I finally saw Oppenheimer, and it’s an absolute achievement of a film. It’s not to be enjoyed— there’s very little joy in the movie— it’s to be experienced. A terrific script, an absolutely great ensemble of first-rate actors, and it’s surprisingly faithful to the history. Lots of special effects, but none are CGI, they’re old fashioned effects you have to film with an actual camera, which has the effect of making them seem a lot more authentic than pictures created by a computer.
The film eschews straight narrative, and assumes the audience is smart enough to sort out the various timelines. It was the soundtrack that left me thinking, What the fuck???
Here’s what I mean.
OPPENHEIMER: Hello, Albert.
EINSTEIN: Dr. Oppenheimer! What a pleasure. What brings you here?
OPPENHEIMER: I have a few equations I’d like you to look at.
SOUNDTRACK: SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM SHRIEK SHRIEK THUNDER THUNDER THUNDER SCREAM!
EINSTEIN: This looks interesting, Robert. Who wrote these equations?
OPPENHEIMER: Teller.
EINSTEIN: I’m not quite sure I’m the right person to address this. You should go to Chicago and talk to Fermi.
SOUNDTRACK: YOWL YOWL SCREAM SCREAM CRASH THUNDER THUNDER SHRIEK SHRIEK SHRIEK!
OPPENHEIMER: All right, Albert, I’ll do that.
If I didn’t have tinnitus going into the theater, I’d have had it coming out. Here scientists would be talking about physics in low, conversational tones, and then it’s the shrieking violins from Psycho, only ten times as loud and digitally enhanced.
By the end of the film, after three hours of this, my nerves had been shredded. I needed a massage, some Zen flute music, and about a crate of scotch.
If you see it in a theater, be sure to bring your noise-cancelling headphones.
What I think is that someone didn’t have confidence that the audience would watch a film about scientists discussing their work, even if there was a big bang somewhere near the end, and so they decided to gin up the suspense by interrupting the action with vast jolts of noise. It’s an incredibly crude technique, for all that it works. (I remember it being used to considerable effect in The Exorcist.)
I wouldn’t have minded if it weren’t for the volume. Can we dial it back to mere Wi-Fi?
Still. Brilliant movie. You should see it, but maybe in a theater with analog sound (if you can find one).
I thought it was a pretty standard soundtrack for a Christopher Nolan movie. He does like his BWWAAAHHHHHHs and droning noises.
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