Brevity is the soul of wit, and I remember something from middle school about “this letter would have been shorter but I didn’t have enough time.”
It used to be that the limit of the media forced creators to be concise. Now it feels like moviegoers demand long run times to “get their money’s worth.” After all, you can get 10 hours of entertainment in a season of tv at home for free.
But are long run times better? Largely speaking, I don’t think so. I think it lends itself to sloppy writing and editing.
Does Oppenheimer fit that category? I don’t think so, and I say that as someone who thought the movie was ok, not great. But in general, I don’t like these longer run times. Solid 90 minute movies are a dying art.
Saw it Friday in 70mm IMAX. Fourth row slightly off of the middle. My entire field of vision was occupied by the screen, totally immersive.
There are some comments about estimating the film projection as equivalent to a 12k digital projection. I assume that is a calculation based on film grain size? I would argue that the effective resolution is higher than that. Film grain is going to be in different random locations in every frame, whereas a digital pixel will always be in the same location. With film the “pixel” locations are “dithered” spatially; dithering is a technique used to increase effective resolution when going between the analog and digital domains and vice versa.
One great feature of the 70mm format was that there were no previews or advertisements - the lights went down and the feature started. The theater actually sent out emails a few days ahead of time warning that there would be no previews so show up on time.
I didn’t pre-buy my ticket – that’s why I was in the 3rd row – so I got no emails, but there were signs all over the lobby warning of the on-time movie start.
Didn’t prevent a few people from coming in fifteen minutes late.
I saw it at the weekend, and loved it. My wife also loved it, and she generally doesn’t go for complex narratives with interweaving timelines or technical content. She’s not usually a Chris Nolan fan at all.
We saw it in IMAX (I’m not sufficiently informed to give any more detail than that, but it wasn’t 70mm). I know the use of sound is controversial but that’s the one reason I thought that IMAX enhanced the movie - at some points the sound was a physical sensation more than than audio. [OK, I know that sound is always a physical sensation but you know what I mean].
I loved that after the escalating tension of the Trinity countdown, the actual detonation was (at first) a moment of peace and calm.
On the subject of muffled dialogue, it’s normal practice in movies to re-record the dialogue in a studio after filming. Nolan eschews this practice for artistic reasons, meaning that dialogue has to be captured on overhead boom mics for close ups or mics hidden in costumes for wide shots.
IMAX cameras used to shoot the film are incredibly loud on set, although Nolan said they are getting better.
“There are certain mechanical improvements,” Nolan said. “And actually, Imax is building new cameras right now which are going to be even quieter. But the real breakthrough is in software technology that allows you to filter out the camera noise. That has improved massively in the 15 or so years that I’ve been using these cameras. Which opens up for you to do more intimate scenes that you would not have been able to do in the past.”
He had me at capturing natural sound as an artistic choice. He lost me at the result being he was limited in his camera placement because the cameras themselves are loud. Just do the damn ADR!
Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera.)
Optical work and filters are forbidden.
The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
If that part of the film is about the AEC hearings instigated by Strauss (I haven’t seen the film), the book is the same. The last several hours of reading is all about Oppy’s lynching by the government and drags on interminably.
I saw the movie yesterday, in standard format. I’d wanted to see it in IMAX, but I didn’t feel like I missed much. I’m hit or miss on Nolan, coming close to walking out of Tenet, but I thought this was terrific. Biopics generally leave me cold, but the time bending here, and the impressionistic, for lack of a better word, saved it from being a bland retelling of events. The criticsms that it didn’t show the destruction of Hiroshima don’t make sense to me. The film was mostly from Oppenheimer’s perspective, with some from Strauss’s. Neither of them were in Hiroshima at the time.
Oppenheimer was more haunted by Nagasaki than by Hiroshima, which he came to see as being a sort of necessary evil (even though Japan was ready to surrender). But he could never reconcile the second bombing of a city full of civilians.
Sorry, but this is a weak argument to me. Oppenheimer could have seen photographs of the destruction from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How do any of us get our images of the atrocities of war? Probably from pictures or video clips. Are we to understand he never looked at pictures or film reels of the aftermath? Clearly something changed his mind about the morality of what he was involved in.
They showed him watching film of the victims a month after the bombs were dropped and we see how horrified and distraught he is by it. There was no need for us to see the gruesome images as well to understand his feelings about it.
(I saw the film for a third time tonight! It’s easily my favorite of the year so far. And every single line of dialogue was perfectly understandable so I have no idea why some people seem to have had so much trouble with the audio.)
The audio was fine for me as well, unlike some previous moviefilms like Tenet. I get your point about the aftermath, but I don’t think showing us what Oppenheimer saw would have violated any rules about storytelling. POV shots are used all the time. The reason I keep coming back to this is because of the reactions I’ve seen from some people who fail to appreciate the destructive power of atomic warfare, especially on innocent civilians.
