I know I'm going against the grain, but I don't think so Oppenheimer It is the masterpiece that many critics or filmmakers of this caliber write about Paul SchraderWhich he described as “the most beautiful and important film of the century.” Let's be clear, it's a well-crafted and compelling work, but it never has the spark that surprises, moves and distinguishes original works of art.

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The style, hypnotic and deliberately non-linear, is reminiscent of style JFK And Nixon to Oliver Stone: Fast editing and blending of color and black-and-white enhanced by 70mm, co-stars in small roles and continuous time jumps, already present in previous works by Christopher Nolan. However, the structure falls within absolute Hollywood classicism: three acts divided into the introduction of the protagonist, the creation of the atomic bomb, and the process by which its destruction is attempted.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize American Prometheus, the film effectively captures how the triumph of science went hand in hand with the brutality of the results and uses great performances. If we analyze it on a completely astonishing level, we cannot help but admire the massive sequences such as those of the atomic test, and the rhythmic use of music. Ludwig Göransson, tells the story of a race against time to beat Hitler and Stalin in creating the bomb. But the structure prefers the oppression of the world to its intimate moral drama: it is not enough to hear him say “My hands are stained with blood” to Truman, who is also a caricature despite the skill of his art. Gary Oldman. His refusal to work on the hydrogen bomb in the midst of McCarthyism turns him from a hero into a pariah, using his intimate relationships with many communists as an excuse, even though he was a Rooseveltian liberal. In order to make him more likable, his pure health background is ignored, but the most serious omission has to do with the fact that Los Alamos was chosen for the nuclear test without taking into account the Mexicans and Native Americans who lived there. Nearby, who died like two hundred thousand Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The idea of ​​not showing any image of the devastation was successful, evoking horror through the dialogues, from which we learn that the two cities were preferred over Kyoto because the chief of staff was fascinated by the beauty during his honeymoon. The choice to drop the atomic bomb was intended as a show of force to enemies and allies, shortening the duration of the war and saving human lives, but this tragic irony, which would have provided extraordinary material on an artistic level, remains on the sidelines of the story. Yet it was he who declared that “physicists have known sin.”

Although the phrase is quoted Bhagavadge?t? “I have become Death, destroyer of worlds,” the identification with Prometheus, who gave the sun to humans and was punished for eternity, remains in the background.