"Oppenheimer" almost seems to have been put together by taking all the sequences, throwing them in the air and then putting them together just as they fell. There are no standard flashbacks or flashforwards. I couldn't help thinking it was like how Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" randomly dropped in and out of the events in his life.
It takes a while to get the hang of it. For those in the audience that knew nothing about Oppenheimer, it could be a head jumbler. It's a risky technique, however, by the end, the dots join up.
A couple of surprises: the film does not dwell on the creation of the bomb and the first Los Alamos test.
The other surprise was a lost opportunity, the failure to capture the scale of the Manhattan Project that sprang from the desert. There is a scene where the camera rises from behind a hill to reveal a few of the buildings; in reality the project was huge with closely packed buildings.
Oppenheimer's relationships with friends, enemies, colleagues and lovers drive the story.
The film captures the intimacy of Oppenheimer's relationship with his wife and with the enigmatic Jean Tatlock. We also sense the awkwardness of Oppenheimer's dealings with his intellectual friends that were involved in the communist party and tempted him to reveal secrets causing doubts about his loyalty.
When I was growing up in the 1950s in Australia, which was just outside Japan's high tide mark as it advanced through Asia and the Pacific, if there was one certainty it was that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan had ended WW2. Our fathers had fought in it, and there was not much love for the Japanese at the time due to their brutal treatment of civilians and prisoners of war.
With that said though, as the horror of WW2 receded, and mistrust of institutions increased in the 1960s, there has been plenty of revisionist thinking, much of it fact-free.
In "Oppenheimer" it seemed to me that the notion that the bombs were being dropped on an already defeated enemy comes across more strongly than Oppenheimer's reminder that the GIs may not feel that way about it.
The Japanese had adopted the strategy of making the advance to the home islands so bloody that America would grant terms rather than demand unconditional surrender (50,000 U. S. casualties on Okinawa alone); the Japanese were down, but they weren't tapping out.
Truman and his inner circle are characterised as an un-empathetic bunch focussed on impressing the Russians at Potsdam.
However it must have also been uppermost in Truman's mind that if he accepted the arguments for not dropping the bomb and the invasion of Japan had gone ahead, that he would have to face Americans knowing he had held back a weapon that could have saved thousands of them?
Still this film makes you think and maybe worry that Oppenheimer's fears, expressed in the film, about a race to build bigger and deadlier atom-chewing bombs were alarmingly prescient.
It takes a while to get the hang of it. For those in the audience that knew nothing about Oppenheimer, it could be a head jumbler. It's a risky technique, however, by the end, the dots join up.
A couple of surprises: the film does not dwell on the creation of the bomb and the first Los Alamos test.
The other surprise was a lost opportunity, the failure to capture the scale of the Manhattan Project that sprang from the desert. There is a scene where the camera rises from behind a hill to reveal a few of the buildings; in reality the project was huge with closely packed buildings.
Oppenheimer's relationships with friends, enemies, colleagues and lovers drive the story.
The film captures the intimacy of Oppenheimer's relationship with his wife and with the enigmatic Jean Tatlock. We also sense the awkwardness of Oppenheimer's dealings with his intellectual friends that were involved in the communist party and tempted him to reveal secrets causing doubts about his loyalty.
When I was growing up in the 1950s in Australia, which was just outside Japan's high tide mark as it advanced through Asia and the Pacific, if there was one certainty it was that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan had ended WW2. Our fathers had fought in it, and there was not much love for the Japanese at the time due to their brutal treatment of civilians and prisoners of war.
With that said though, as the horror of WW2 receded, and mistrust of institutions increased in the 1960s, there has been plenty of revisionist thinking, much of it fact-free.
In "Oppenheimer" it seemed to me that the notion that the bombs were being dropped on an already defeated enemy comes across more strongly than Oppenheimer's reminder that the GIs may not feel that way about it.
The Japanese had adopted the strategy of making the advance to the home islands so bloody that America would grant terms rather than demand unconditional surrender (50,000 U. S. casualties on Okinawa alone); the Japanese were down, but they weren't tapping out.
Truman and his inner circle are characterised as an un-empathetic bunch focussed on impressing the Russians at Potsdam.
However it must have also been uppermost in Truman's mind that if he accepted the arguments for not dropping the bomb and the invasion of Japan had gone ahead, that he would have to face Americans knowing he had held back a weapon that could have saved thousands of them?
Still this film makes you think and maybe worry that Oppenheimer's fears, expressed in the film, about a race to build bigger and deadlier atom-chewing bombs were alarmingly prescient.