Christopher Nolan is slowly saying goodbye to mass-compatible blockbusters like The Dark Knight or Inception. His last film, Tenet, resembled an experimental action-puzzle in which some scenes were difficult to grasp even after repeated viewing.
On Thursday, Oppenheimer, a new Nolan film, was released in cinemas, originally presented as a true story about the physicist and inventor of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer much more conventional sound. After I was able to see the work in advance in the press presentation, I can assure you: Nothing and nobody can prepare you for Oppenheimer!
Nolan turns a historical biopic into an overwhelming high-speed thriller
For the first 30 to 45 minutes, Nolan’s latest film feels like a bullet train that’s easy to miss. The director has always liked to design his action films or thrillers as elaborate constructions with different levels of time or consciousness.
But even in Nolan’s work, Oppenheimer is a new extreme. From the start, the film seems as if its director Scenes from common biopic stations chopped up and reassembled as a fever dream cut inferno.
Like me, very few viewers of Nolan’s new film are likely to be fully familiar with the biography of the real protagonist and the events surrounding the development of the first atomic bomb. And so Oppenheimer becomes cinema overkill with many dialogues, fast cuts, the change between subjective (color) and objective (black and white) narrative levels as well as permanent jumps in time.
Watching the first third of Oppenheimer sometimes made me feel like I was a complete study semester of history in just one lecture suck into me After one of the three hours running time, I looked at the clock and was sure that I had already seen a whole two-hour film. The core of the plot was just being prepared!
Oppenheimer is more of a physical experience than going to the movies
In the middle part, the blockbuster comes to a rest in terms of staging, but the tension hardly breaks. The central event – the first atomic bomb test in history – becomes a sweaty event under Nolan’s direction. Oppenheimer is heading towards it as a ticking time bomb with a countdown.
After the middle part I felt completely exhausted and afflicted with a slight headache. Nevertheless, the blockbuster is still just under an hour! In the last third of all things, which is drawn out like an overly long epilogue, Nolan fires from all cylinders again.
Nolan’s film, together with Ludwig Göransson’s nerve-racking score, escalates into a (verbal) battle in which I have difficulty remembering the last remnants of my physical and mental strength could cling.
Universal
Oppenheimer
The last time I had a comparable cinematic experience was Ari Aster’s 3-hour nightmare Beau Is Afraid, which evoked a similar physical reaction in me. It wasn’t quite so bad for Oppenheimer. But after the film, my head pounding, I stumbled out of the dark cinema into the blazing sunlight to find that the world (just like in Nolan’s film) still exists.
Maybe I’ll even watch Oppenheimer again to see if there’s an aspirin with the cinema ticket.
*. . .