Tell me, Christopher Nolan, of the man of many turns

The email arrived in the morning, about 7 hours before I was to see The Odyssey on glorious 70mm IMAX.

Unfortunately I have some bad news. We encountered an issue with our film system lamp before our first show of the day today and had to cancel the show. The nature of the issue requires in depth technical repairs that will effect all further shows for today. 

Dammit!

I was in Indianapolis for Gencon and decided to avail myself of the opportunity to see Christopher Nolan's latest epic on the big-big screen and on genuine film, the way he and his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, intended. Back in 2023 I saw Nolan's Oppenheimer on 70mm IMAX there and was looking forward to further Nolanian celluloid revelry. But cruel Fate intervened which meant I was relegated to seeing it projected digitally onto the IMAX screen at the Indiana State Museum which, I should add, has an exhibit going on now about cats and dogs.

Well, I will have to be content with looking forward to Nolan's next summer blockbuster on 70mm at a Gencon coming soon. (When the Signia by Hilton Indianapolis is open and I get a hotel room downtown again. Rant over.) 

Truth be told, I am not a Nolan fanboy. I respect his love of film, the IMAX format, and practical effects quite a bit but his output after The Prestige - what I've seen of it - has been hit or miss. I love that he loves film but I don't necessarily love his films. Going into the theater last month my main concern was peeing as much as possible before taking my seat as The Odyssey is nearly three hours long and I wanted to see every byte of every digital frame. I am incredulous that men in middle age or older make these 3 hour epics and don't include an intermission. L-A-M-E. I get it, it's your movie and you can sit around in an editing bay and hit pause at your leisure to take a leak. However, I do not have that luxury.

Beyond prostate issues, my hope was to simply have a good time watching Homer's poem brought to life on a ginormous screen. On that count, The Odyssey delivered.

It had been several years since I'd read the poem (Robert Fagles' translation) so it was not exactly fresh in my mind as the lights went down but I recalled various plot elements from the written work that Nolan had discarded as I watched.

I want to add that there was one trailer at this screening. Well, not a trailer, really, as it was a few minutes of Dune 3 or whatever it's called. Basically a bunch of futuristic flying Higgins boats land on some planet. Ramps open and space infantry run out looking for shelter on some kind of Herbertian version of Omaha Beach. Laser cannons make mincemeat of many of them before a giant worm emerges from the ground and basically it's real shit show for the poor space infantry.

I am not someone who maintains that Nolan had any obligation to slavishly adhere to the source material but some of the things he excised disappointed me. The Odysseus in the movie wasn't as clever as Homer's hero, e.g. - where was the "nobody" subterfuge? Odysseus is supposed to be hubristic - he didn't tell the cyclops his real name in the movie, did he?

Instead it seems that Nolan crossed Homer with The Deer Hunter. Matt Damon's Odysseus is suffering from PTSD after the Trojan War and 10 years of wandering doesn't help. Speaking of the wandering, Scylla was really neat and Charybdis looked fantastically menacing on the IMAX. Those giant armored warriors - weren't they cannibals in the poem? I suppose the main point was that Odysseus lost a lot of men and was left with but one ship. Still, that scene feels incomplete, a bit random.

The Odysseus of the film is a bit one note - he's got shell shock. His cleverness doesn't get the attention it deserves, although the Trojan Horse scene is really neat. It gave you a taste of his ingenuity and a large dose of the horror of war that has so traumatized him.

The Circe sequence in the film was great fun and the transmogrification of Odysseus' men into pigs was simply fantastic. The way they gorged themselves with the stew and how she massaged them and put her hand in their mouths to mold their faces into porcine visages was at once entrancing and grotesque.

Didn't Odysseus schtup Circe and Calypso in the poem? He is oddly asexual in the film.

I recall being rather appalled at the graphic violence in the poem as Odysseus puts paid to the hopes of the suitors by terminating them with extreme prejuidice. If I recall correctly, Homer describes evisceration and a pecker or two being lopped off.  Odysseus is absolutely vicious. While he is definitely out for blood in the movie, it's mostly stabs and slashes with no viscera falling out.

