We watched Oppenheimer last night; well, I watched most of it anyway. I never made it to see it in theaters and had been putting it off mostly because of the extended run time. But the idea to watch it came up last night, and the four of us (Nora, her sister, her husband, and myself) sat down and gave it a go.
The flow of the movie is similar to the book I wrote a while back. The story jumps around between different times in the narrative. Basically, we get the story of his career in three arcs. I like this storytelling approach, but for me, at times, it wasn’t always clear what time period we were in, and I got confused about the temporal relationship to the facts of the story. (Did event A really happen before event B, etc.)
I did like how we got to see some of the lesser-known bits of the story. His meeting with Truman after WWII, the concern about igniting the atmosphere, and some of the human flaws in his character.
Being me, I wish there had been deeper dives into the science, and less of Florence Pugh’s breasts. More Einstein and less talk about security clearances. More focus on the details and importance of the race to build the bomb first and then the angst felt by the scientists once it became clear the US would be first.
I didn’t stick around for the last half hour or so of the movie. Hope I didn’t miss something amazing, I’ll ask Nora in a couple hours once she’s awake. I got to the point that the bombs had been dropped, and Oppie was voicing his concerns over the future of the weapons. I lost interest in the drama over whether he could be silenced on the matter. I went to bed.
I’d give the movie a solid C+. Entertaining, but no need to ever watch it again.
This got me thinking about the last movie I saw that really impressed me. I’m not sure when or what it was. I’ll do a post in the future about my all-time favorites. Pretty sure you can find a podcast episode I did during the early days of COVID on this topic, from the Stay-At-Home series. Regardless, it’s been a while since I’ve seen something that really moved me. Plenty of “Hey, that was entertaining flicks” (see the MCU) but nothing that I would suggest to a stranger who was looking for a great movie.
Is this a result of getting older? Being overly medicated? Becoming a sourpuss? I’m not sure.
What was the last movie you saw that really impacted you?
I’m not sure it impacted me per se, but the last film I watched was Face Off. I’d never watched it before (it was slightly before my time) but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mostly because I found it hilarious, not sure if that’s the intention of the film though….