Oppenheimer
Movie · 2023 · Reviewed on
On August 6, 1945, A resident of Hiroshima was seated on the stone steps outside the Sumitomo Bank. In their right hand they clutched a walking stick, their left may have been across their chest.
Why do we know this?
It’s because the bomb that was detonated seconds after had a light that was so intense that it burned his shadow into the ground forever. That’s the kind of power our world is dealing with.
Even now, this resident and countless others are etched into the very stone of Hiroshima, almost as if our world is trying to remember them because they were given no grave. Their memorials lie in the shadows that they left behind.
Oppenheimer isn’t a hero, nor is he a villain. A man who firmly believed that the ends justified the means. A flawed individual just like all of us.
This film is Nolan’s finest work, every brush stroke planned meticulously to construct a 3-hour-long epic that portrays the complexities of history’s most enigmatic man. Everyone involved in making this film clearly gave it their all. Ludwig Göransson came in with a score that pulses and thrums with energy. The cast is lost in their roles, and the imagery is nothing short of spectacular.
This film is about ambition, guilt, the lengths people would go to for power and the folly of nationalism.
It does feel like they were tampering with things that were never meant to be tampered with. The explosions are hypnotic and transfixing, like a force that is other-worldly. The idea that we’re breaking the fundamental building block of our universe, is still foreign to me… The ripples of the atom bomb are felt even today.
The ambiguity of this film is perhaps its biggest strength, by choosing to not make a statement on who Oppenheimer really is, it leaves things to us to figure out.
Who is Oppenheimer? A man driven by ego? A spiritual prophet driven by necessity? A man driven by scientific ambition?
That’s for us to figure out. Which is just the way Nolan likes it.
The scientists working on The Manhattan Project were afraid it would cause a chain reaction that would end the world. In many ways, they did cause that very same chain reaction… Just not a physical one. It is for us to see where it leads, and stop it before it consumes us all.
