Oppenheimer shows there is a vast audience for smart adult movies about compelling people. But Hollywood doesn’t care.
I finally got around to seeing Oppenheimer, and it made me melancholic about the current state of cinema. My capsule review is that it’s an intelligent, ambitious, impressively atmospheric, and exceptionally acted picture, with one of the most suspenseful (even knowing the historic outcome) and exciting sequences ever put to film, yet also overlong, unfocused, and self-indulgent. Director-cowriter Christopher Nolan deserves high praise for tackling and executing the cerebral story of a man who literally shook the world before reshaping it forever — when far too many young Americans can tell you who won the last Star War but not who fought in World War II. Unfortunately, even a superior and successful modern film like Oppenheimer reveals why Hollywood is dying.
I watched the movie with my cousin and her mother, both sharp, knowledgeable women cognizant of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s place in history. They are the target audience Hollywood needs to survive. Because of the familiar and fascinating subject matter, they drove to the theater, paid a hefty sum, and patronized the show — as the older lady had done for 80 years. Salome loves period epics, and two of her favorites were also biographies about significant men, made by two of the greatest filmmakers ever — Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus) and David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia). Critical and popular praise for Oppenheimer led Salome and daughter Vivian to trust Nolan. Then the movie started.
One main difference between Lean-Kubrick and Nolan was that the legends’ three-hour epics welcomed the audience, while Nolan’s seems cold to it.