Robert Pattinson is a fine actor to my mind and he is generally good as the venal, arrogant jagoff of a suitor, Antinous, in the movie. Yet I had to wonder why Nolan had him verbalize what we were able to so plainly see in the scene where Odysseus returns. The weapons that line the great hall are stowed in a room upstairs so that they're inaccessible to the suitors who are locked in when Odysseus appears to take his revenge. But one of those who sought to gain entry into Penelope's knickers and purse enters the store room and busts a hole open in the floor down which he drops weapons for those confronting Odysseus. Every time he drops a spear or some kind of melee weapon, Antinous is shown in close-up urging someone to take up the newly available weapon.

A spear drops down so he says frothing at the mouth, "Get the spear!" Then a sword falls to the floor and we again cut to the suitor in close-up who shouts, "Use the sword!" It made for a weird, superfluous kind of play-by-play.

And there's Athena. Rather than a goddess of war & strategy who favors Odysseus because of his cunning and actively intervenes on his behalf, she's just this robed apparition in the movie that glumly stares at our hero for a spell before disappearing. And she's not clad in armor nor does she have a shield nor a helm nor any weapon of any kind. She appears in robes looking more like a sullen Aphrodite than a bad ass who wields an Olympian croupier stick as she plots of the fates of men. It's like having Thor appear in a suit & tie with no hammer.

OK, so Nolan's movie is missing a lot of the cool bits of the poem. But as far as spectacle goes, it was, um, spectacular.

The Trojan Horse was really neat. Rather than standing upright on all four and being on wheels, it has its two front legs up in the air with no helpful wheels. And so it's a hard slog pulling it into Troy meaning Odysseus and his men are thrown about as the horse is dragged inside the city walls and they relieve themselves in situ. The sack of Troy was exciting and visceral. And horrific too so it's no wonder that Odysseus agonizes once the war is done.

As I said before, the scene with Scylla and Charybdis was thrilling. The long shot of the whirlpool churning away amongst the rocks was gorgeous on the IMAX and made me feel the peril in my bones. The sequence where Odysseus' men are slaughtered by the giants was heartrending. This bit also benefited from the IMAX format by emphasizing the large size difference between Odysseus' men and the badass islanders. The heroes of the Trojan War are puny in contrast to the warriors who are built like Tiger tanks and you just know they're doomed from the start.

Circe was cool but I felt that the scenes with Calypso didn't get across just how long he had been there very well. But I think Nolan gets away with combining the nymph and the Lotus Eaters.

I felt that The Odyssey was an old school Hollywood epic full of beautiful actors with lots of dramatic conflict, thrilling action, and a fairly simple good vs. evil binary. Trading the wily, horny, hubristic hero of the written word for a shell shocked warrior rendered a more simplistic Odysseus. Nolan's hero is imperfect but not flawed.

I've been thinking about theme here. Zeus' Law™ is invoked multiple times during the course of the film, - the concept that people should welcome visitors and treat them well and, in turn, guests should treat their hosts with kindness. Odysseus sees the Trojan Horse episode as a violation of it in that he treated his hosts poorly. Really poorly. The sack of Troy here is a lengthy sequence full of Greeks committing atrocities. It is quite intense as we see that women and children are not spared.

And so he feels tremendous guilt - a bit like the subject of Nolan's previous film, Oppenheimer, dare I say. I'd need to watch The Odyssey again to get this straight but I think our hero sees Zeus' Law™ breaking down everywhere in his homeland and he is exiled at the end of the movie for dishonoring the ultimate law of hospitality in a scene that reminded me of the end of The Lord of Rings, like he's being sent to the Valinor Home for Naughty Kings.

Odysseus sees the Bronze Age coming to a close and a dark age, of sorts, beginning because Zeus' Law™ is being ignored. And he has contributed to this.

Does this, along with a generic "war is bad" thing count for deep thematic content? It's a general exhortation/admonition that we should be nice to one another. I suppose this is the true modernization of the tale.

