2023-08-26 13:04:52
OPPENHEIMER. In the halls
Not just an ethical-visionary lesson on the origins of the apocalypse, on nuclear fission that can pulverize the world and the self-destructive obsession that corrodes the human brain. Not just a wow-movie that transforms quantum physics into a show. Oppenheimer, the biopic / thriller by Christopher Nolan on Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), Jewish physicist, head of the Manhattan project, therefore father of the atomic bomb, a film of discoveries, revelations, insights, adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: and Nolan insists a lot on the figure of Prometheus, the titan who stole fire from the gods to give it to men.
An epitome of the power of cinema, all the more evident when applied to capital themes. Entertainment and reflection, with a raw and clear message that corresponds to the strong fear of having passed the point of no return, eighty years after the explosions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer’s studies and experiments allowed the United States to be the first to equip itself with the Bomb by swinging his figure from savior of the country, turbine of American military power, to ex-communist reprobate, shredded by the McCarthy wind, finally re-evaluated, at least in the scientific part of his life.
Power, politics, the future of the planet. At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer tries to anticipate Nazi Germany’s nuclear race. No citation or cinematic comparison is plausible. No China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979), zero The Day After (Nicholas Meyer, 1983). That’s a completely different music. The only film that has the same expressive-prophetic force Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick’s certified masterpiece with the pass of Peter Sellers’ satire. Nolan builds a film that is worth a design object. He philosophises, in a sort of self-analysis now in color now in black and white. It expresses the doubts of a conscience in turmoil and of the entire twentieth century. Oppenheimer’s heart opens and closes in an inferno made up of laboratory flames, explosions and flashes.
The contradictory man, of fluctuating feelings: he feels the weight of being a bearer of death, with blood on his hands. During the Trinity Test, the sequence relating to the explosion of the first atomic bomb (the gadget) is the most engaging moment of an important film, necessary and at times even magnificent in terms of overall aesthetics and power of meanings, but without being the masterpiece to which many shout, more realistic than the king in the face of the collective fear of catastrophe and therefore generous with the intellectual who has the courage to debate it. Also a political work, not at all summery, partially unresolved, obsessive. A maze of formulas, poetic and musical quotations that increase restlessness and the desire to understand.
We feel, one after the other, the emptiness behind human intelligence, the noise of the gravitational collapse that coincides with the existential collapse of the protagonist, the weight of the original sin of a generation overwhelmed by guilt. The scientist has the Irish face of Cillian Murphy, 47, dear to Nolan, opponent of the zombies in 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002), fearful doctor in the turmoil of the Irish civil war in The wind that shakes the grass (Ken Loach , Palme d’Or at Cannes 2006), the idealist of Inception (Nolan, 2010), the dandy ringleader of the Peaky Blinders series. Murphy defines himself as an actor of pure instinct, incapable of intellectualising, and says he was close to Kip Thorne, a Nobel prize winner who followed Oppenheimer’s teachings, during filming. For Nolan’s big film, he has lost weight and changed his voice, his walk, his attitude. Until you struggle to recognize yourself. He talks about his character as if he were an unfortunate brother: A complex man, who had a perfect childhood and a traumatic adolescence, ended up in analysis, restless, unstable, capable of living with a sort of cognitive dissonance. The mirror of an era.
OPPENHEIMER by Christopher Nolan
(USA-UK, 2023, duration 180′)
con Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Matt Damon, Gary Oldman, Robert Downey Jr.
Rating: *** out of 5
In the halls
August 26, 2023 | 08:28
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