Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a three-hour biography shot on 70mm IMAX film, and I have honestly never felt the scale of a life the way this movie makes you feel it. The film is structured across three timelines: Oppenheimer's Los Alamos years leading up to Trinity, his postwar security clearance hearing, and Lewis Strauss's Senate confirmation. Nolan cuts between them with real rhythm. The hearing scenes are colour; the Strauss scenes are black and white. The film calls them "fission" and "fusion."
Cillian Murphy is extraordinary. He plays Oppenheimer as a man so internal that Nolan has to physically put him in frame to remind us he has a body. Robert Downey Jr., in what is easily the best performance of his career, plays Strauss with a quiet, aggrieved pettiness that is genuinely terrifying. Emily Blunt, as Kitty Oppenheimer, carries the moral weight of the film's last third.
Nolan Slowing Down
Oppenheimer is Nolan's first film that is not really about set-pieces. There is a set-piece — Trinity, and it lands with the weight every Nolan fan was hoping it would — but the film's real work is the hearing. Strauss has orchestrated the hearing out of petty resentment, and Nolan stays in the room long enough for you to feel the soul-murder happening in real time. In an American film, this is very rare.
See It in 70mm IMAX If You Can
The 70mm IMAX prints are genuinely the best way to see this film. Scotiabank Theatre Toronto runs a 70mm IMAX, and SilverCity West Edmonton Mall carries IMAX 1570 prints for select runs. For standard Canadian viewers, Cineplex UltraAVX is a strong second choice. The film sounds incredible in Atmos.
Dolby Cinema at Cineplex Brampton also runs Oppenheimer with Dolby Vision HDR — the contrast is genuinely superior, though the screen is smaller than the nearby IMAX.