Overuse of background music in Oppenheimer

[u/CoverZealousideal876]

Just finished watching Oppenheimer and while I generally liked it (at least at first), what really started to bother me as the movie progressed was the seemingly never-ending background music. At first I thought "cool, some visionary shit happening and epic music" but it just kept going on and on and on... Then I started paying more attention to it, which just took me out of it and kind of destroyed the movie for me.

Close to every single scene has background music - I think if there's 20 minutes of the movie's total 3 hours running time without any that would already be much. It was so excessive that near the end I started longing for a moment where I could just hear people talking without annoying noise lingering in the background. The right music at the right time can elevate a scene and even an entire movie and make it so much greater, but when it's there literally all the time I find it self-defeating. Am I the only one that was bothered by this?

[u/superslider16]

I think it does affect some scenes - in particular I think it undercuts Damon’s delivery of the line about how it’s the most important project in the history of the world, as the music and the dialogue are about at the same level in the mix at that point.