Before I end, the soundtrack deserves mention. Nolan eschewed the conventional orchestral accompaniment with sweeping washes of strings for music that sounded like it had one foot in the ancient world and the other in 2026. Were replicas of ancient instruments used? Sampled? The music aimed to manipulate the audience just like a typical soundtrack would but it felt older, more period. Good stuff.

Despite some shallow characterization and missing source material I simply had a good time watching The Odyssey. It was wonderful to see so much of the epic brought to life on a very large screen. Watching Antinous get what was coming to him was extremely satisfying while seeing Argos lying on a dung heap tugged at my heart strings.

However flawed Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey may be, it is still full of thrills and a lot of fun. 

Coming soon, 14 Juni 2026

Seen before a screening of The Furious at Point.

I saw the trailer for this and it reminded me a lot of The Raid. The plot is fairly simple here: a mute gentleman's daughter is kidnapped and he endeavors to rescue her. He meets up with another fellow who is looking for his wife who was investigating the abductions of children and they team up as they have common cause and both are exceptional martial artists.

And so there are lots of lots of fights that seem to go on for hours. Don't get me wrong, they're fun, at first, but I get lost quickly with all those quick cuts and a bit bored as the fights reach the 10 minute mark. They're just interminable.

One fight scene takes place in a refrigerator factory and our heroes seemingly put down one of the bad guy's henchmen, Ho, who is built like a brick shithouse. Towards the end of the movie Ho quite remarkably regains consciousness and makes his way to the police station where the two heroes are locked in mortal combat with two really bad baddies. Thus we get this five-way conflagration that was chaotic fun until it wasn't.

I knew what I was getting into here and went because I wanted to spend time with my friend. And these types of movies aren't torture. The theater was, I think, the smallest at Point but it was fairly well populated.

 

  

Coming soon, 22 April 2026

Seen before a showing of Normal which was a hoot. I did not expect the mayor, played by Henry Winkler, to get blown up. Hehe. I was, however, disappointed at the lack of regional Minnesota accent and dialect. No mention of hotdish at the potluck. Oh well. Still, it's always good to have a Ben Wheatley movie.

 

Oceans Eleven's 25th anniversary is this year so it is returning theaters.

Coming soon, 6 March 2026

Seen before a screening of Train Dreams. I really enjoyed it and felt very sympathetic in the wake of Piper's death towards the central character, Robert Grainier, who struggles after losing his wife and child. The Malickian shots which placed him in natural, non-man-made environments were gorgeous. They gave context for the character - a man at home in the woods, away from his fellow men. But he also seeks the company of a woman and has a child with her so he is no misanthrope Unabomber type fellow.

I'd like to read the book upon which the movie was based now.

Oh no! Andrew Scott!

Coming soon, 8 February 2026

Seen before a screening of Dracula.

I thought Dracula was fun. Not a classic but not terrible. A divergence from the novel, I am told since I've never read it. Dracula was sympathetic and driven by his love for his lady. Christoph Waltz is a priest in the X-Files division of the Vatican. Some of his dialogue felt stilted at times but I liked his character because he was driven to do what needed to be done.

Like I said, good fun but not a great movie.

Marcus showed about 33% fewer trailers than AMC generally does. 

I was appalled to find out that there is a He-Man movie on the horizon. Is this a lure for nostalgic GenXers?

I think that trailers filled with laudatory quotes portend a lousy movie. I feel ambivalent about this one as I suspect I'd appreciate the creepiness but there were too many jump scares (and quotes).

Red band! 

Coming soon, 4 February 2026

I think JoAnne Pow!ers has been at every screening I've been at this year. It is not clear if this says anything about me or her.

These were the trailers at a screening of The Testament of Ann Lee which was excellent. I loved both kinds of musical numbers - the ones that gave exposition and the ones that were liturgical. The latter were quite effective in creating an ecstatic atmosphere and giving a sense of the characters' religious fervor. There were a couple scenes where I felt it would have been neat if the movie had let worshiping continue longer and more had been done with Mother Ann's visions. It would have been nice to have had a bit more that takes place outside the normal, workaday world.

