Oppenheimer: cult even before being played

Translated by Angela Tagliafierro

There are a number of films which become so meaningful in the tastes and the conversations of the viewers in the years, to be considered as cult. They become more than just films: they turn into a cultural and social phenomenon able to affect the life and the tendencies of the people.

What makes a film a cult? It is not an easy task to make a table of the values, and it is strictly linked to a specific period. This makes this task quite impossible. Oppenheimer is a unique and blatant example of it.

The factors contributing to this phenomenon are multiple. To avoid confusion, I will start from the essential elements to get to the less evident: you know that the cinema machine needs event the tiniest element to work.

Firstly, the plot, which means the script and the scenes, apparently a linear process, but more complex than it seems. You must consider that the director and screenwriter are two different roles, even though sometimes they may correspond. For this reason, not everyone is able to write a script, nor everyone can translate the writing into pictures.

Truly reconstructing the life of a man who played such a decisive role in history during the Second World War as J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by a masterful Cillian Murphy. It is an extremely complex task, even if one has many technical means at one's disposal. Christopher Nolan, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin were able to describe the scientist's psyche in an extremely even-handed manner, highlighting the many responsibilities he had to face and the consequences the world still suffers today: for example, the fear of an imminent nuclear war.

But the film does not deal only with the character of Oppenheimer: it is Lewis Strauss, for whose interpretation Robert Downey Jr. finally obtained the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; it is Kitty Oppenheimer, such a devoted wife and so skilled in handle such a complicated man, played by Emily Blunt. And many other high-level actors punctuate the incredible cast at the disposal of the British director: Matt Damon plays Leslie Groves, the US brigadier general who worked closely with the scientist on the operation, directing the military side; Florence Pugh, playing Jean Tatlock, allows us to discover the fragile and more human side of the inventor of the most devastating weapon in history.

Briefly, we added the second piece for a film to become a cult: the cast, those who tell the story putting themselves in the shoes of those who experienced it first-hand. In addition to the skill of each person, the director, in this case Christopher Nolan, plays the fundamental role of coordinating and directing the entire cinematographic process. A master who has entered by right into the Olympus of directors alongside all the greats. A master who after a 25-year career has given us films of the calibre of The Dark Knight Trilogy, Following, Memento, Insomnia, Inception and all the other feature films for forced binge-watching. I would say that nothing more needs to be said.

Thirdly, the image, the costumes, the make-up, the hairstyling, the colour, the lighting, the photography, the composition, the choices of black and white and colour, everything in sight. Even thinking about Oppenheimer allows us to recreate those precise images in our minds. This is surely one of the goals that audiovisuals try to pursue: to create their own memory in the common imagination. The sound, disassociating, 'out of time', a construction that our ear would never expect to receive, the bomb explodes but the adjacent particles that should vibrate along with it, are even more frightened than we are, and they freeze. They do not vibrate, they have to realise the situation and then boom, everything explodes, everything becomes reality and even Oppenheimer realises this.

The Zone of Interest, as I have already described in other articles, makes masterful use of sound. On second thought, Oppenheimer certainly is a challenge for it, sticking its fingernails to everyone's temples, leaving us holding our eyes open and scaring our ears afterwards.

Much of the credit for the film's planetary success goes to communication and the Barbienheimer phenomenon: the release of the two films on the same day in the USA (in Italy, in fact, they will be shown in cinemas about a month apart) creates a healthy competition and the siding of the public with one or the other side.

Unfortunately for Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the main character of this article has not one but seventy more gears in many respects: the Oscar ceremony gives us some nice moments related to this theme in which Ken and Kitty, as Emily Blunt says, argue lovingly. All these elements, except for the last one, emerge during the viewing of the film, when the film flows through the camera and comes to life on the screen. However, it is the last element that climbs the rankings in importance. Journalists and editors of newspapers have admitted to spending sleepless nights, determined not to make a mistake in choosing the cover: Oppenheimer or Barbie? This is why the two films, more the former than the latter, are to be considered cult films even before their release, an unprecedented phenomenon.

The Academy of Motion Picture, which I have nothing to reproach this year, awards the story of the scientist who changed the world seven times, as it did for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once last year:

- Best Picture to Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas and Charles Roven

- Best Director to Christopher Nolan

- Best Actor to Cillian Murphy

- Best Supporting Actor to Robert Downey Jr.

- Best Editing to Jennifer Lame

- Best Cinematography to Hoyte van Hoytema

- Best Original Score to Ludwig Göransson

Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and all the others return to the theatres for a while longer, whether you have already seen it or not: fill the theatres because this really is Cinema.

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