It won all the awards and was named Best Film of last year. It is finally released this week in streaming and on television in France.
It's not often that a film achieves such consensus between critical reviews, box office numbers, and award ceremonies. This feature film, although a true cinema challenge, achieved the feat of combining the three and stood out as one of the essential films of the year 2023, winning several statuettes for Best Film.
The release of Oppenheimer on July 19, 2023 had the effect of a tidal wave. And for good reason: released on the same day as Barbie, another cinematic event in a completely different genre, the Christopher Nolan drama was involved in one of those competitions that are as fierce as they are artificial that newspapers are fond of. A competition from which he seems to have emerged victorious if we rely on the winners of the last Oscar ceremony. Oppenheimer recounts in a non-linear and fragmented manner several key sequences in the life of Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, from his rise to the creation of the nuclear weapon, including his hearing to maintain his security clearance in 1954.
Oppenheimer has achieved critical success, scoring 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, 89/100 on Metacritic, and 3.5/5 on Allociné. The seduced media hail "a great American spectacle" taken "towards singular and experimental territories, between intimate portrait and political fresco" (Cinémateaser), or "a sensory work of haunting richness and breathtaking beauty" (Ecran Large). If some are more measured, like Libération or Le Figaro, it is undeniable that Christopher Nolan's film is a real success: to date, it has collected $957.6 million worldwide, accumulating more than of 4.4 million admissions at the box office. A very nice success, which only the phenomenal Barbie has managed to overshadow. It still remains one of Christopher Nolan's best popular successes, ahead of Interstellar or Inception.
But if Oppenheimer isn't the box office winner of 2023, he certainly is the award show winner. The biopic won seven Oscars: Best Picture, Best Direction (Christopher Nolan's first), Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr, Best Cinematography, Best editing and Best Film Music. He also won 5 Golden Globes and seven BAFTAs.
After its release in cinemas and its posting online on purchase and rental platforms, Oppenheimer is finally broadcast on television in France. It is this Friday, March 22, on the encrypted channel Canal , that it will be possible to discover Christopher Nolan’s film. It will be put online immediately on the subscription streaming platform MyCanal.