I liked a lot of it - a lot! - but I despised the final hour. Yes, Oppie was hounded. It was an hour of horrid audio nonsense - especially the stamping feet - and people yelling at each other in tiny tiny rooms. I can’t even imagine why this was shot in 70mm, VHS would have been fine. DO YOU HEAR ME MISTER OPPENHEIMER? WELL?!? WELL?!? Ugh, what a crap experience.
Also we saw a couple of gruesome visions(?) He had of a charred corpse and a woman with a melting face. Not to mention the final image of a thermonuclear war. Anything more would have made the movie didactic and cheesy.
I saw it a few weeks ago in 70mm IMAX at the Universal Citywalk AMC – I had read about Nolan and Tarantino (in particular) talking about how there are certain ways to film for this format, etc. etc. and hadn’t thought much or understood really what they might have been talking about.
But my showing did have previews, and I instantly saw what they meant. The preview was for something (Blue Beetle, maybe?) that was a big action movie with stuff happening all over the screen; it was actually impossible to see what was going or where you were supposed to be looking, because the “immersiveness” of the giant screen meant looking in the wrong place means you’re missing something happening on the other side of the screen. This preview was dizzying and baffling and I had no idea who anyone was or what was going on – that effect could probably be harnessed, think D-day in Saving Private Ryan or something where there are scenes that are supposed to portray overwhelming chaos and an inability to absorb everything that’s happening at once. So Oppenheimer started and was just wonderful in contrast, and I realized afterward that despite the screen size I had no problem taking it in and didn’t feel like I missed anything due to looking in the wrong place. Designing and framing these shots so that you know where to look, and the rest is just environment, or detail, it’s very skillful. And I think it’s almost counterintuitive; there are folk in this thread saying “not sure the spectacle warrants IMAX,” but I guess it’s not at all about how much “stuff” you can cram onto a giant screen, but using the space to give senses of scale, focus, and immersion without being distracting. Thinking of The Hateful Eight, which I saw at home but much was made about the 70mm print…those wide mountain range shots and all the background. Helpful and beautiful to be there; necessary to the story? Probably not, but helps make you feel “there.” Interior shots, too. And so I happened to be in the area and got to see the 70mm IMAX of Oppenheimer and similarly, the shots out in the desert, and the relative closeness of the interior scenes – I’ll be interested to compare when I watch it again at home if it all hits the same way.
I don’t think I would have understood a lot of this for real if I hadn’t seen that incomprehensible preview before this film!
We went yesterday for national cinema day. It was a regular theater with an upgraded sound system. I liked it a lot. Frankly I don’t understand some of the criticisms.
I didn’t read this thread before going but I did see other articles. By what some wrote I thought there would be borderline pornography instead of brief shots of Florence Pugh’s boobs.
One interesting choice that I didn’t see mentioned here (unless I missed it) was the almost subliminal shot of a gloved hand pushing Jean down into the tub. Is it a suggestion that maybe she was murdered? Since this was an Oppenheimer POV shot was that his guilt?
I’m someone who has trouble separating voices and dialogue. Too many things have gone boom close to my ears in my life. I watch TV with closed captioning. I had zero problem understanding the dialogue.
I agree with some that there was more than adequate portrayal of how Oppenheimer felt about the effects of the bomb. A vision of a woman with her skin peeling off and a charred body was more effective than showing any newsreel. One beat of the movie was to show how he was taken completely out of the loop once the packages rolled out of the gate. They entire point of the movie was to show things from his POV. He was no longer a participant and had to hear it on radio like everyone else.
I chuckled when Einstein and Oppenheimer talked about how math wasn’t their strong suit.
Murphy and RDJ should get Oscars. Emily Blunt will probably be nominated.
For those who could sit through it without a bathroom break I salute you. I shouldn’t have had that large coke.
Just got back from an afternoon showing with the family and we all really enjoyed it.
The dialogue was clear enough, the sex was minimal and perfectly justifiable and overall the time flew past.
It is a period of history that has always fascinated me and to see it fleshed out so well was wonderful. I definitely came away with a full sense of Oppenheimer’s torment, his awkwardness and carelessness and though much less about his genius. That seemed to be taken for granted. Fair enough.
I’m also a sucker for a nice bit of legal chicanery so the final third was right up my strasse.
Great, great ensemble cast and a lovely little cameo from Gary Oldman. Standout scene for me was Emily Blunt’s interraction with the security clearance board. She nailed that and was uniformly excellent throughout.
Shout out for the soundtrack as well, perhaps a touch loud in places but it certainly added to the atmosphere of unease and menace.
I’m reading American Prometheus. Not very far into it, but so far surprised at Oppy’s VERY privileged upbringing, in a family of secular jews, educated at the Society for Ethical Culture, and with significant emotional issues as a youth.
I was wondering if it might have been worth alluding to at least some of that in the film - maybe cutting some of the repeated explosion close-ups. Certainly giving me some different insight into the man he grew into.
Certainly giving me some different insight into the man he grew into.