Akash Kvijay

Storytelling-wise this is the best Christopher Nolan movie in my taking. Needless to say, Cillian Murphy was absolutely impeccable in his performance as Oppenheimer. And although I would say the similarly for all the other actors, Einstein just wasn't that compelling enough for me. I must admit if I hadn't done some background research on Oppenheimer prior to the watch it would've been very difficult for me to handle the pacing of certain scenes in the movie. I watched that one Veritasium video on youtube that came out a day before the premiere which helped tremendously. Coming to the movie, I loved the shifting timelines that focused on specific aspects of Oppenheimer’s life which are later being dissected and scrutinized during the cruel security clearance hearing. While the movie does reveal Oppenheimer as a troubled patriot, it still mildly justifies how his past conduct and relationships can be interpreted along the lines of suspected treason. My favorite scene (lines of which I don't precisely remember) is the one where Oppenheimer’s wife tells him to pull himself up after finding him lying in the woods bereaving the news of his ex-lover’s suicide. In that scene, Oppenheimer blames himself for Jean’s death and his wife tells him not to play the victim of his own actions, which is a brilliant foreshadowing of his mental state after the development of the atom bomb culminating in his most famous quote “Now I am become death The destroyer of worlds”. People criticize him for his hypocrisy in his stand on nuclear weapons but Nolan portrayed how this duality existed in his personal life also during Jean’s suicide. Oppenheimer was a complicated man who had to make many hard decisions that triggered far-reaching consequences, the weight of which always haunted him. Robert Downey Jr’s performance as the vindictive and scheming Lewis Strauss who nearing the end tried to expose a sinister motive behind Oppenheimer’s motivations for leading the Manhattan Project was very compelling to watch. The spirit of scientific adventure and the fervor unleashed at the splitting of the atom, the hasty nuclear arms race that ensued among leading nations, and the dramatic unfolding of the events leading up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki were all thoroughly gripping moments in the movie. There seems to be so much to talk about, especially the ending where it is inferred that the world was destroyed, figuratively at least, after detonating the first nuclear bomb. There's much I believe I've missed and looking forward to a rewatch soon.