Christopher Nolan is one of contemporary cinema’s great engineers. He sets himself a formal challenge and proceeds to solve it, like a scientist testing a hypothesis. So it makes makes that he finds his most substantial subject in Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist compelled to apply theory to the very practical concern of constructing the ultimate weapon.
Not one for linearity, Nolan approaches Oppenheimer’s life as if it’s a Rubik’s Cube, twisting from his student days in Europe to working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos back to teaching at Berkeley to his womanizing to the witch hunts of the 1950s and back, and back, a puzzle to piece together first one way and then another until everything clicks into place.
This is big, ambitious, serious moviemaking, and two years after Tenet failed to persuade audiences back into cinemas, Oppenheimer did the trick. That in itself is worthy of celebration.
A great achievement in formal and conceptual terms, and fully absorbing, but Nolan’s filmmaking is, crucially, in service to the history that it relates.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times
A juggernaut historical biopic that you’ll want to see again asap, even if it doesn’t all work on the first sweep.
David Jenkins, Little White Lies
Christopher Nolan
Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Benny Safdi, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett
USA
2023
English
Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Score, Production Design & Editing
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Credits
Screenwriter
Christopher Nolan
Cinematography
Hoyte Van Hoytema
Editor
Jennifer Lame
Original Music
Ludwig Göransson
Production Design
Ruth De Jong
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