What a sack of shit this was.

A boring story told in the most incoherent way possible.

The simple story of Oppenheimer being set up as a dirty red, when he probably had nothing to do with heroically leaking stuff to the Soviets, to discredit him and his anti-proliferation position, in the public eye.

But all jumbled up to make it seem cleverer than it is.

And some stuff in the past from the film's perspective was in black and white, to indicate that it was in the past (a device I dislike but whatever, it's so common I just overlook it). But other stuff in the film's past was *not* black and white.

Also: Hey guys I'm starting to think that this weapon we've made which can kill tens of thousands of civilians in a single explosion might be a *bad* thing. I'm very soulful.

Absolute bag of wank.

My main objection is that it made one of the most intriguing periods in recent history, and a fascinating individual, astonishingly boring. The much vaunted atomic explosion scene was discussed at length before the first screening. It used "practical effects" we were told, as though that embued the film with extra authority, almost as though they mined some plutonium, built a real shaped-charge around a core, and actually set it off. In reality it was a bit sad. As was the acting throughout that section. And most of the other sections to be honest. Probably the saddest part is that the film was so hyped that people will regard the thin, simplistic story as definitive.

A few years ago when my daughter started at Southampton uni, I got chatting to Ray Monk. He had known some of the old staff of the philosophy dept who were reaching the end of their careers as he was starting, and I knew them as a student. I was rather in awe of him because he wrote probably the best biography of Wittgenstein ever, but I can't have appeared too much of an idiot because he sent me a pre-publication copy of his biography of Oppenheimer. What an astonishing and rounded man he was. And how open about his politics. He was nowhere to be found in that shit film.

The explosion effects were very odd. And ended up making the bomb look un-powerful.

And yeah, so many interesting stories in that period around those people and they chose... none of them.

Next up on films-I've-been-avoiding: Barbie.



 

I think Christopher Nolan's films often miss, rather than hit because he's usually wrong about the important things to focus on. I'm sure he'll make a better film than I ever could, but that's not the point. He spent a daft amount of time working out how to avoid CGI for Oppenheimer as though that was the big deal. He managed to create an unconvincing, frankly disappointing explosion, while all the interesting possibilities about what was actually going on slipped away. Inception was a film with some enjoyable moments but in the end, insubstantial waffle about a "high concept" story. Interstellar is pretty and good to look at, he didn't avoid CGI, but packed to the gills with as many sleight-of-hand fluff-scenes as any Sinbad movie from the 1950s, with less story beyond the rather dumb twist he shoehorned in. Tenet is just awful. Dunkirk is OK, but way over-rated. 

Come to think of it, is he actually getting worse as a director? 

Barbie? There's another on my own to-watch list. They say it's good. 

I have Tenet on deck. Nolan has some interesting pop-oriented ideas, which aren't as deep as he's trying to pass off, yet reasonably entertaining in the way of blockbuster fluff.

Yeah honestly the only Nolan film I enjoyed even a little was Interstellar (which I liked quite a lot). But the more I see of his stuff, the more I think it's kinda insulting to the audience.

I'm expecting to hate Barbie. But I'd be happy to be surprised.

Tenet is pretty weird, it's objectively probably quite bad but there's some stuff going on that interested me all the same. I heard scuttlebutt that it was a rejected Bond script originally which would've been a fun thing to see.

I haven't seen Memento since just before it went on full release, I'm gonna try that again soon.

I quite liked Inception, the Batmans, and The Prestige. Like too many talented directors his work waxed overblown and turgid as he gained overconfidence and bloated budgets.

Yeah, I'm developing a growing respect for directors like Soderbergh (whom you mentioned in another thread recently) who seem to just make whatever they fancy and not fall into that trap. For example he just made that (relatively) very low budget film Presence, which looks cool. I've never really paid him much attention before but I may have a little Soderbergh buffet over the next few weeks.