Oppenheimer Synopsis
Christopher Nolan has recently made another successful record with gold ink for his biographical film in the movie industry. The film, which managed to earn more than 500 million dollars or around 8 trillion rupiah, is a film with a historical background in World War 2.
This was the most successful among other historical films. Even though the appearance of the Oppenheimer film at the last July 2023, is still inferior to the profits of The Barbie film, this film has a class of its own.
This film, which tells the story of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, is enough to make the world’s eyes wide open. How could it not be, the story of the terrible atomic bomb designer turns out to be so interesting for us to explore through scene after scene of the film.
People’s Choice
This three-hour film has a back and forth plot at a fairly slow pace. Director Christopher Nolan really put forward the use of dialogue in the storytelling process in this biopic. Some viewers who commented in cyberspace complained about the slow pace and intense dialogue throughout the film.
They generally expect brutal scenes, moving fast scenes, bombs everywhere with super explosions, exploration of atomic bomb ideas with various failures leading to horrendous success so that they feel stunned for 3 hours without occasionally looking at the cellphone screen as a diversion. There are also those who say on social media that this film is monotonous with sudden back and forth plots and interludes with long successive dialogues.
Even though Christopher Nolan wants to build tension from the dialogue of each character. Especially he wanted the audience to truly understand Oppenheimer’s life story.
However, the dialogues that often appear in every movement of the plot back and forth are what make most of the audience able to enjoy the film until the end. Nolan himself is indeed good at playing back and forth grooves so that the audience doesn’t feel the movements overlapping each other.
At the end of the film, it is as if the audience is following Nolan’s instructions trying to collect puzzle pieces until the last parts amazes them because of the perfect unification of the whole puzzle.
Now I Am Death
There is one epic sentence that Oppenheimer said. Those of you who watched it will remember when Oppenheimer looked up at the burning black sky. He uttered, ”Now I am Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
In a verse from the ancient Hindu scriptures, The Bhagavad Gita, there is a passage that Oppenheimer takes and it goes exactly like, ”Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The verse is: “If the beams of a thousand suns burst all at once into the sky, it would be like a mighty splendor.”
Oppenheimer however has learned to read Sanskrit just as a casual hobby which he doesn’t take too seriously. He even learned any language like Dutch just to meet any girls. This is more like having tricks to a party for his humane desires than learning a language to defend himself in front of an opponent who speaks that language.
That epic sentence also appears at the beginning of the film, where there is a scene of a young Oppenheimer who seduces Jean Tatlock. Florence Pugh, a Great Britain actress, plays a role as a communist woman who has chemistry in bed with Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer at that time took a copy of The Bhagavad Gita from the bookshelf. He translated a random passage where it turns out to be: “Now I am Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The intimacy that Oppenheimer and Tatlock built turns out to bring both happiness and small disaster.
The Actors with Their Shining Moments
Those who take on prominent roles in this film are those we know for their incredible work and who Nolan has worked closely with on a number of occasions. Nolan himself became a producer of Oppenheimer along with Emma Thomas and Charlles Roven. Emma Thomas is Nolan’s wife who also owns a film company with her husband, Syncopy Inc.
Concepts in Nolan’s films often carry philosophical, ethical, human moral, human memory, sociological, personal identity, and time construction concepts. All the concepts in Oppenheimer are a unified concept that Nolan often works on with his wife and writers.
Chillian Murphy, who worked with Nolan in Inception (2010), is indeed suitable to play Oppenheimer. Just look at how Cillian looks in one direction in a photo during filming. The way he looks is so similar to Robert Oppenheimer who also has the same pose while supervising an experiment in the field.
Then, The Devil Wears Prada actress, Emily Blunt, played Kitty Oppenheimer. Meanwhile, actor Bourne Legacy, Matt Damon, is excellent at playing the United States Army General, Leslie Groves. Groves was an important person who encouraged Oppenheimer in developing the atomic bomb according to the Manhattan project.
So, how many times did you watch Oppenheimer at the cinema? Do you see any mystical scenes that showed you how great the film is?