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Rating:
I am such a convinced Nolan fan that I consider Tenet an unrecognized masterpiece.
Much has been written about the movie Oppenheimer, and I would say it took an English director to tell Americans that they feel so "good" (they wear white hats in westerns while the bad guys wear black hats, as Asimov used to say) that the whole world must understand they need to have total control over military technology to exercise this goodness... in short, as often said, they feel like the world's police.
They eventually repent; they repented for the Indians, for Vietnam, for Iraq... for the atomic bomb (the only nation to have dropped the nuclear bomb).
How much of a hypocrite Oppenheimer is, the film does not say, but it does hint at it a bit. That is, whether his repentance is genuine or just a chase of a moral issue to unload the conscience onto politics, which does not make a good impression (as usual). But maybe that's an impression I got from the endings of Nolan's films (remember the spinning top?).
The film is stunning, pure Nolan, who finally gives his fetish actor, Cillian Murphy, the leading role. Moreover, during the movie, one is surprised by the parade of actors in various roles, true stars of global cinema.
Pure Nolan, as I was saying, and in the beginning (of course), you understand little, you feel lost in the whirlwind of names, situations... history. You seek comfort in school memories, trying to recall the little history studied in textbooks: Einstein, Fermi, Los Alamos, the atomic bomb, and the H-bomb.
The timelines blend (I counted up to four), and often the time jump is not (intentionally) clear. After a while, you realize that the "present" is filmed in black-and-white (it took me 10 minutes to understand this), while the various pasts are in color. And that's enough spoilers because one cannot go further in revealing the plot that the various temporal snippets gradually reveal, scene by scene, connecting the entire story.
A fundamental role is played by the music, or rather the noise, the noise of the explosion, and a strange noise that at first, cannot be deciphered until about midway through the second half... noise and temporal plots.
Three hours? I didn't notice, and I finally understood what black holes are.
p.s.
Oppenheimer is the only one wearing a hat, except for the soldiers who wear it as part of the uniform.
For men up until the 60s, the hat was a mandatory garment.
All reactions:
80 Valerio D'onofrio, Enrico Crotti and 78 others
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Other reviews
By Anatoly
Oppenheimer is indeed a political film that Nolan skillfully stages, wisely alternating timelines in line with his typical non-linear narrative.
The eternal repetition is that of the logic of power and the human propensity for destruction and death.
By JackBeauregard
A film to see and, probably, even to see again to fully enjoy some passages that the relentless pace of the film might sometimes risk losing.
There are never real moments of reflective pause; even the dialogues between scientists, the family situations, or even the brief erotic scenes are always on the edge, always suggesting an impalpable tension.
By The Punisher
Excellent performance by the actors. The story is beautiful. The dialogues are beautiful, profound, and witty.
In the end, I left exhausted and worn out. Perhaps that was the sensation one was supposed to leave the cinema with?
By RolloTommasi
This is the greatest ethical dilemma humanity has ever faced.
Politics is the second (inevitable) trace of the film: high-level dilemmas can be even more complex than ethical ones.