While watching the credits I was pleasantly surprised to see that Amanda Seyfried did her own singing or most of it, anyway. The music was wonderful and I am curious to know how much of it was authentic Shaker music or at least based upon such songs.

An excellent flick.

The evening began with a commercial for the Metropolitan Opera. The show is Cinderella and it noted that it had a running time of 90 minutes and was in English so you don't have to be a sophisto to watch it.

Next was another commercial for Winter Olympics coverage at the cinema.

We then got a trailer for Dreams but it was not banded presumably because it had not been reviewed by the MPAA. Jessica Chastain has is a cougar here - a long way from Mrs. O'Brien. 

Jessica Chastain & Neve Campbell flicks? Are middle-aged women having a moment at the cinema?

I am hoping to see The Odyssey on film in Indianapolis while I'm at Gencon.

The second trailer that begins in the desert. I am getting them confused.

 

More older Fraus.

Red band once again. Perhaps there is no green band version of this one.

Coming soon, 27 January 2026

Seen before a screening of No Other Choice.

This was a commercial and not a proper trailer.

 A commercial for the Winter Olympics coverage followed.

 

This was a red band trailer.

 

Coming soon, 26 January 2026

Seen at a screening of Hamnet.

A commercial for the Olympic games followed.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 102: Wherein I learn that they do tom yum differently in Indy

(early-August 2023)

(Watch this entry's prelude.)

Having constructed a prima facie case in my mind that the Masons' influence permeates Indianapolis, I made my way back to the convention as I had a game to play. On my way there, I passed the lovely old Deschler Building that dates from 1907. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

My next game was a Call of Cthulhu adventure entitled “The Stone Gateway Mystery, Starring The Hardy Boys” and I played Iola Morton, Joe Hardy’s sweetheart.

We are in Bayport and the Hardy Boys’ dad, Fenton Hardy, must head out of town on business so he entrusts his sons with the responsibility to investigate a developer named Terrence Wall, er, Nolan Andrews who is to present his plans that very night for a big, new development which would gobble up precious shoreline and imperil the charming historical character of the town. This character is aided by a mysterious stone gateway adorned with eldritch carvings - or pictograms, perhaps…

I have never read any Hardy Boys stories but the guy running the game and the other player had. (Two people didn’t show up.) It was a blast investigating the evil developer's stratagems, fretting over Joe’s dangerous ("Oh, Joe! Be careful!") yet very manly (sighhhhhhh) actions to thwart the developer, and screaming occasionally because that’s what girls do, right?

It was a fun game and we managed to stop the mad developer from not only erecting ugly, out of character buildings that would tarnish Bayport's charm, perhaps irreparably, but also from summoning forth hideous, evil creatures that would destroy the world! We really dodged a bullet there.

When the game was done, I met up with one of my friends who, like me, was tired of bar food. I hadn’t had a bad meal, really, but I'd certainly had enough salads and Buffalo wings to last a week. And so we went to a Thai restaurant not too far from our hotel. Completely expectedly, many other gamers had the same idea we did and there were a dozen people waiting in line for the place to open at 4.

My companion had a fine curry while I went for tom yum soup, one of my favorite foods.

The soup was excellent though a bit different from what I’m used to. This stuff had no noodles but there were onion and tomato in it, which was a new twist for me. Also, I am accustomed to getting a plate on the side with Thai basil, bean sprouts, a few jalapeno slices, and a wedge or two of lime. Not here.

Still, not only was it a welcome change from the bar food that had largely been my diet so far, it was genuinely tasty stuff.

We went back to the hotel with full bellies to freshen up before heading out to a movie. We had tickets to see Oppenheimer on the IMAX and on film too at the Indiana State Museum, just a few blocks west of the hotel. We wandered over there and discovered that the museum was next door to another one, the Eiteljorg Museum.

