Watching this for the first time in probably 15 years, and I definitely felt the length more this time around. Today (unfortunately) you wouldn’t need to use the first hour establishing Norton’s character/world view. A modern audience would clock that immediately.
Still a solid movie, despite how large chunks of the audience misread it.
Great performance from Pitt.
The movie definitely has its own inertia, and will continue on its course even as the momentum of the characters arc away. The movie never deviates from its path or speed to follow those arcs, Fennell is satisfied with just proceeding to the next scene at a constant pace.
There’s a sequence near the end that is completely needless and insulting. But then the final scene redeems it.
“The words are on the screen! That’s the best part! The best part!”
Oppenheimer trades almost exclusively in tone and ginned-up interpersonal moments. Nolan doesn't give the scientific, military, or political context needed to tell any of those stories. He's not interested in engaging with the Manhattan Project even at a pop-sci level, instead various proper nouns are name-checked, but could be erased and replaced without changing the structure of Nolan's script, just like a Mad Lib. Characters are all constructed out of the standard tropes from every fiction/biopic about a troubled genius,…
