Oppenheimer: Regret and Relevance

The Final Shot

The harrowing eccentricities of his conscious brilliance, dwindling around the gallows of his pearly, expanding eyes.

Contemplating, brooding, and self-sufficiently scathing from the daunt of a historic concoction. A birthed might, a genocidal discrepancy turfing necessary, and evil.

Oppenheimer stands erect yet debilitated, by the scenery ailing the AE Commision office.

The puddle whirls in a puny relaxation of one of the many transfixing vitalities of genesis, the eyes stitching the canvas then, shut off.

But off to where? To which rational silhouette does that frame blend in? Or to which crucifixion for unsituational perjury? 

Where does the soul tread in the finite deterrents of absolute polity?

Perhaps the man harbouring it doesn’t know either. 

That lingering ethical macabre is how this narrative trails to a melancholic doom, one whose imprints surmount the affirmations of establishing posterity.

A sagacious dare, only plausible to a self-assured craftist like Nolan, that is ready to shed his legacy’s trump. 

The War

A span of change, a void manifesting revelation conjured up the one mind siphoned enough to do this, and the one heart, swayed enough to. It was a convenient existential ridiculity that these facets were strung in a single humanist satchel. 

The war was fleeting.

Fascinations and consequences pavemented bounds above the causality of a rushing life, pressurizing the growing pestilence of moral ciphers to symptomize. 

How do you tell what goes behind making a weapon of mass destruction? Is it just the scientific culmination of the shrouded inter-dimensional visions? 

The visions of gravitational singularities and influenced space-time continuum feverishly delved in the mystique of the imperceptible.

Is it the wretched mental credence of aware political dynamics? 

The untethered diction of empathetic scarring, that plugged the realization of ramifications, if perchance the Nazis made it before them.

Splitting the atom, the strand in this fabric of nature, a miniscule fragment– as elusive as it is proximal, yet somehow, still fissionable. The hauntings of a hidden universe were decorated with a morphing metaphysical integration in the frames of the film. It played greatly to retell the ephemeral lack of control the best minds of that time had over imagining the atmospheres of their fascination, which like today, wasn’t aided by years of graphic representations of quantum constituents.

Still knowing it could be done, and knowing the energy it relieved Robert snappily determined the impacts it would have on warfare.

Yet, proved by the succumbing checks throughout the cinematic progression, they were far reaching to an extent he never could have fathomed.

This engages a dilemma of revered trust in his proficient intellect which stamps to mechanics, the predilection to invent a bomb, which is marred by the disparaging lethality of his fateful creation that eventually piles the intangible harrow of countless existences at his feet.

Robert’s personal stance is powered by the unsubtle drive to sway the accountable action for racial reversion.

The Burden

Like the designated personalities that cling to this narrative, they’re all destined to ultimately plod through the consequences of their cause. In this relatively simpler fusion of intriguing timelines, be it Lewis mymedic.es Strauss or Robert Oppenheimer, the story fully lets their actions catch up to them, in masterful reticence of acting brilliance.

Downey Jr.’s raging crescendo towards the film’s end and Cillian’s fixated gaze sinking in insurmountable guilt are subjective choices that seem highly rewardable now, almost donning the film its signature-esque uniqueness which will make it distinctive to the fanatical posterity.

A print which was courageous in prospect, not just admitting the abhorrence of shrewd bureaucracy, but fervently delving into its grey facets in a scientific context of inventive influence. A reminiscent dismay exists, in words spoken under the afterlude of cornerstone discoveries that power our modern circuit. These people, the ones stitched to our inspiring curriculums and condescending retellings, existed, outside of their shackled photos in lives which were spent repenting. 

Repenting, defending, debriefing and abandoning, sometimes the ultimate purpose of their infused faith. 

There aren’t innumerable runtimes that tend to capture this heinous opacity, but Oppenheimer does.

The withdrawn might of dialogues, the scaling immersion and a boulder of reciprocable, ailing hearts give this venture a pulse. A permutation that was flailing to defeat in Nolan’s previous arc of direction.

The Trend

Yet, transcending the commendable themes at display in the film, we get to a broader array of contemplation. 

The films used to be a marvel to look at, at one time and for a long time. Not just owing to their resonating recreations of striking reality, but because they fostered the space to entertain a human mind.

A human way of understanding and telling stories, unique stories and perhaps the same ones, in a different way. Some with melancholy, some with destruction and some borderline poetic.

Before the corporate realm infringed this passion, before every film had a scene structure and narrative which competently assured them blockbuster finances. There used to be acceptance, for different causes and different crafts, which somewhere along the line lost, greatly, to a parodied illusion of cinema that churns mediocrity.

In the eyes of the casual stroller to seats, it might not differ, the lack of soul in scripts creating the over-explained plotlines might not generate the bothersome worry, the care of guardiance, but cinema is changing. Tragically, to an unfamiliarity of decline. It doesn’t matter if the dopamine-addicted audience flees to the theaters in a fashionable commemoration of an artist. 

If it invigorates a film like this, in the growing cataclysm, it’s a small win. For, films like Oppenheimer are important, and for as long as originality is celebrated, it will always turn out to be.

Written by Sidhant Tomar for MTTN 

Edited by Dhriti Bharadwaj for MTTN 

Featured Image by Jemima James

Images by Universal Pictures