Christopher Nolan is DaVinci, and this is why I could never say, “Hey Leonardo, I love your Mona Lisa but if you could just put a date and age tag for Mona on the bottom of the canvas that’d be so nice.”
No, I would never do that, same with CN, even though I wanted to know the years the different interrogations were happening (and their actual duration) as well as, what happened to “Oppy” during his later years…I can (and did) look that up on my own time. Having that on the screen would have detracted from the art, and Nolan has certainly earned the title of auteur and has the right to keep his canvas as clean or complicated as he sees fit.
I loved this film because…
-it didn’t feel like three hours, the pacing of tension was superb
-every actor was brilliant, my favorites being Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt (more on her in a minute*), Robert Downey Jr., Benny Safdie and Jason Clarke…just to name a few
-the sound and cinematography were chef’s kiss
*More about Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer…I’m glad Nolan showed the flawed woman as it gave Emily something to reach for in acting and because not all mothers are perfect. My research gleaned the fact that she was married three times previous to Oppenheimer (not that there’s anything wrong with that, spoken from a twice married), and as displayed in the film, both alcohol dependent and negligent in mothering (whether that lack of nurturing mother was driven perhaps by lack of knowledge regarding post-partum, alcoholism or depression in general is neither here nor there for the film or now. The die has been cast.). As I discovered the children didn’t turn out to be self-esteem boosted adults (son had anxiety issues and barely finished school, daughter committed suicide).
But I digress…the movie as a work of art was fantastic. Nolan used two different Oppenheimer book writers as the basis for his screenplay (Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin). Nolan did his homework and inspired me to do my own*. I predict it will win the Oscar.
