a.k.a. V.J.

I mentioned in a previous post that I rarely go to the movies these days. In the lead-up to its release, Oppenheimer struck me as a film worth making an exception for. While I’m not really all that much of a Christopher Nolan fan, there’s no denying he is one of our most skilled living filmmakers. The movie’s ensemble cast is a collection of top-tier acting talent. Oppenheimer also exists at a unique intersection point in the Venn diagram of my household’s various interests, with Griffin being the physics nerd, Jen being the film nerd, and me being the history nerd. So, the three of us took the plunge and booked tickets for a Saturday-morning showing at our local Movie Tavern.

I’m not ambitious enough to provide a review or recap of the movie here. I will just say that I had high expectations going in, and I was not disappointed. It wasn’t perfect, but Oppenheimer was one of the best new films I’ve seen in years. It did justice to the story of the Manhattan Project and the moral questions associated with the nuclear proliferation that followed. Visually, it was pretty much flawless. Cillian Murphy was phenomenal as the title character and Robert Downey, Jr.’s performance as Lewis Strauss was better than phenomenal.

There’s so much more to say about Oppenheimer. Jen, Griffin and I have been discussing it off and on since we left the theater. It was a lot to process, clocking in at a very dense three hours and covering arguably the most serious single topic in human history. It’s a film that will probably really reward repeat viewings. I’m sure that a lot of subtleties escaped me amid all of the spectacle and the ocean of scientific and political issues being tossed around. I’ll be thinking about it for days and weeks to come.

One minor parting observation about the movie: Gary Oldman shows up in it briefly as Harry Truman. Oldman is an actor I didn’t give a lot of thought to one way or another earlier in his career, but over the years I have come to regard him as one of the finest film actors of the past few decades. He has now convincingly portrayed Truman, Winston Churchill, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Sid Vicious, all in chameleon-like fashion. Now that’s range.