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Oppenheimer by Christoper Nolan: review

August 7, 2023
Oppenheimer review

Yes Nolan did it again! He makes the cinema greater! Filmed in IMAX and IMAX 70 mm as tradition. The last work by Christopher Nolan is Oppenheimer, and here is my personal review.

About a month ago I’ve watched in Italy the latest work by Christopher Nolan during the Italian press preview. Stunning images as always but this time we have “a different Nolan”, another style from Inception or Interstellar. Oppenheimer is a war movie, am historical thriller but also a drama; after the wonderful Dunkirk (2017) Nolan returns to show us history on the big screen. So there are no illusions or sci-fi, only real facts happened during and after Second World War. We live the experience through the eyes of Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) the inventor of the atomic bomb. The movie starts from objectivities and ends up in Oppenheimer’s intimacy. The story become more introspective, personal, dramatic and thrilling. That is the C. Nolan’s magic and poetry in this movie.

Oppenheimer review

Atomic bomb was represented by different way in cinema. For Kubrick it was painted by black humor in Dr. Strangelove, for David Lynch it was the psychedelic nightmare of an explosion in the desert (Trinity test) with the birth of evil, while for Spielberg it was the moving Empire of the sun with a young Christian Bale.

The  Nolan’s atomic bomb is a dazzling and blinding light, a spectacular and lethal supernova that crowns the success of a brilliant mind. But Nolan’s atomic bomb is also a consequent deafening and ferocious uproar that tear Oppenheimer’s soul apart; an agonizing truth, a tormented and terrible awakening of conscience, a hole in a dark and threatening future. Between that light and noise, time stops expanding to infinity, leaving us a glimmer of lucidity that leads to reflect on how close human self-destruction is. Here is all the poetry of the Nolan movie, in a thin line between success and catastrophe, in that limbo in which the terrified conscience of Oppenheimer and modern man finally awakens.

Oppenheimer review

Oppenheimer has such powerful images in the last part. Lights and terrible noises. The bomb explosion, the awakening of conscience and humanity. That’s cinema, that’s art.

You can read my full review (only Italian) here…

Vote: 8,5/10


That’s all folks

 

 Stay well, have always light in your life

Best, F.S

 

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