I have a revolutionary idea for screen-writers and directors that might fundamentally change the way stories are told. Begin at the beginning and go to the end. I call this “linear storytelling”, and I’m confident that if somebody tried it, it would prove remarkably effective. Characters would develop in ways that surprise us. When their past events catch up to them, we would share that moment of memory and realization. It would be amazing. Yes, I know, no one in Hollywood thinks audiences are capable of remembering things from 30 or, god forbid, 90 minutes before. You think it’s necessary to go back in time, show an event, and then immediately jump forward to show the consequences. I disagree.
Which is all to say that Oppenheimer suffers from it’s pointlessly convoluted structure and it’s endless cutting from a somewhat boring future to a far more interesting past. It goes on an hour too long, and it doesn’t use its structure to do the one thing that might have justified all that complexity. Which is to put the bomb test at the end of the movie.
Because the twenty minutes leading up to and through the testing of the atomic bomb are some of the finest moments ever put on film. It’s brilliant, awe-inspiring, thought-provoking and remarkably exciting history given that we all know exactly what happened. It, alone, is worth the price of admission. And if I’d walked away from the screen with that as the final image? It would have been as stunning a movie ending as I’ve ever seen.
That isn’t what happens.
To be fair, the rest of the movie is fine. The last hour drags a bit and doesn’t have anything interesting to say, but it’s rescued by Robert Downey Jr.’s operatic line-readings and brilliant take on whiny, self-serving DC professionals. If you must sit through a stock history of a misleading narrative about anti-communism, you could do a lot worse than to spend the time with Downey. Or you can just hit stop on the remote when that last scene of the bomb is over. Ah the beauty of streaming. (Amazon)