Oppenheimer’: “Best” “Most Important Film This Century”
The 2023 Oscar race has just begun.
Writer-director Paul Schrader offers strong praise for Christopher Nolan’s science epic.
Writing on Facebook, the Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Last Temptation of Christ screenwriter called Oppenheimer: “The best, most important film of this century. If you see one film in cinemas this year it should be Oppenheimer. I’m not a Nolan groupie but this one blows the doors off the hinges.”
Party for Dunkirk at Chateau Marmont; I am flanked by director and his wife-producer
Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the World War II-era Manhattan Project, which was responsible for the creation of the atomic bomb.
Telegraph film critic Robbie Collins wrote on Twitter: “Torn between being all coy and mysterious about Oppenheimer and just coming out and saying it’s a total knockout that split my brain open like a twitchy plutonium nucleus and left me sobbing through the end credits like I can’t even remember what else.”
Total Film’s Matt Maytum tweeted, “Oppenheimer left me stunned: a character study on the grandest scale, with a sublime central performance by Cillian Murphy. An epic historical drama but with a distinctly Nolan sensibility: the tension, structure, sense of scale, startling sound design, remarkable visuals. Wow.”
AP film writer Lindsey Bahr wrote on Twitter: “Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is truly a spectacular achievement, in its truthful, concise adaptation, inventive storytelling and nuanced performances from Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon and the many, many others involved — some just for a scene. It’s hard to talk about something as dense as this in something as silly as a tweet or thread but Oppenheimer really is a serious, philosophical, adult drama that’s as tense and exciting as Dunkirk. And the big moment — THAT MOMENT — is awe inspiring.”
Nolan and his stars detailed the process of making the three-hour film. “There aren’t a lot of people running around on phones,” notes co-star Robert Downey Jr. “There’s no video village. There’s no chair with your name on it. It was focused and Spartan, almost a monastic approach to what we’re doing.”
