby treatment he received as a result of Cold War paranoia and an act of personal vengeance taken out against him. I don’t see anything wrong with this per se, first of all it’s Nolan’s choice as to how he wants to tell this story. But given it’s adapted from a novel called American Prometheus you’d also expect a little more emphasis on the moral implication of creating something that simply can’t be put back into the box again.
But then the assumption behind the Manhattan Project was that German scientists would create such a weapon, and that the Americans had a moral responsibility to at least match their achievements.
Would have liked to have seen more about the science - as eminent physicists like Nils Bohr and Heisenberg are lauded as geniuses without any real grounding as to why and therefore they largely become one dimensional cardboard cut outs.
Anyway that’s just my opinion and it still stands up as a film worth watching. Albeit with the subject matter and the material that could have been explored, a three hour film could indeed have become one of the greatest television series’ ever made.
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