Oppenheimer Review

Review of Oppenheimer (2023) by screenqueeen: 👎 2/5

Feels like a TV show recap for the first hour. Jumps so quickly through what would be scenes but clinically removes any real drama. Plays through like a highlight reel just to provide shown evidence for why people didn't like Oppenheimer, lesson learned from THEORY OF EVERYTHING's characters' claims of Hawking being "world famous" despite showing us any of that but in Nolan's case covers the bare minimum of show not tell. Within this highlight reel and beyond, it's clear he has no respect or acknowledgment for what the women in his life were trying to do for him.

At some point he calls himself selfish, to which his friend responds that selfish people don't realize they're selfish. Something you'd say to someone who no doubt is, but only to assuage them in some halfhearted attempt to stay on his good side in the long run. Ripples of Oppenheimer's true selfishness ring out in the film but we're firmly looking at the world through his eyes here. But something in the depiction of women in this has a disrespectful sting. Kitty's forced pep talk after learning of Jean feels executively slimy, like a production suit advancing a chess piece on the table that is ultimately a wasted and exploitative move.

He directs actors really well but seems to struggle in putting together a compelling narrative, at least for me. Immediately heavy on the physicist's immovable feelings of remorse, sure, but we all knew that and didn't need to be convinced so heavy handedly. Instead much of the film is populated with so much stunt casting that it really distracts from the fact that this doesn't have anything to say other than people within the government will throw others under the bus to further their own goals.

Has an identity crisis between serving an obligation to be a biopic and a courtroom drama (not really courtroom but it's so similar it might as well be one), and its editing is so committed on mickey mousing how fractured Oppenheimer's life has become post-Manhattan Project (like his life is exploding, get it?) that it ends up hitting the same obvious dramatic beats over and over like Jack Quaid slamming on the bongos in every scene he can. Reaches no actual reflection on the real repercussions of the aftereffects of nuclear attack, although it teases that far too little and has the feeling of focus group results having pointed that out in test screenings. I'm really just curious now about what Oppenheimer would have thought if he saw GODZILLA. Maybe he would finally weep.