A three-hour biographical drama shot partially in black-and-white does not usually sound like a recipe for a mid-summer theatrical release, but the formula for blockbuster success changes when director Christopher Nolan is involved. His latest film seeks to meld his penchant for IMAX spectacle and practical action visual effects with a serious, awards bait story of the man who made nuclear war possible and the psychological effect his success had on him. It’s an ambitious undertaking that involves much risk despite Nolan’s considerable talents.
Oppenheimer follows the journey of famed physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as he goes from physics student to professor to enduring World War II figure. While working on quantum theory, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. (Matt Damon) recruits Oppenheimer to lead the work on the top-secret Manhattan Project and develop and design the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition on July 16, 1945, as they witness the world’s first nuclear explosion, forever changing the course of history, but also changing Oppenheimer himself.
Moviegoers have come to associate Christopher Nolan with elaborate, time-bending set pieces with action meticulously designed to be projected onto giant IMAX screens; an association that has made him into one of the few Hollywood directors left that can garner interest in a film based upon his name alone. Oppenheimer is a departure from this Nolan, instead being a film that is a deep character study of a flawed man whose ambition, intellectual curiosity, and interpersonal relationships lead him down a path of haunting regret. This doesn’t mean that viewers will necessarily walk away disappointed by the film as the edge of your seat thrills you expect from the director remain, just focused on outcomes that have to do with bureaucracy and science than explosions and hand-to-hand combat. Watching Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project team work against the clock to beat the Nazis in developing the bomb and against nature in getting the physics to work is just as thrilling at times as watching a semi truck flip or a room rotate as characters attempt to traverse it. I’ve often said that one of the surest measures that a film based on true historical events with a widely known outcome has been well made and executed is whether the filmmaker can imbue the story with enough tension to invest the audience and have them on the edges of their seats despite the fact that they are aware of how the story ends. Nolan achieves this here in his first foray into true events.
Thematically, what Oppenheimer explores in its study of the film’s namesake and main character is the chain reaction that results from a nuclear explosion and, mirroring the science that forms the basis of its subject matter, the flim’s latter half documents the ripple effects of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Oppenheimer’s life. Immediately following the culmination of his life’s work and the Manhattan Project’s multiyear efforts, Oppenheimer is faced with the reality of what he has contributed to. Nolan plays out his crisis of conscience with the touch of a horror director as Oppenheimer makes a celebratory speech before the workers at Los Alamos while the guilt that begins to build within him causes him to lose his senses of hearing and sight while having visions of deteriorating flesh amongst those in the crowd and burned bodies representing those bombed in Japan. It is the beginning of a push toward containing nuclear proliferation that would come to define his life post-war and the first domino to fall in numerous resulting conflicts. Oppenheimer’s persistence on the issue causes strain on numerous relationships he has with fellow Manhattan Project alumni and with former employers such as Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), which forms the basis of the film’s legal procedural final third act. It is at this point where the film really begins to pick up and transition from interesting character study and historical documentation of the development of the atom bomb into a compelling legal drama about a man who’s struggling with his conscience and how the powers that be react to his morality. Nolan does well in using Oppenheimer and his work to prove his quantum physics theories correct through the development of a super superweapon as a cautionary tale of the risks of hubris and ambition and how human aspiration can lead people down paths that they soon come to regret but are unable to repave over. The focus on Oppenheimer’s relationships made complicated by communist politics, how they intersected with his citizenship and ethnic and religious identity as written by Nolan superbly lay out the intricacies of human relationships and how the tug and pull between loyalty and love can have downstream effects on our lives. Nolan is oft criticized for having trouble with writing and directing human emotion and relationships, but how their complications for our lives are depicted here is one of the most genuine looks into how relationships complicate our lives in myriad ways.
As is to be expected at this point from Christopher Nolan in the director’s chair, Oppenheimer displays a mastery of technical filmmaking from its cinematography to its editing to its score. As mentioned earlier in the review, the film is not an action packed IMAX film with the most action confined to the first test detonation of the bomb (a technical, practical VFX marvel in its own right), but Nolan’s use of intimate framing to capture Oppenheimer’s emotions, particularly during the scenes at his clearance hearing and the aforementioned celebratory scene at Los Alamos use visuals to capture and convey emotion powerfully. The film’s score composed by Ludwig Göransson is pulsating and grand, complimenting the film’s thrilling and tense moments perfectly. Cillian Murphy’s turn as Robert Oppenheimer is stirring with the actor perfectly depicting the myriad of emotions involved in the aftermath of creating the potential for such destruction. Robert Downey Jr. returns to serious acting with a quality turn as Lewis Strauss deftly portraying both versions of the character that differ based on the vantage point shown onscreen. This is a film that contains all the technical elements of a great film combined with story and thematic elements that will make viewers think. All of this combines for one of Christopher Nolan’s best entries.
Image: Universal Pictures
