Oppenheimer's First Reactions Out: Here's what the Critics Say

Team FC

“This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan. He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

“Nolan, once again bending narrative and chronology to his will, is after something more elusive than a simple three-act trajectory. He is also less interested in reenacting scenes of mass death and devastation, none of which are depicted here, than in sifting through the bomb’s lingering geopolitical and psychic residue. This swift and supercharged movie leaps between time frames and perspectives, color and black-and-white, crowded classrooms and wide-open desert vistas, and even between aspect ratios.” - Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

“It’s a dense, event-filled story that Nolan — who’s long embraced the plasticity of the film medium — has given a complex structure, which he parcels into revealing sections. To signal his conceit, he stamps the film with the words “fission” (a splitting into parts) and “fusion” (a merging of elements); Nolan being Nolan, he further complicates the film by recurrently kinking up the overarching chronology — it is a lot.” - Manohla Dargis, New York Times

"The dense first hour of Oppenheimer is a task to follow, as we’re assaulted with information and thrown into a frenzy of names, places, and events in quick, furious succession. A film that demands all of you in order to keep up. Oppenheimer is not a movie that tells a story as much as one that expects you to know that story in order to entirely engage with it. It’s why Oppenheimer is Nolan’s least accessible, and perhaps bravest, movie to date." - Suchin Mehrotra, Hindustan Times

"The much-anticipated film is everything you would come to expect from Nolan (haunting background score, ground-breaking camera work, unexpected surprises and a cerebral indulgence of emotions), yet it also is the most 'non-Nolan' movie experience. The explosions happening in your mind are even more real than the ones you watch on screen." - Tushar Joshi, India Today

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