Oppenheimer and the Radioactivity of Hollywood – The American Spectator

I finally got around to seeing Oppenheimer, and it made me melancholic about the current state of cinema. My capsule review is that it’s an intelligent, ambitious, impressively atmospheric, and exceptionally acted picture, with one of the most suspenseful (even knowing the historic outcome) and exciting sequences ever put to film, yet also overlong, unfocused, and self-indulgent. Director-cowriter Christopher Nolan deserves high praise for tackling and executing the cerebral story of a man who literally shook the world before reshaping it forever — when far too many young Americans can tell you who won the last Star War but not who fought in World War II. Unfortunately, even a superior and successful modern film like Oppenheimer reveals why Hollywood is dying.

I watched the movie with my cousin and her mother, both sharp, knowledgeable women cognizant of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s place in history. They are the target audience Hollywood needs to survive. Because of the familiar and fascinating subject matter, they drove to the theater, paid a hefty sum, and patronized the show — as the older lady had done for 80 years. Salome loves period epics, and two of her favorites were also biographies about significant men, made by two of the greatest filmmakers ever — Stanley Kubrick (Spartacus) and David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia). Critical and popular praise for Oppenheimer led Salome and daughter Vivian to trust Nolan. Then the movie started.

One main difference between Lean-Kubrick and Nolan was that the legends’ three-hour epics welcomed the audience, while Nolan’s seems cold to it. For example, both Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia contain a preliminary overture, accompanied by the music of their premium composers (Alex North and Maurice Jarre). The overture promises that the imminent movie will be worth the wait, and the film score — a lost art in cinema — gives a preview of the skill level involved.

The same thing goes for the opening credits — an element since discarded by contemporary auteurs in their rush to get you into their often lousy work. Many — if not most — motion picture classics have an equally memorable main title sequence. You can’t separate your fond memory of Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, the James Bond icon Goldfinger, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spielberg’s Jaws, or Lucas’ Star Wars  from their impressive opening credits. 2001 — the Kubrick masterpiece that Nolan so admired, he made a poor imitation, Interstellar — maintains a black screen for almost three minutes before the MGM logo appears. (READ MORE: A Tale of Two Movies, and the Men Who Think About Them)

Once Oppenheimer began, the first thing that depressed Salome was the darkness. Most movies today suffer from low lighting, even a stratospherically budgeted one such as Oppenheimer. The production spent a fortune on actors, period design — topped by a spectacular recreation of Los Alamos, New Mexico (a town built into existence to house the Manhattan Project scientists’ families), and special effects — culminating in the first test explosion of the atomic bomb—  yet has the illumination of a Friday the 13^th sequel. This phenomenon is not unique to modern films, even in the once “wonderful world” of Disney. Compare any scene in the ghastly live-action The Little Mermaid remake to the cartoon original.

But soon, Salome and daughter Vivian had a bigger problem with Oppenheimer — the sound quality, especially for dialogue. The more film technologically advances, the harder it is to understand the actors, which was never previously the case. Line delivery in Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday runs at twice the speed of any line in Oppenheimer, yet Salome could understand every word in the former and only half of those in the latter. She had paid good money for a fine sensory experience, only to have one sense — hearing — challenged.

And Christopher Nolan is the worst A-list offender in this category. He adamantly refuses to rerecord his actors and clarify their dialogue. “I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor re-voice it later,” Nolan said. “Which is an artistic choice that some people disagree with, and that’s their right.” Nolan may be artistically correct, but his films are far less enjoyable for it. I still have no idea of what the hell Michael Caine was babbling about in Interstellar.

Finally, and detrimentally, to older viewers like Salome, was the story structure. Nolan made his career mark manipulating a complex narrative with flashbacks and flash-forwards in Memento (2000), and expertly weaving reality with dreams in Inception (2010). But he overdoes these practices in Oppenheimer by overlapping time scenes, color with black-and-white, and inserting pedestrian hallucinations, such as Oppenheimer imagining an audience meltdown as he addresses the Japan bombings. (RELATED: Movie Fest: TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars”)

It all works well enough, but seems lazier than straightforward storytelling— such as Nolan did in his lucrative Batman trilogy. The great films Nolan and Salome — and I — and millions of others love work better. Lawrence of Arabia begins with T. E. Lawrence’s death and has a single movie-length flashback. 2001 jumps brilliantly from prehistoric man to the future to a space mission and ultimately “To Jupiter and Beyond.” They are easy to follow, easy on the eyes and ears, and will stand the test of time longer than Oppenheimer.

And yet the massive success of Oppenheimer bodes well for the art of film if not Hollywood. Because it shows there is a vast audience eager to consume smart adult movies about compelling people — even straight white men who changed the course of civilization. In the universe of asexual superheroes and feminist dolls, this is something to appreciate — even by a recently disappointed moviegoer like Salome.

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