It features art from Native Americans and from Western America. Indianapolis seems an odd spot for such a museum but it apparently got its start from the collection of a philanthropist for whom the place is named: Harrison Eiteljorg. We had some time before the show and were waiting on another friend of ours who was grabbing a quick bite after a game so we decided to do a little wandering.

There was a path leading behind the Eiteljorg and so we followed it.

This led through a small green area and out to the Central Canal.

It was a really nice spot with a park on the opposite shore and a trail to walk along the canal. We saw only a few people as we slowly strolled our way along the canal path. Did the threat of potentially having to navigate large crowds of gamers keep locals away? The area just seemed oddly quiet. I am not sure where the canal goes, exactly, but walking it to find out may just be in the cards for a future visit.

The museum was closed except for the IMAX cinema but it looked to be an interesting place. Many other people had the same idea we did as the theater was full when we settled in for 3 hours of celluloid goodness. I’ll be honest, though, it should have had an intermission. I guess the industry has to squeeze as many screenings in as they can, audience bladders be damned.

I really liked how director Christopher Nolan used the IMAX format for scenes depicting massive flames, ripples on the surface of water, and just any phenomenon that captures the scientist's vast imagination. The sheer size of the screen engulfs us and, just perhaps, instills a tidbit of awe in our minds as the man on the screen ponders the universe and its workings. I wish there were a few more of these scenes as I really enjoy this montage style where the film cuts to something that illustrates a character's thinking or feeling or perhaps just shifts the mood for us. Personally, I especially like it when a film cuts to something outside of the story world for a brief second before throwing us back into it so we can ponder how what we just saw relates to the story. I enjoy that act of trying to link seemingly disparate things.

The Trinity scene was just great. While we see various people taking shelter, donning goggles, and looking on in anticipation, we hear only breathing despite an atomic bomb just having detonated. And then the sonic boom hits them. But it also hits us with that IMAX sound system cranked up to 11. I felt the boom. Just fantastic cinema. Great credit must be given to Nolan for not making this the climax quickly leading to the end of the movie. It’s another element of Oppenheimer’s story, albeit a very important one, but it’s by no means the end of his tale.

I would really like to see Oppenheimer again but, alas, probably won’t be able to on an IMAX.

As was our custom, we retired to the Omni lobby for the night after the film where drinks and conversation flowed easily.

********

Saturday morning I had a date down the street from our hotel at this place, the City Market.

A friend and I walked down there and we discovered a small memorial for James E. O’Donnell, a native of Indianapolis who survived the sinking of the cruiser named after his hometown on 30 July 1945 just after it had delivered the uranium and other parts for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, courtesy of one J. Robert Oppenheimer. You may recall the scene in Jaws where the grizzled old man of sea, Quint, tells of the ship being torpedoed and of how he and his fellow sailors found themselves at the mercy of the sharks who called the Philippine Sea home.

My friend went on his way whereas I entered the City Market and found that it is now a public market. It was still early so no vendors were yet open.

I was here for a tour of The Catacombs, the subterranean ruins of Tomlinson Hall which stood next to the Market building until 1958 when it was consumed by fire. Both buildings were/are on Market Street and, true to its name, markets were held on this street as well as in the two edifices which were designed by a German architect whose name I cannot recall. While the first floor of Tomlinson Hall hosted markets and vendors hawking their wares, the rest of the building was more of a public event space.

Concerts and cotillions were held for Indy’s good and great and Benjamin Harrison celebrated his nomination for the presidency in the Hall’s ballroom. The Catacombs were the basement of Tomlinson Hall, with plenty of room for things such as produce for the markets that would stay cool underground.

The Catacombs were quite spooky and I dared not stray from the rest of the tour group lest I never return…Our tour guide was a member of Indy’s historical society and explained the history of Tomlinson Hall and its surroundings. While not as dramatic as Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow starting the Great Chicago Fire, local legend says a bird dropped a discarded, yet still lit, cigarette on the building's roof to start the blaze. Did a pyromaniacal pigeon really do the deed? Or was it a story concocted by an anti-smoking crusader? We shall never know.

