Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s epic ode to Robert J Oppenheimer, the “father of the bomb” who masterminded the development of the first atomic bomb in the 1940s and later went sour on the US government’s use of nuclear power just before the US government went sour on him.
Oppenheimer’s is a fascinating story to tell. Emblematic of the change in the perception of nuclear power from scientific miracle to bringer of armageddon, he fell foul of the McCarthyite anti-Communist atmosphere after the Second World War.
The film delivers the proof that Nolan is now as at home making movies about historical events (alongside Dunkirk) as he is in the realm of the high concept (Memento, Interstellar) and the superhero movie (The Dark Knight, Man of Steel). He can do drama as well as thrills and wows.
Factually, Oppenheimer follows American Prometheus, the 2005 biography by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin. Prometheus, an intertitle right at the beginning of the three-hour marathon reminds us, was the ancient Greek trickster who stole fire from the gods and was punished by being tortured for ever.
He may switch genres but Nolan’s familiar time-hopping remains as he tells piecemeal the story about a trickster – an arrogant, womanising, funny, networking genius – on a grand journey from Europe’s finest academic institutions and laboratories back to his native America, where the American establishment puts aside its qualms about Oppenheimer’s leftist past and puts him in charge of the Manhattan project at Los Alamos. An entire town built from the ground up specifically to house scientists, technologists and their families, Los Alamos has one aim: invent a nuclear bomb before the Nazis.
All this seen from the future, where Oppenheimer’s security clearance is being questioned and he’s being grilled by a government committee. The Prometheus-tortured angle.
For a good chunk of its running time Oppenheimer resembles a gigantic extended trailer. Pithy explication sums up action, fetching images are just so, significant looks are shared. But eventually, like a jigsaw revealing itself when enough pieces are in place, it coheres. Two key performances snap its bits together. As the tortured, arrogant, driven individual dying on the hill of his own personal integrity, Cillian Murphy puts in the sort of performance the Academy likes. He’s hotly Oscar tipped. Robert Downey Jr, almost unrecognisable with grey hair slicked back, plays Lewis Strauss, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission and Capitol Hill operator who give Oppenheimer a big break and eventually becomes his nemesis.
Characters and actors cluster around these two like electrons around a nucleus. The big names of 20th century physics – Einstein, Fuchs, Heisenberg, Bohr and Fermi. And here is Matt Damon as General Groves, the military side of the Los Alamos Project and Oppenheimer’s enabler. Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife (who only comes into her own at the end). Florence Pugh as his lover. Josh Hartnett, Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, Benny Safdie, Alden Ehrenreich, Tom Conti, Dane DeHaan – the list goes on. In a nano-role Casey Affleck is particularly effective as a gimlet-eyed nasty piece of work investigating Oppenheimer’s lab for security leaks. Jason Clarke also stands out as one of Oppenheimer’s interrogators when his security clearance is being questioned. He’s particularly good as a persistent senator with an axe to grind.
Nolan always shoots his movies on film and his DP, Hoyte Van Hoytema, a master of the lush visual (see Ad Astra, Spectre, Her), shot this for Imax, so it’s pin sharp as well as tasty. For the black-and-white sequences he used film similar to the Kodak Super-XX many photojournalists used during the Second World War, hence that authentic archive look.
Nolan’s screenplay makes the point that the Germans had a head start on the atom bomb but the Americans beat them to it because they embraced diversity and didn’t have a racial bias against Jewish scientists – a riposte to the go woke, go broke crowd. But he leavens that with his portrait of Oppenheimer, a weak man in many ways, whose hand-wringing over what he’d helped create has a distinct libtard tang.
For all the timeline-juggling it’s 180 minutes of easy viewing. Nolan’s films may duck about but he’s more about opening up and explaining rather than complicating. No actual understanding of theoretical physics required in other words. Sit back and admire the view.
Oppenheimer – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
