Film Review: Oppenheimer

To paraphrase Niels Bohr (played by Kenneth Branagh) in Christopher Nolan’s film, Oppenheimer, “You’re like Prometheus. When you create the bomb, you’re not just creating a new weapon, you’re creating a new world.” Indeed, J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) stood on the precipice of a world-creating, and by turns, potentially world-destroying, device, and helped through the creation and overseeing of the Manhattan Project, to usher the atomic age into existence. Our world has not been the same since, to Bohr’s point.

Nolan has been getting me out to the movie theater on opening weekend (if not at times, early Thursday evening screenings) since 2008’s The Dark Knight. As far as I’m concerned, Nolan has never missed with a film of his, and Oppenheimer is no different. In fact, I would argue that Oppenheimer is his best film since The Dark Knight, and overall, his second best film behind that one. A true mark of a great film is to not feel its runtime, and especially for a 3-hour film, I did not feel Oppenheimer’s runtime in the least. That’s pretty remarkable an achievement when you consider the film, which is interspersed with scenes shot in black and white, often featuring Lewis Strauss’s bid for a cabinet position post-WWII (played by Robert Downey Jr.), and is largely a nerdy film of men (and occasionally Kitty Oppenheimer (played by the always powerful Emily Blunt) and Jean Tatlock (played by a favorite of mine, Florence Pugh)) talking about science, power, and bureaucracy. Power not just as a result of the science (the bomb), but also the power to use the bomb, and the power to decide who even has control within government, as the film is juxtaposed with the 1950s Red Scare about communist infiltrators in United States government, including that Oppenheimer himself is a spy for the Soviet Union.

The 3-hour film runs at a fast clip not just because the dialogue is utterly enthralling from Nolan, who wrote the script, too, and because of the quick editing from Jennifer Lame, but also because Ludwig Göransson’s score is engrossing in its own regard and imbues the potent dialogue with an extra bit of … danger. After all, these men are talking about creating a weapon that, theoretically, could destroy the world. That is, they don’t know with 100 percent certainty that when they detonate the bomb in a practice run known as the Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico, that doing so won’t start an unceasing chain reaction that ends the world. One scientist, telling Oppenheimer this, actually delighted that the mathematical formulations demonstrated the chances of that occurring to be “near zero.” Not zero, but “near zero.” And moreover, these scientists, Oppenheimer included, knew they were creating the bomb, but it would be policymakers (primarily, the president) deciding if, when, and where to use it, with the the not-so-subtle insinuation that creating it is tantamount to using it, because once they created the bomb, of course the policymakers were going to want to use it. By use it, that is to use it on men, women, and children of another country. For the record, even after watching Oppenheimer, I’m still against the use of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII.

Oppenheimer, I think as portrayed in the film, believed the nuclear bomb would be the end-all-be-all the way, for example, Ozymandias believed aliens would be in Watchmen: the arrival of the nuke would make war virtually obsolete, and especially with it setting off a nuclear arms race, mutually assured destruction was all but guaranteed. Thus, a peace … in a way, thanks to the specter of human annihilation.

And like how we think of most “great men of history,” Oppenheimer was flawed, primarily in that he was a womanizer and believed that his genius — and what that genius meant to the world, particularly the U.S. side of WWII, and even more particularly, to Oppenheimer as a Jew up against the Nazis, who were perpetrating the Holocaust and also racing to build the bomb — compensated for his flaws, or “allowed” for his flaws to co-exist with his genius. He has an affair with Pugh’s character, who even though she isn’t in the film much, she eats up her scenes. While in bed, she also gets him to read his famous line drawn from Hinduism and Vishnu, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” She dies by suicide, which initially derails Oppenheimer until Kitty gives him a tough talking to (this is why I love Blunt!).

When the Trinity test happens, phew, that is probably the singular greatest achievement ever put to film in Nolan’s career, both in direction and writing, and a remarkable feat as well from cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. The tension in the build up was remarkable — I kept thinking in my head, I can’t believe these madmen are about to do this! — but I think what really sold the scene was that when the explosion occurs, it is transfixing and beautiful in the worst way, like the way I get transfixed by a bonfire’s fire dance, but on a whole other level, and it is initially completely silent … until the sound wave finally comes and it’s overwhelming with its awesome power. Nature, as bolstered by human beings, is a sight and sound to behold.

Somehow, just as captivating as those moments is RDJ’s Strauss orchestrating, and ultimately succeeding and failing in different ways, to tarnish the reputation of Oppenheimer as a Soviet spy who helped them build their own bomb (and a bigger one at that). Strauss succeeded because Oppenheimer’s security clearance was revoked, but he also failed, because he didn’t earn the necessary votes to be confirmed to his cabinet position (thanks, in part, to a young JFK). I didn’t even realize Strauss was RDJ at first. Sure, the black and white, and RDJ looking considerably older than his Marvel self helps, but his acting sold those black and white scenes. I couldn’t look away from the screen whenever RDJ was on. Arguably, it’s the best role and performance under Nolan’s direction since Heath Ledger as the Joker. Seriously.

That’s not to take anything away from Cillian Murphy, mind you. I think he absolutely should be up for Oscar contention for Best Actor. He completely lost himself in the best way in this role, juxtaposing the giddy arrogance of a young genius scientist with the gray-haired Trinity-experiencing scientist trying to argue for a cessation in the arms race. Murphy has a very distinctive look himself, mostly his eyes, and I came to see him only as Oppenheimer, and with those eyes, him seeing what he’d wrought as the “destroyer of worlds.”

I loved this movie, as I’m sure I’ve shown at this point. Again, I can’t get over that a 3-hour movie about Oppenheimer was as captivating as it was, between the music, the dialogue, the Trinity test, and the weighty moral themes, I could have watched another two hours easily. I don’t know how long the film went after the Trinity test occurred, but the post-Trinity test plot is largely a question of whether Oppenheimer will get to keep his security clearance or not, and it’s completely captivating! The film didn’t drop off at all, and then it built and built to a moment I forgot I wanted to know the answer to: What Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (played by Tom Conti) said to each other years previously at Princeton. Oppenheimer said the worry was that by setting of a nuclear weapon, they would start a chain reaction that would end the world, and Oppenheimer said, he still felt like they did. I’m still wrestling with that line, but the way the film hit its apex with the delivery of Oppenheimer’s revelation and insight there, gives me goosebumps even recounting it to you.

Go see Oppenheimer. I think it’s imperative for human beings to think more about the existence of nuclear weapons, their care, their use (previously, presently, and in the future), and what it means for humans to possess such awesome power. But also, it’s just a darn great film, and it’s always a thrill to watch a great film on IMAX (yes, see it in IMAX!).