Director: Christopher Nolan
Run Time: 3 hours
Oppenheimer, inspired by the book American Prometheus, which Robert Pattinson gifted to director Nolan, recounts J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) life, beginning with his school years, moving through the dropping of the atom bomb, and ending with his security hearing. Even as a young adult, physics and the inner workings of the world fascinate, so much so that he’s distracted from life in front of him, other sciences, socialization, and relationships.
While in school, he meets Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz) who is already familiar with his work. This leads to a meeting with Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer), and eventual recruitment by Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) for Harvard. Upon accepting the job, and with few students signing up for his classes, he befriends Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett) and is eventually recruited again, only this time by the government.
General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) wants Oppenheimer to catch America up in the arms race. This leads to the development, thanks to ingenuity, of The Manhattan Project. The science doesn’t quite exist and much of what they’re doing is an experiment, but amid Communism scares, WWII, and scandal, the project leaders and scientists make the deadline for the test. Few of them are prepared for the quickness with which the American government takes the project away. Oppenheimer is stunned and tortured because of the devastation and guilt, but President Truman (Gary Oldman) takes the blame.
The president does not take Oppenheimer’s advice that the country re-examine America’s use of the bomb though. It’s too late. J. Robert Oppenehimer’s late life leads to a review of his security clearance which is almost concurrent with one of his original supporters and recruiters, Senator Strauss, seeking to gain approval for his nomination as Secretary of Commerce.
The beauty of that summary doesn’t lie in the fact that the summary is historical and obviously pushes back against spoilers. The beauty is how that traditional timeline is stretched and deviated by Nolan in a way that only he can. Nolan is a master of adding tension where there is very little, while deflating strenuous moments and creating an environment that is almost unbearable. Oppenheimer ebbs between tension and stress, manipulating time in a way reminiscent of Dunkirk, which I often label as Nolan’s perfect work. Weeks after the release of Nolan’s latest and I’m not sure about my rankings anymore.
Nolan’s fictional work is what he’s often known for but the work he’s doing by reimagining history might be what cements his career. One of the key elements of the film is sound and how it’s withheld and overdone. The audience won’t hear explosions when they expect them, yet we do experience an abundance of cacophony, including cheering, applause, and mechanization. Oppenheimer isn’t all sound either. It’s visually stunning and delicate, light when possible and dark when necessary.
One of the few criticisms of the film, which continues a necessary discussion that’s never finished, is the portrayal of women and their overall absence. Women were disproportionately represented in the field of science during the time of The Manhattan Project. 3.8% of women held a college degree at the time, so their presence on location wasn’t expected, yet some audience members, myself included, couldn’t get past how Oppenheimer interacted with women, regardless of whether the interactions were realistic or not.
His friend and hidden partner Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) never meets his wife Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt), though they have one scene together; the female students, secretaries, and scientists don’t interact with one another either. The film overtly fails the adopted Bechdel test, continually noted as a joke, yet the joke still compels people to inquire if a film sidelines an entire gender. The test highlights moments audiences may casually overlook, but maybe this movie doesn’t really need to pass it anyway.
Oppenheimer was deemed a womanizer in the movie and the lack of female characters interacting is a reflection of that. There are two additional ideas that might undercut that claim though: in general, Nolan doesn’t typically write about female characters—there’s a debate about representation with Murphy (Jessica Chastain) and Brand (Anne Hatheway) in Interstellar—and additionally the main women in the film fall into the mistress and wife/mother category a little too easy. This may underscore Oppenheimer’s use of them in this way, but nevertheless, I did find it unfortunate to see the reduction. Maybe this comes back to the idea and claim long before the film’s debut that we don’t need more stories about powerful, small, white men, even though the interpretation of their stature by the end is remarkable.
What impresses me most about Oppenheimer is Nolan’s trajectory. Many fans began following his career after his work on Batman, moving backwards to catch some of his more grounded work like Memento. Though I personally haven’t seen The Following yet, I appreciate that, similar to a poet, Nolan is often telling the same story repeatedly just with refined techniques. He’s always curious about humanity and what makes a person human. It’s the through-line on all of his work, whether we’re watching Bruce Wayne recover from trauma by giving up his humanity or soldiers on the shore of Dunkirk mustering the last ounces. Nolan is one of the few directors whose themes barely change while the outward dressing is always shifting.
The techniques are similar as well, but he harnesses them more and more over time. Everyone entered Oppenheimer curious how Nolan would create a bomb with practical effects, no CGI, and minimal VFX work. He is a master and only the best can do what he does, the withholding of what audiences want or expect, the delayed gratification, and reassembly later on in a schema we weren’t expecting. Developing the atom bomb was a heinous act. It’s one of hundreds of low moments for mankind. But what I appreciate about everyone involved is that the film refuses to create winners. Every character is so small by the close of the 3-hour film. Whether they admit it or not, they are changed. J. Robert Oppenheimer is the smallest of anyone by film’s end. Still a man, scientist, and great mind, but lesser, and Nolan makes that undeniable.
It’s been several weeks and I’d still rank this a 5 out of 5. If you were intimidated by Barbenheimer or the sold-out, 24/7 IMAX seats, make sure to catch this before it leaves theaters.
