Immersive. That’s the best way I can sum up Oppenheimer.
Despite being a daunting length, the three hours of film go by quite fast.
It is a surprisingly fast-paced film with a constant intensity throughout. In a weird way, it felt like the ticking of a time bomb, always progressing to something bigger.
Cillian Murphy plays Robert Oppenheimer, a casting that is honestly perfect. The film cleverly and bravely details his life pre- and postcreation of the bomb. But be aware that with any biopic it is hard to know what is absolute truth and what is not.
One of my favourite elements of the film is the switch between coloured and black and white scenes.
Black and white scenes show the perspective of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr) while the coloured show Oppenheimer’s.
You may not be aware of this initially, but it adds so much to the film once you realise.
Fortunately, I never found scenes of characters talking about physics to be boring — in fact I found the tension and technical jargon in them interesting, despite my lack of knowledge.
This is a testament to the director, Christopher Nolan, who also did a lot of the film’s writing.
Nolan is by far one of my favourite directors, between The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, Tenet, Inception, and others, he has proven himself more than capable in many realms and biopics appear to be no exception.
With each Nolan film the brilliance of the cast is hard to look past, often because many of the films feature similar casts.
However, this is a classic case of ‘‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’’ because who doesn’t want to see more stellar performances from Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon and Kenneth Branagh?
