Imagine that you are going to make a movie about Oppenheimer, the man who is credited as the father of the atomic bomb. You will probably find interesting things in Oppenheimer's biography that you will decide to show in your future film and impress your audience with. In that film, you are supposed to discuss the exciting Manhattan Project and its competition with the Nazis and then with the Soviets. It's supposed to make the audience worried that the Germans will not get the bomb sooner or Soviet spies won't give Stalin firsthand information. The audience is supposed to be nailed by the moment of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb explosions. It will be your job to illustrate how atomic bombs impacted people's behavior and minds, particularly Manhattan Project scientists. Considering Oppenheimer has two children, a wife, and a lover who committed suicide, it makes sense for you to show dramatic moments from his personal life. The drama of your film will be liked by everyone, you're sure. Following the war, the film will cover Oppenheimer's rejection, the impact of the bomb on his daily life, and his moment-by-moment decline. You see how easy it is, at least in your mind, to create a movie that is suspenseful, exciting, and dramatic, and all the audience leaves the theater satisfied? After you've fantasized, come back here to see what Christopher Nolan has been up to.
Answer:
Hmm..., it is almost impossible to find any of those moments in Nolan's work.
According to him, Christopher Nolan has taken a unique approach to telling Oppenheimer's biography. Instead of the classic narration, as much as possible, he has attempted to narrate Oppenheimer's biography from the perspective of Oppenheimer and Louis Strauss. It tells the story of the events and memories that happen in the speech and minds of these two in two different places. The color parts of the film are Oppenheimer's narration during the security trial held by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1954, while the black and white parts are narration by Strauss in the trial that examines his eligibility to enter President Eisenhower's cabinet in 1958 in the United States Senate. In the film, the story is told in three parts, which are almost an hour long and similar to the code name for the first American atomic test in New Mexico, Trinity. The first part of the color parts show Oppenheimer as a young man. In this part, we see him going to Cambridge and then becoming a professor at Berkeley University and his tendency towards left-wing ideas, which later became a problem for him. A black and white part also tells of Strauss' irritation with Oppenheimer: Oppenheimer's questions about his education or Oppenheimer's humiliation of Strauss in Norway. It is narrated slowly and almost linearly in the first part. During the second act of the film, which begins with the launch of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos and ends with the more serious conflict between Oppenheimer and Strauss over the in the black and white parts, Oppenheimer is described as the peak of his career, glorious, fast and successful. In this part, we see that despite Oppenheimer's dark past, he seems to have no problem in his court. His court memories are the Manhattan Project and the first atomic bomb. In the black and white parts, his efforts to control American atomic activities seem successful after World War II. The third part is however a turning point in both Oppenheimer's and Strauss' parts much like the last years of their lives. As we see in Oppenheimer's mind, there is no more respect for him after the first atomic bomb, rejection after rejection. Strauss' memories remind us of how he brought Oppenheimer down in the 1954 trial, but his Senate testimony did not go well. Oppenheimer and Strauss both fall at the end of the third part.
Besides his beautiful first-person storytelling, Nolan is at the pinnacle of his craft when it comes to portraying these events. To stay true to the narrative and show events in the first person, he primarily uses close-ups and generally blurred backgrounds throughout the film. As a result of this method, which is in a sense the most faithful way to show mental memories, we experience something similar to reviewing mental memories during the film. By using beautiful background music and fast editing, he is able to better induce mental experiences. Together with the very good acting of the actors, these techniques create an experience similar to viewing Oppenheimer's mind. You should keep in mind that the mind listens to events in a completely nonlinear manner. We have no control over them and we do not remember our most important memories longer than others. Sometimes there are even no sounds or details provided at all. That's why America's atomic attacks on Japan were shown only on the radio in the film while his relationship with his lover or even much of his daily life are depicted as more important. During Oppenheimer's Trinity experiment, another significant moment in his life, we see Oppenheimer's mind immersed in the greatness of the explosion, hearing nothing. Nolan also used this form to illustrate Oppenheimer's shock when his colleagues applauded him for the Hiroshima bomb, eliminating ambient sound and adding background shaking, at the time. But the final fifteen minutes are where Nolan's work reaches its peak. Oppenheimer and Strauss' mental breakdowns are among the best Nolan has ever filmed. It is hard to imagine how Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. could act so beautifully before watching this part of the film; there is no doubt that they will win several awards only for this part.
Rating: 4.5/5
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