Christopher Nolan’s latest is both a trippy action movie and an immersive biopic. Running a full three hours, it is a provocative and sometimes sexually graphic portrait of the troubled physicist who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb.
Nolan is known for his dark visions, but this is the most profoundly pessimistic work yet. That said, Oppenheimer – which is as intimate and tender as Nolan’s early masterpiece Memento – is frequently very funny. If we’re still alive in 2024 (and the movie suggests imminent destruction is closer than we think) it should clean up at the Oscars.
