I am supremely impressed with this on a technical level, but left feeling somewhat empty and frustrated with the project as a whole.

much has been said about what this film omits. the Japanese perspective on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. the effects of the trinity test and the Manhattan project on the indigenous and Latino population of Los Alamos. it's true that this film is not about those people. it's about Oppenheimer, and he largely ignores them, so in some ways it makes sense that the film does the same. that being said, the moments where he seems to grapple with these effects of his creation are haunting. I just wish the film spent more time with them, because they are some of the few times I feel it truly goes beyond the surface. It’s hard to fault the film for this, though, because again it’s not about that.

I also feel conflicted about how the film handles Emily Blunt’s character. again, this film is told from Oppenheimer's perspective, yet I only sense her feelings in their relationship. I feel nothing from him. maybe that was intentional, but I felt his love (or at least care) for Florence Pugh’s character very deeply. even so, her character - and especially her identity as a communist - is wasted. (except for that great opening conversation between her and Oppenheimer) I almost started laughing when Blunt sees a vision of Pugh and Oppenheimer during one of the hearings. Nolan has long struggled to fully realize the women he writes, but this film lays bare that weakness in ways his others never did. they simply do not feel like real people, even from within Oppenheimer’s perspective. 

the acting is unreal though. Cillian Murphy is phenomenal and carries the weight of this role with ease. his eyes tell a million stories. everyone else is great too. (seriously, every famous white man is in this) it’s impressive the camera always treats them like characters, never celebrities.

the actual trinity test sequence is magnetic and spectacular from start to finish. it, and the rest of the first two hours maintain an incredible level of tension. it’s hard to overstate how well the film builds up to the climactic moment. unfortunately the last hour wasn't nearly as interesting. I don’t think Nolan is as good at making hearings suspenseful as he is the creation and detonation sequences. he likes to use sci-fi concepts (time libraries in Interstellar, clones in The Prestige, limbo in Inception) to dramatize his films. He doesn't have those tools available in this film, and I think it shows. dialogue has never been his strong suit, and this film requires SO MUCH from its script.

I agree with the thesis that humanity will never learn our lesson. we will always build a bigger bomb. In some moments, that message is genuinely effective. I'm just not sure I buy how Nolan gets there. there are searing moments of greatness here, to be sure, but there's too much surface level analysis for the film to be as good as its best moments are.

I'm not sure what is about Nolan films that I haven't liked recently. The man is a technician. he constructs layered, complex, stories. I sometimes find his allergy to linear storytelling annoying, (Dunkirk springs to mind) but it felt warranted here. as a whole, it is a marvel to look at and dissect. But like All Quiet on the Western Front last year, I find the technical greatness to be emotionally void.

I’m really glad I got to see this in IMAX 70mm. that’s a special experience even if I'm mixed on the film itself.