After BarbieIt's to the other member of the duo. Barbenheimer to be screened: the much awaited Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan. After Tenet palindromic who had split critical and public, the director looks at a scientific and historical figure of first order. The opportunity for him to sign his best film or pursue a downward curve? Answer below!
Quantum criticism
J. Robert Oppenheimer. If it is called the father of the atomic bomb, it is above all the one who brought the quantum theories of the old continent back to the USA. Marked by the army, he will end up at the head of the Manhattan project: a vast undertaking seeking to develop the atomic bomb before the Nazis, in the heart of the Second World War. Combining intimate drama, scientific race and enormous diplomatic stakes, the life of Oppenheimer is adapted to the screen after being laid on paper in the pages of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Anti-spectacular film?
If the nuclear bomb has always fascinated the seventh art – Dr. Folamour, Hiroshima my love, Never again... To name but a few – the central destiny of Oppenheimer is not the best known. Evolved between the layings of twentieth-century physics, appearing as much as by Easter Eggs in the film (Einstein of course, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Werner Heisenberg in particular), Oppenheimer The film is rather like an anti-spectacular work. Manipulating diplomatic issues (the question of the communist tendencies of Oppenheimer, the development of the bomb before the Nazis, the sometimes troubled lines between enemy countries and friendly countries, etc.), intimate issues (the extramarital connections of our dear Oppi) and obviously scientific, Nolan It's not a choice but to make us a talkable movie.
Indeed, while the issue of the development of the bomb is obviously a red thread leading to a certain climax, the very flesh of the film remains the dialogues. Perhaps for fear of losing its spectator, Nolan then made the strange choice to drown his first two hours of a constant tablecloth of music (composed by Ludwig Göransson with whom he had already collaborated for Tenet). Connecting a little artificial and confusing, accompanying an epileptic montage whose pace prevents every scene from becoming truly significant as each of them is immediately swept away by the next.
Regular punctuation of pop-up kinds « quantum » (images of sparks not always very inspired in particular), highlighted by a music far too loud launched as blows of mist horn to keep his spectator awake, also remains a choice more than questionable. Would Nolan be uncomfortable with linearity and the intimate side of his story?
Nolanian Clarity
Nevertheless, it must be noted that with this much too angry editing Nolan manages perfectly to pass on to his spectator all the stakes of his film. Touching science without ever really entering it (damage or so much better, to you to judge ...) and remaining on the surface of geopolitical considerations of its history, it makes the bet of clarity. Even stronger, Nolan presents us and manages to make live his entire gallery of characters (and God knows if there are!) in a rather brilliant way, without ever losing ourselves in the face of this continuous scrolling of new heads. The artist hat!
In terms of female characters – this is rarely the fort of our dear Christopher – it is clear that the pack hurts. Between Jean Tatlock the unstable and very sexualized lover (Florence Pugh) and his wife Katherine Oppenheimer, an acrid and alcoholic housewife (Emily Blunt), here you touch the heel of AchillesOppenheimer. But for once, Nolan can at least (in part) take refuge behind the story with a great H... Katherine was indeed destined to become a great biologist, before her encounter with Oppenheimer and her future now any plot of housewife. And it's unfortunately a reality (not yet completely erased today!): science was a macho milieu where the few women who dared to get ejected often...
The BOUM!
Then after two hours of film comes the explosion. And constant overcut crushed by bourrine music, we go to total silence! A striking contrast, making the explosion scene the most striking sequence ofOppenheimer. Too bad Dany Boyle have already captured the same scene in a much more subtle (and metaphorical!) film and with the same Cillian Murphy : Sunshinein 2007. If the parallel is striking and Oppenheimer suffers from comparison, however, the counting until the explosion of the atomic bomb remains what Nolan proposes most striking in the film.
And then what? For if these two hours indeed pass like a letter to the post office and the force of the narrative manages – albeit somewhat artificially – to take away its spectator, there is still a good third of film... And since the climax of the explosion has passed and the tension is falling, Nolan arranges to make a scriptual mille-feuille of which he alone secretly. Thus confusing a segment of history yet relatively linear and understandable, it ends up completely lost in the meanderings of this latter part.
Half-tone explosion
If the point – the use by the army and then the ingratitude of the latter – is not annoyed and that Oppenheimer (the character) escapes fairly well from all manicheism (his search for questionable glory, his questions about the atom which he seems constantly to set aside, his doubtful relationship with women, etc.), this last third is led by its length and its finally relatively low stakes. Certainly the reminder sting about the aberration of nuclear weapons and this idea of contamination of evil (fighting against the Nazis America ended up creating ultimate annihilation) is not uninteresting, Nolan ends up forging a ball that will lead his entire film.
Still, let's keep in mind the interpretation – perfect from end to end – and the highlight of this extraordinary biography, in an overall film of very good bill. If the staging and artificial complexity injected into the scenario lead OppenheimerHowever, there is still a quite exciting blockbuster to discover in the cinema (unfortunately very rarely in IMAX 70 mm, the ideal conditions required by Nolan).
Interesting critic who makes me want to reconcile with Nolan after Tenet who had bothered me so much that he had wiped out my soul!
Your expression of "scenario millennium" made you smile, that's so much. It's as if, spent a certain stage in his films, Nolan couldn't help but unnecessarily complicate things to express in the end a simple idea.
I appreciate this director as much as he tires me!
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