In years past, The Catacombs were used as a haunted house on Halloween and Gencon held at least one session of Dungeons & Dragons here which sounds like it would have been a hoot.

With the tour over, I headed east. This area of downtown felt gentrified with lots of newer apartments. Since such buildings are about as interesting as watching paint dry, I headed north and again found myself surrounded by older homes and other buildings like this Catholic church.

I came to another beautiful and decidedly older building where I spied a Green Man on the side.

Don’t see these often. I discovered that it was affixed to a wall of The Athenæum, a gorgeous 19th century building that was originally a kind of community center for the city’s German immigrants and German-Americans. Back then it was named Das Deutsche Haus or "The German House” but World War I forced a change to The Athenæum lest community members be accused of being loyal to the enemy. Besides, a Latin name sounds all highfalutin, especially when it has that fancy a-e diphthong with the letters melded together.

My understanding is that German immigrants and their descendants were slow to learn English and adopt it as their primary language. I believe Milwaukee still had multiple German-language newspapers as World War I began. But, as the conflict progressed, these people scrambled to learn English, anglicize their names, eat hot dogs instead of frankfurters, etc. OK, so I am not sure about that last one.

Das Deutsche Haus featured a Turners Hall, a theater, and surely a bier hall too, amongst other things. Today there’s a German restaurant, concerts are held there, and I think some of it is office space.

Turning the corner to see the great architectural detail of The Athenæum, I found myself on Massachusetts Avenue which begins in the northeast part of downtown and continues in that direction.

I first discovered Mass Ave, as the locals call it, back in 2006 or so. It’s a bit like State Street here in Madison but with less emphasis on college students and more on young professionals. New apartments sit next to older ones with hip restaurants and bars to be found along much of the streetscape. Well, they looked all trendy to me, anyway.

The stretch closer to downtown seems to have more newer apartment buildings and more places that would appeal to a younger set who found it important to be seen at such joints.

Kitty corner from The Athenæum is another fantastic building but this one has a Middle Eastern look to it.

Are those minarets? It says “Murat Shrine Club” on one wall and it turns out that this was the local HQ of Indy’s Shriners, formerly known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, hence the architectural style. I got this vision in my head of the front door opening and a bunch of old duffers donning fezzes zipping out on go-karts heading for some parade or other. Shriners are an offshoot of the Freemasons – Masons again! They're everywhere in this town.

I wondered if there was an Illuminati lodge somewhere. If I happened upon an Eye of Providence or any other esoteric symbol while traipsing around, I was going to get very paranoid.

I presume mystical, arcane rites used to be performed there but now the place is a theater called the Old National Centre where the only chants raised are drunk concert goers singing along to their favorite bands.

Just look at the marvelous detail!

I could have looked at all of the stained glass windows and the carvings and whatnot all day. But time was tight so I pushed onwards.

Another highlight I stumbled upon was an old fire station that had been converted into the local firefighters museum and memorial.

Across the street I found one of, if not the, neatest ghost sign I’ve ever seen. The wall of the building was covered in layers of ads - a veritable early 20th century advertising palimpsest. But it was the Quaker Oats sign that was the biggest and stood out from the rest.

A gentleman who was sitting on a bench flagged me down and introduced himself as a photographer and videographer. After introducing myself, he said that he had seen me walking along the street taking photos and was glad that I had traipsed by him. He inquired as to where my pictures could be seen online and if I considered myself a street photographer.

“No, I’m no street photographer,” I replied. “Just a tourist who likes old buildings and ghost signs. And no, I’m not on Instagram or Twitter or any social media like that. Just an old school blog where these photographs will be posted in a few months.”

It was a friendly little chat and I was appreciative that someone would think that I was even a remotely practiced photographer whose snaps would be worth viewing.

I found the storefront theater where I was scheduled to see a play that night and then checked the time. A game awaited so I turned around and headed back to the convention.

On the way, I passed a couple of murals. The first was of hometown literary hero Kurt Vonnegut. 

The second was of Mari Evans.

Evans, another Indy native, was an artist, writer, and poet who was associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. I am not familiar with this "Black Arts Movement" and so will have to investigate.

