Summary
Christopher Nolan delivers one of his most straightforward stories to date, but loses none of that explosive presence in the telling.
Christopher Nolan’s epic biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb”, arrives with a moment of quiet contemplation. It’s immediately followed by a literally explosive assault on the senses, coupled with textual reference to Prometheus. In these few moments, Nolan signals how he intends to go on, framing a life like the series of chain reactions that haunt its subject.
Given the vein of quantum mechanics that runs through both OPPENHEIMER the movie and the man, it makes sense that writer/director Nolan tells this story in a nonlinear fashion. As such, we do not start at the beginning, as Nolan takes us back and forth between a private ‘trial’ of Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), his complicated and hostile relationship with Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), and the development of the first atomic bomb.
If it already sounds mildly obfuscating, it’s because it is – and quite deliberately so. After all, it’s Nolan’s brand at this point. On one hand, there’s a straight line from Oppenheimer’s early days – where he is “troubled by visions of a hidden universe” – through to the establishment of his physics career, the Manhattan Project, the development of the bomb, and the furor over his connections to communism after the War.
Almost like a series of jump scares, Oppenheimer’s glimpses of that hidden universe make animalistic leaps at the audience. These are moments that blast us with the sound and fury of the inevitable mushroom cloud. It’s a testament to the practical and in-camera work of visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson (who won the Academy Award for his work with Nolan on Tenet) — not to mention the thunderous sound design — that you can virtually feel the heat emanating from the screen.
This all culminates in the first test detonation in New Mexico. Following a literal ticking time bomb motif, Ludwig Göransson’s enveloping score mixes with the unnerving twitch of a Geiger counter as the fateful moments approach. The cacophony of noise goes chillingly silent during the Vishnu moment: as Oppenheimer becomes Death, destroyer of worlds, there is an odd calm. The tangible blast that follows is both literal and political.
Nolan doesn’t conveniently end his film there. After all, the audience knows how this all turns out for the nuclear arms race. Nolan traces Oppenheimer’s attempts to halt the development of the H-Bomb and nuclear proliferation, a public stance that saw him pilloried as a communist. For the more chronological recent sequences, Nolan and regular cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema take a literal black and white approach, one that’s almost documentary in nature. This isn’t always as dramatically successful as the first two thirds of this gargantuan story, but it’s never anything less than fascinating.
Murphy doesn’t so much play Oppenheimer as embody him. When he dons the familiar hat and pipe, it’s as much a ritualistic act of putting on a costume as one of Nolan’s superheroes. Given that we are constantly reminded of Oppenheimer’s genius, including his relationship with Einstein (Tom Conti), both of his main antagonists (and sort of collaborators) are bureaucrats. During the war, it’s Army man Leslie Groves, played by Matt Damon in his most confident performance in some time, that pushes at Oppenheimer from a place of respect. Strauss is his antithesis, taking any minor slight as a declaration of war.
The two women depicted in this environment – Oppenheimer’s lover Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and his wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) – fare less successfully. Both have stories that feel biopic worthy in their own right, although at various points both feel like supporting objects in Nolan’s hands. Only Blunt really has a strong agency in the final moments of the trial, and is perhaps the one voice in the narrative that can confidently tell the lead to pull himself together.
OPPENHEIMER isn’t a film you watch but one you experience. It may not all work, with those leaps and bounds backwards and forwards through time potentially requiring a few watches to get one’s head around, but that scarcely matters. As with Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project, Nolan has built his opus in the middle of the cinematic desert and it’s up to us to take it from there. Just like its subject, it may take us years to fully appreciate the impact of its detonation.
2023 | USA/UK | DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan | WRITERS: Christopher Nolan | CAST: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures | RUNNING TIME: 180 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 20 July 2023 (AUS), 21 July 2023 (US/UK)
