I'm not a movies fan! The last one I watched in the cinema was Suzume (the last one I watched not in the cinema was Crimson Peak). I only watch movies when I have someone else to watch it with. It's, you know, a low-effort thing that you can do together and everyone can come out of it happy (or at least if it's bad, come out of it feeling bad together). I don't often have high expectation for movies.
So when my parents asked me if I want to go watch Oppenheimer with them on its opening night I was like, "sure". I didn't really enjoy any of Christopher Nolan's previous movies before, but like, watching a movie with my parents is pretty great, regardless of whether it's a good movie or not.
Well, Oppenheimer was FUCKING GOOD. I'm mad that I now have to say "yes my favorite movie is by Christopher Nolan" FUCK.
I'm not a movie buff, I can't tell you shit about its camerawork or its mise-en-scene or whatever. I can tell you about narrative structure though. And character writing. I can tell you pacing. I can tell you about set-ups and payoffs. I can tell you the writer's intent, as I see it comes through in the writing.
Anyway uhh Oppenheimer was FUCKING GREAT, and part of its greatness is its LASER-FOCUS at being a movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer. Of being J. Robert Oppenheimer. We see him at his lowest and highest point, at how the highest points are always marred by his lowest anyway, how even at his lowest he retains himself.
This post was spurred by me not wanting to talk about a terrible take I saw on birdsite, but ah hell lemme talk about it anyway. "Why doesn't this movie show the Japanese victims of the bomb. They should have done it to show how horrible the bomb was." I want to yell at the top of my lung: THIS MOVIE ISN'T ABOUT THE FUCKING BOMB. It's about the guy who made the bomb. And obviously the bomb is a major part of his life. How can it not be?
When I write a story---or actually when I work on anything, even something for my job, if I care about it enough---it haunts my every thought. I joke often about how, even when I'm not actively working on it, it's still "cooking" or "rotating in my head like a rotisserie chicken". Even when he's not working on the bomb, even when he's out horseriding or meeting his girlfriend or trying to not get choked by politics, making the bomb must have been rotating like a rotisserie chicken in Oppenheimer's head. He sees vision of fire and quantum physics and chain reactions and it haunts him; we see how it haunts him all the way from his university days.
And I think I can feel the same thing happening to the writer of this movie (who is Christopher Nolan, apparently. I can't believe I'm relating to Christopher Nolan, ugh). The way this movie is structured, the way scenes fold into each other, the way it goes forward and backward through time, setups in the future for payoffs in the past, my god, this movie must be rotating like a rotisserie chicken in Nolan's mind too. I can sense that!
And also this movie is based on a book, American Prometheus Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwind, which took over twenty years to write. I can see it, again! The book rotating like a rotisserie chicken in their head, around and around and around.
By god, this is what I read/watch/play/listen to stories for, this connection to other human beings. This is what I write for. Will you believe if I say that when I come out of the theater, I did not feel "devastated", as apparently some people do? Instead I feel a POWERFUL DRIVE to work on my own stories, finish all those drafts, get my ideas out there. Creativity is contagious and I need to pass it on!
There's so much more I want to to say about this movie. The way it's structured is a brilliant puzzle. The way it misdirect you and then show you the right way, like a magician! Dazzling! There are some scenes that honestly I would cut shorter but eh, I can respect them being there. The way it pointedly left things out, and include other things in. The way it feels like I can see Nolan having so much fun. Indulging, and myself as the audience partaking in it.
FUck. I can't believe I have to admit my favorite movie of all time is by Christopher Nolan.
