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    Posted a few days ago Archived Message

    Posted by scrabb on July 31, 2023, 3:38 pm, in reply to "Re: Private Eye "Oppenheimer" cartoon"

    ...... to be unwatchable due to the background noise and melee of a storyline, if it can be called that.


    For someone who hasn't seen it, Fionn, this is a perfect summary of its failings.

    [Fionn was speaking of an earlier Nolan film -- Inception I think -- but her verdict was very apt for Oppenheimer as well]

    I wrote to a friend who is a member of the CND and the local peace group who is plugging the film as a powerful anti-nuclear weapons document. As follows:

    I went to see Oppenheimer this afternoon and warn you to avoid it, if only for the sound and “background” music which bludgeon the senses so you come out very nearly deaf. The staccato screeching of violins to indicate impending doom and dramatic climax is excruciating -- and never-ending.

    On top of which it’s a confused mess of a film with a plot that meanders all over the shop for 3 hours. I already know most of Oppenheimer's backstory (which takes up at least the first half an hour) and the scientists he worked with before the war — Nils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Edward Teller, Claus Fuchs, Enrico Firmi and so on — because quantum mechanics is one of my passions, but most ordinary punters will be completely lost as to who is who and what part they played. Scene after scene with dialogue like "Robert, I'd like you to meet Heisenberg, he's in your field." "Good to meet you, Robert, loved your paper on particle-wave transition." "Hello, I'm Teller from Chicago, you're Nils Bohr I take it" and on and on. (Einstein is played by Tom Conti, who is actually quite good in the role.)

    I asked my wife as we left the cinema (who wouldn't know quantum mechanics from a hole in the road) what she thought of the film. (I hadn't expressed any opinion at all at this point) and she said she was bored. I asked her with which bit and she said “All of it.”

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