During my graduate years, I was surrounded by friends having extensive knowledge of films. Inside their mind stored what seemed to be a thick encyclopedia, with complete entries of titles, dates of release, actors and actresses, directors, languages, plots and every tiny things of interest. While I tried to keep up during our conversations over meals, or just lazing over grass during bright summer days, my less than broad education meant I regularly found listening instead of contributing. It was my luck these friends were kind and happy to entertain quizzical looks from me, and what might have seemed like noobish questions.
I have since developed a little more interest in moving pictures. Parts of that education have allowed me to name every Christopher Nolan’s movie now. Though I cannot say I have watched all of them, the ones I have watched impressed me at a very deep level. Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy redefined Batman into a serious superhero movie, that could spark serious discussion of watch-ifs, and the motives of each character. In The Dark Knight, the second installment of the trilogy, there is an application of game theory. His doing of Superman through Man of Steel raised the prestige of the superhero, after years of being dragged through the ditch on television. Inception is mind blowing, playing with my understanding of reality. I remember watching Momento when I was young, and did not understand it (due for a rewatch). Interstellar is amazing, and it redefined the appearance of black hole in the popular mind, and made everybody a modern lay physicist. The Prestige, I just love it, and the movie probably convinced Hugh Jackman that he could be more than just Wolverine (or Van Helsing). I thought Jackman grew after, in Les Misérables, in The Greatest Showman, and in Logan. As for Tenet, let us ignore it here.
Together with Dunkirk, I think his latest, Oppenheimer, are probably the least cerebral among the whole collection. The storyline is direct, and there is not much of a twist. That does not make both of them any less amazing.
But I think, what makes Oppenheimer stands out out of the two is its sheer noisiness. I may suffer from incomplete recollection to make a complete comparison, but I would venture to claim his latest does not give my ears a rest from the very beginning, right up to the successful test of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos in the middle of the movie. For a movie that runs for three (freaking) hours, that is quite a long exposure. Not one second is there a pause. There is always background music, or it might better be described as loud pounding foreboding ambience music.
Combined with a fast paced story, and a dialogue that keeps going, it feels like watching a race car movie! When I was in the cinema watching it, my heart was beating faster than usual trying to match the tempo of the ambience music. It is a confusing feeling, given that Oppenheimer is a very talky movie that shows off its nerdiness by citing Einstein, Bohr, Teller, Feynman and several other big names, with the only big visual spectacle is the atomic bomb test explosion.
When the silence came, it came as a relief. But of course, seconds later, an even louder shockwave came afterwards.
And I watched Barbie afterwards. You should too. Your ears need that rest with happy songs.