#minorspoileralert
It wasn't nearly in the same league as Inception or the Dark Knight. Or even interstellar or Dunkirk. I get that it's a biopic, not Sci-fi, but still... why must a movie drag for 3 hours only to show that the man who built the atomic bomb in the end had regrets and a 'conscience' -but also really, really loved his country? That ambitious unscrupulous men throw others under the bus to get to the top? Like, duh. And no, the loud incessant musical score and stellar cast doesn't make it any less boring.
I get that it's Hollywood, but the subtext of these films-and this is the biggest of all-is so problematic. For a film that's more like a documentary (in its scope), and which goes at great lengths to show you how the inventor of the atomic bomb was plagued by visions of faces being peeled off we see not one Japanese face. For a scientist who was later wracked by the guilt of what he eventually did, being a scientist himself, he was very excited to achieve that end in the first 3/4th of the movie.
There's much special effects and time spent on the star-bursting science and the back-breaking hard work and the deep secrecy and coordination that went into bomb: because, of course, the bomb was needed to end the war. So much, in fact, that the remorse that comes afterwards seems rather feeble. But if this was the man, then this is the film. Fine. But why then show the man in a largely positive way? And why only this man? Why this kind of film at all?
#Oppenheimer goes back to that old question: do the means justify the end-even when the means here is nuclear fission and the end is The END. It succeeds in small moments, maybe, but only just.
And does it really deserve all the hype? Erm, no.
I get that it's Hollywood, but the subtext of these films-and this is the biggest of all-is so problematic. For a film that's more like a documentary (in its scope), and which goes at great lengths to show you how the inventor of the atomic bomb was plagued by visions of faces being peeled off we see not one Japanese face. For a scientist who was later wracked by the guilt of what he eventually did, being a scientist himself, he was very excited to achieve that end in the first 3/4th of the movie.
There's much special effects and time spent on the star-bursting science and the back-breaking hard work and the deep secrecy and coordination that went into bomb: because, of course, the bomb was needed to end the war. So much, in fact, that the remorse that comes afterwards seems rather feeble. But if this was the man, then this is the film. Fine. But why then show the man in a largely positive way? And why only this man? Why this kind of film at all?
#Oppenheimer goes back to that old question: do the means justify the end-even when the means here is nuclear fission and the end is The END. It succeeds in small moments, maybe, but only just.
And does it really deserve all the hype? Erm, no.
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