I was tempted to stop in at that ice cream parlor where they make it to order in a bowl resting atop a bath of liquid nitrogen but didn't want to be late.

********

Bonus photo. Here’s another one of Piper at the vet unsuccessfully hiding behind the doc’s laptop. Poor Pipey.

 

 

(Now watch the postlude.)

The Corona Diaries Vol. 102 - Prelude: IMAX

Do you fear this man's invention that they call atomic power?

While I was in Indianapolis for Gencon, I availed myself of the chance to see Oppenheimer on an IMAX screen and on film at the Indiana State Museum. To the best of my knowledge, director Christopher Nolan shot as much of the film using IMAX cameras as was practical. Plus, I know of him as a big fan of film as opposed to digital so it seemed that this was an opportunity to see the movie as the director intended, so to speak, and I couldn’t pass it up.

In the weeks leading up to the screening, I’d listened to Rush’s “Manhattan Project” countless times and one day coincidentally found myself a couple blocks from Stagg Field in Chicago, the site where Enrico Fermi and company became the first people to create a nuclear chain reaction – as part of the Manhattan Project.

The theater was near or at capacity and I remain amazed that a three-hour movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer is attracting large audiences. Are people really that interested in a story about this man? Or is Christopher Nolan’s name that big of a draw?

Let me get this out of the way: Oppenheimer is a three-hour movie and should have had an intermission. I wanted to pee and I bet a lot of other people in the audience wanted to as well without missing a frame like me. I guess the industry has to squeeze as many screenings in as they can, audience bladders be damned.

OK.

The movie has two storylines: “Fission” and “Fusion”. The former is where we follow Oppenheimer from student to “father of the atomic bomb”, more or less. The latter storyline is itself bifurcated into one in black & white with scenes depicting the Senate hearings for Eisenhower’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce, Lewis Strauss. This storyline shares time in the “Fusion” world with scenes from a hearing that was to determine if Oppenheimer would be able to keep his security clearance.

That Rush song is on an album called Power Windows and most of the songs on that album are about power and how it is wielded. The more I think about it, the more it seems that this is one of Oppenheimer’s themes. The power of atoms, the power that the bomb has to destroy, political power, the power we have in interpersonal relationships – all kinds of power are on display in this movie.

The power inherent in atoms and the ability to harness them in the form of a bomb are readily apparent. The “Fusion” line portrays political power as we get a glimpse of the inner workings of Washington and find out that Strauss, who says at one point, "Power stays in the shadows”, was responsible for initiating the investigations into Oppenheimer and his loyalties which resulted in the hearing we see which eventually resulted in the celebrated scientist losing his security clearance.

As far as power in interpersonal relationships go, the scenes with Edward Teller in the security clearance hearing come to mind first. Teller testifies against the father of the atomic bomb yet Oppenheimer shakes his colleague's hand after he finishes his damning testimony. This infuriates Kitty Oppenheimer, J. Robert's wife, who is deeply angered by her husband’s refusal to stand up for himself. Kitty goes on to defiantly stick up for her husband at the hearing and steadfastly refuses to shake Teller’s hand.

I really need to go see this movie again to get my thoughts truly in order but here are some other things that stood out for me.

Early on when Oppenheimer is lecturing, he asks his students how light can be a wave and a particle at the same time. This idea of duality/ambivalence continues throughout the movie and really embodies Oppenheimer. On the one hand, he sees the atomic bomb as something that will end the war and bring about peace. Yet on the other, he views it as an abomination, an existential threat to humanity that should be hidden away and never used.

I really liked how Nolan used the IMAX format for scenes depicting massive flames, ripples on the surface of water, and just any phenomenon that captures the scientist's vast imagination. The sheer size of the screen engulfs us and, just perhaps, instills a tidbit of awe in our minds as the man on the screen ponders the universe and its workings.

