MOVIE REVIEW: "Oppenheimer" is a killer score

NOTE: I have updated this review on 6 August 2023 because I missed mentioning 2 crucial factors shown in the movie. 

They are:

1) Oppenheimer's mistress may have been murdered instead of her committing suicide; and

2) During Oppenheimer's meeting with Einstein, they both shared a fear that the first test explosion of the atomic bomb may ignite a chain reaction that might spread to all the corners of the planet and destroy the whole Earth.

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No tickets were available for Friday's premiere screening which a Maldivian friend said could be the result of scalping because he has come to know about it from reliable sources.

And unlike black market sellers who would wait near the National Stadium in Male' to sell the higher priced tickets to football crazed Maldivians in the 80s, he told me Schwack Cinema's tickets were scalped through word of mouth, which may be why I didn't see any underhand dealings around the cinema in Hulhumale.

Schwack could introduce a policy such as limiting the number of tickets each person can buy but why would Schwack mind about that since the Maldives' market is tiny and why bother about the ethics of selling as long as all the tickets are sold regardless of to whom it is sold even though as my friend says that puts him at a disadvantage if he particularly wants to watch a film in its early days of release.

So after watching “Oppenheimer” at Schwack's wondrous cinema in Hulhumale on Saturday, here are the factors I liked about "Oppenheimer" which I think makes it a masterpiece:

1) It's a practical lesson in real science which already is here unlike writer-director Christopher Nolan's theoretical science explorations in "Interstellar" even though some say the latter was the most emotionally draining and therefore the best and most satisfying film from him.

2) It's a political history that is complex. The world was at World War 2, which created an urgency of seeing Germany, Italy, and Japan be defeated at the earliest. And thrown into this mix is the controversial decision to drop the atomic weapons on a populated area, i.e. literally carrying out a genocide in Japan which would haunt Julius Robert Oppenheimer for the rest of his life because he helped to design the world’s first atomic bombs.

3) Add to this the West's paranoia that its Capitalism would be overthrown and replaced by Communism backed by Russia, which demonstrated that the Cold War was already taking shape even before the Second World War was over. This resulted in the Communist witch hunts that had a negative impact on the life of Americans, including Oppenheimer’s, who was responsible for heading the Manhattan Project which created the nuclear weapons. Which brings us to the question: was he an American hero or the destroyer of the world? Though Albert Einstein did not explain how a nuclear bomb could be created, in his meeting with Oppenheimer, he expressed his fears that they could be held responsible for the destruction of the world if that takes place. Surprisingly, the last 70 or so years were the most peaceful time for Earth although the younger generations are now questioning whether there could be a Third World War. Fueled by the misgivings as to the outcome of Russia’s war with Ukraine, which now is in its second year, it is reasonable to admit that the world has never been able to rid itself totally of the fear of the possibility that there could be a nuclear war even now. So the younger generations’ fears of a possible Third World War are not unfounded.

4) A Nolan film cannot be praised without traditionally mentioning its score. This time around its from "The Mandalorian"'s Ludwig Göransson who helps Nolan smoothly lead through a three hour epic with audiences even forgetting to take a piss in the middle of the movie (for some reason, perhaps because our body adapts to symptoms of our situations, I find I now can hold in a piss for around four hours whether it's pertaining to a movie watch or the attendance of someone's funeral). However, as a friend pointed out, Göransson could have shown some restraint because sometimes his music felt too loud and too long.

5) "Oppenheimer" works because it is also a sophisticated biopic. In fact, some critics say it is the best biopic to date although I would address such subjective claims with a little caution because there are some, who had watched "Oppenheimer" who still insist his "Interstellar" still outshines all his past movies. And that includes not only Maldivian TikToker Hussein Ali who posted a video of him crying during the scene when Cooper tells Murphy: "I was your ghost".

6) The technicalities go a long way in making "Oppenheimer" unmissable. Great editing makes the long winding true story a fast paced narrative thriller with its criss crossing jumps across scenes resulting in us never coming across a boring or drowsy scene despite the movie's long running time. And the sound effects and mixing were just "wow" on Schwack's 7.1 Dolby surround system which I never fail to mention, along with the Schwack’s Hulhumale Cinema's gigantic screen, every time I watch a film there. In fact, last week I was contemplating whether I should watch a second time “Mission Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning Part 1” just to enjoy the heart thumping sound of all the explosions taking place when Tom Cruise’s train was derailed by the villains blowing up a bridge over a river. Not surprisingly, Nolan, who doesn't like 3D and prefers IMAX cinemas, once again sticks to one of his principles; he does not like the use of computer generated images (CGI or special visual effects). Yet he blew my mind away with a traditional practical effects driven nuclear explosion, while cleverly playing around with sound, and most importantly, the eerie use of silence which seems more deafening than any sound that shatters my chest.

In conclusion, I have to agree with certain viewers that this is a kind of horror film that departs from the traditional meaning of what a horror film is. Oppenheimer's psychological struggle to come to terms with his coming to know of the devastating deaths of the thousands of Japanese civilians he was indirectly responsible for killing is very telling when we see his face symbolically lighted up as if by the flash of a nuclear bomb - not to mention his imagined stepping on a charred body. In fact, rather than direct exposure, the indirect conveying of information seems to have more of an impact on both him and us. Nolan shows us only the test explosion of an atomic bomb, and what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki reach Oppenheimer and us through a radio report which only makes our imagination run wild, making us indeed squirm in terror and horror.