Film Review - Oppenheimer
Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Its subject notwithstanding, the notion of a Christopher Nolan biopic was always going to raise eyebrows. The famed director is undeniably a central figure in contemporary cinema discourse, but his reputation was forged by the likes of the Dark Knight trilogy and Interstellar: high-concept blockbusters with little of our own world recognisable. In his new film Oppenheimer, the director has turned his eye to one of the most consequential events in the development of the world we live in: the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the Manhattan Project’s facility in Los Alamos in the creation of the first atomic bomb. With his regular player Cillian Murphy giving a leave-everything-on-the-field performance in the title role, Nolan has spent hundreds of millions of dollars of Universal Pictures’ money to create a film that only he could have made.
Oppenheimer is a character study certainly, but also a process movie, a political drama structured around hearings, a 70mm-IMAX-format showcase, a dialogue-driven ensemble film, and a foray into some of the key questions of the last hundred-odd years of human history. Some of those things are Nolan mainstays, some are decidedly not. It’s a fascinating, fascinating film, with many competing masters to serve, and the overall impression it leaves is, despite wonky elements, staggering.
Firstly, for a biopic, we get relatively little insight into Oppenheimer’s mind. The closest the film comes are regular, visceral cutaways to roiling, otherworldly bursts of energy and fire – rings of light, crackling & sparking – his imagination of the atomic world inside our own, and its potential to be harnessed for unimaginable power. These sequences are pretty breathtaking, an ingenious use of the overwhelming IMAX format to depict not a landscape or an action sequence, but a particular human psyche.
Nailing down what kind of historical biopic this is, then, becomes tricky. An easy comparison to make might be to HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl, with its historical focus (nuclear history specifically!), engrossing depiction of administrative bureaucracy, and broad array of male character actors content to deliver committed one-or-two scene performances. Like Chernobyl, Oppenheimer sees a bleak world of unheeded scientific progress, with tormented men doomed to agonise over the morality of their work. It’s captivating just watching this gargantuan cast all get their moment: Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, Gary Oldman, Matthew Modine, Rami Malek, Jack Quaid… one sign that Nolan is still the safe-choice director, though, is who he casts as the antagonists. Oppenheimer’s goals are threatened by characters played by Dane DeHaan, Jason Clarke, and David Dastmalchian – without a doubt the three most obvious guesses one might make for who looks like a villain among the cast. For the size and, ahem, firepower of this cast, you can’t help but sigh at Christopher Nolan’s preference for conventionality. He’s a creature of habit.
That’s to say, Oppenheimer is certainly also fascinating as an entry into Nolan’s filmography. Many of the director’s obsessions are present here: mechanics and procedure, non-linear chronology, and moral quandaries; and many of the cast here are actors he’s used before. But this is a Christopher Nolan film where much of the drama comes from impassioned discussions of union membership, or the potential outcome of a congressional hearing. Seeing Nolan’s quintessential thrilling use of editing, sound, and music to ramp up a crescendo of momentum over not action sequences but dialogue feels like a rare treat.
Indeed, the whole three-hour film moves incredibly quickly, thanks to Nolan’s propulsive sensibility and idiosyncratic structure. Famously fond of narrative conceits that play with time, here the director employs two distinct ‘timelines’: one in colour, following the subjective point-of-view of J. Robert Oppenheimer; and another in black and white, which is more objective, later in the story, and tied to the experiences of Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss (a simmering, jumpy, and truly excellent Robert Downey Jr.).
It's the cross-cutting between these timelines that give the film its sense of pace. Nolan is exceptionally good at foregrounding, through a concept or a piece of imagery or an underlying theme, something that we’re about to see in another timeline: whenever we make these abrasive jumps into a different temporality, something narratively compelling is dangled right in front of us and remains at the fore of our mind as we get our bearings again. It’s a classic Nolan trick, but it makes for a three-hour film that passes in a thrilling rush.
There is also, at a very base level, undeniable appeal to a movie about incredibly intelligent characters having fluent, spirited conversations about subjects of untold complexity. Nolan has always had a virtuosic command of scale and sound, but his bombastic style applied to a drama biopic like this is an experience like nothing else in theatres. The dialogue itself is some of the best in his career. Taken in totality, this is huge, grinding, muscular cinema, but it’s as easy to watch as the best courtroom dramas, and it has genuine rhetorical intent.
For example, Oppenheimer himself will of course always be remembered as a scientist, but the film is actually a pretty meticulous, thoughtful depiction of the political necessities of being a leader. The competing interests are numerous: of the scientists living and working in Los Alamos, the U.S. military apparatus and its strict “compartmentalisation” for security, the greater ethical concerns, the pursuit of scientific progress… to co-exist, all require sacrifices and concessions in favour of each other. Oppenheimer’s role as a figurehead for the Project means the decisions fall on him, and it’s the character’s negotiation between these interests that distinguishes this film from Nolan’s other work. This is a man who walked a tightrope and still pulled off one of humanity’s greatest achievements, and yet we watch years later as he is punished all the same.
As seen here, Oppenheimer – who was Jewish – is less a Communist than just a rigid Anti-Fascist (albeit one who has read all of Das Kapital… a “turgid thing”), but that doesn’t stop him being subjected to a reputation-battering hearing in 1954, nominally for the renewal of his security clearance. It proves to be a pretty egregious and personally-motivated witch hunt, and its part in the film is crucial, marking a turn toward questions of meaning and legacy after the thrilling centrepiece Trinity Test (the first detonation of an atomic weapon in history) sequence upon which much of the film hinges.
That what-have-I-wrought legacy, and the cinematic ways we see it weighing on Oppenheimer (far better enjoyed in the theatre than spoiled here), are some of places in which the film connects best. There’s genuinely such tragedy in the idea of a well-intentioned man of science convincing himself to the point of delusion that his horrifying creation could be a force for good. Nolan is so good at captivating you with the process of assembling the team and building the bomb – à la Inception or something – that when the reckoning comes, it’s harrowing. To wit, the acclaimed 2005 book upon which the film is based is called American Prometheus, and the mythical allegory being made there is one the film only reinforces.
It’s perhaps Nolan’s affection for mythical posturing that leads to another bewildering moment in the film, as Oppenheimer’s famous “I am become death” quote from the Bhagavad Gita first appears in the most eye-roll-inducing moment possible. In addition, despite a memorable triumphant moment for Emily Blunt’s character – Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty – a true-to-form Nolan never seems all that interested in the women whose lives intersected with his subject. His infamous limitations as a storyteller are hardly invalidated here, it’s a Nolan film in all that that has come to mean.
Yet, if it wasn’t for Nolan and the overwhelming intensity of his directorial style, it would be much more difficult for the film to make the intuitive leap from all these men talking in rooms, to the result of those conversations being the technology that may well doom the human race. In that way, Oppenheimer is a freakishly good match for Christopher Nolan, and it may well be his best work.
Oppenheimer is screening from Thursday 20th July. For tickets and more info, click here.