The Trinity scene was just great. The movie cuts to various people looking on as we hear only breathing despite an atomic bomb just having detonated. And then the sonic boom hits them. But it also hits us with that IMAX sounds system cranked up. I felt the boom. Just fantastic cinema. And great credit to Nolan for not making this the climax, the end of the movie. It’s another element of Oppenheimer’s story, albeit a very important one, but it’s not the end of his tale.

One thing that I am rather ambivalent about is how much shallow focus there is, how often the only thing on the screen for us to glean information from is a face. I wouldn’t doubt that part of this stylistic choice was made because of technical limitations of the IMAX format. I really don’t know what kinds of lenses those cameras can or cannot use. The characters seemed like isolated atoms all too often, where we see their faces but their surroundings seem almost irrelevant. 

Having said this, Cillian Murphy’s eyes and his facial expressions are amazing here. They go from wide-eyed wonderment at the workings of Nature to the sadness of carrying the burden of having fathered the most destructive weapon ever devised by mankind.

The last thing I want to mention here is Nolan’s use of cutaways. I mentioned one kind above – those of natural phenomena, whether on the macro scale like an ocean of flames or on a micro scale where we see what I think are meant to be elementary particles in motion. (As I said, I need to see the movie again.) These get us inside Oppenheimer’s head and demonstrate his fascination with the universe and the rules that govern it.

But there are also cutaways that demonstrate Oppenheimer’s growing unease with the idea that there are now what we’d call weapons of mass destruction around and that he played a pivotal role in creating them. One of these cutaways is that big IMAX frame full of fire which sits in both realms. It’s a fascinating natural phenomenon yet it also symbolizes death and destruction.

Another takes place after Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been bombed. Oppenheimer is either walking to a stage to address the denizens of Los Alamos or away from it having already spoken to them and he zones out and imagines stepping on the charred corpse of an atom bomb victim. His foot goes right through it and his shoe emerges covered in ash.

In a scene that takes place in the cramped conference room where a panel of modern day Torquemadas question him, Oppenheimer appears nude before them. A cut shows him from another angle and his lover, Jean Tatlock, is on his lap, her hips thrusting in ecstasy.

As a stylistic device, I like these impressionistic cutaways. Done well, they get you into a character’s mind on a basic, emotional level. And I enjoy that feeling of being taken out of the story’s “real world” and placed somewhere different, perhaps somewhere “unrealistic”. These kinds of scenes just work on my brain in a different way that is fun and interesting.

I liked Nolan’s use of these cutaways here in Oppenheimer but I wish that there had been more of them, that they were used in something of a rhythmic pattern. There didn’t need to be a whole lot more of these cutaways but I think a few extra would have done the trick. But the ones we did get were great and paired well with a dynamic soundtrack. Again, just a few more to give that really visceral impression to punctuate the plot and illustrate our protagonist's state of mind.

At three hours, Nolan gives us a lot of food for thought. I really need to watch it again if I am to piece things together, to get a better view of the whole megillah. As it stands, I very much enjoyed this film, with an emphasis on film. It looked fantastic. I am, however, ambivalent on the whole Strauss storyline. It’s not that it’s bad and I think I understand its importance in helping give shape to Oppenheimer’s post-war life. It gives you an idea of what he did and of the powers aligned against him.

But I can’t help but think that more of Jean Tatlock would have been interesting. I don’t know anything of their real-life relationship but she is a clever and formidable woman. The scenes with her show us an Oppenheimer distanced from his work, the bomb, and all of the horrible implications.

Regardless, this was a very good film, flaws and all, and I am keen on seeing it again though, sadly, it likely won’t be in IMAX.

P.S. - at the screening I attended, a notice was shown before the film that there were no additional scenes to be found in the middle of or after the credits. Was this an Oppenheimer thing? A peculiarity of the venue? I'd never seen that before.

P.P.S. - Martin Scorsese's latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, looks to clock in at just under three and a half hours. This is Ben Hur territory. Surely there will be an intermission.

I got tickets for Oppenheimer on 70mm

I now have tickets to see Oppenheimer at an IMAX on 70mm film. I'm really looking forward to this. No wonder I've been listening to this song a lot lately.