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Based on American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Oppenheimer is the latest film from Christopher Nolan. In classic Nolan fashion, we follow the story from different perspectives and timelines. In one, in color, we see glimpses and moments in the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as he is eventually enlisted as director of the Manhattan project overseen by General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon). In the second timeline, in black-and-white and taking place in 1959, we mainly follow Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), a senior member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission who is undergoing cabinet confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate.
While the two timelines might not seem to relate to one another, they do in fact intersect at numerous points, and are basically in conversation with each other throughout the film. Nolan also utilizes the color and lack thereof as a way to indicate the reality we experience. When in color, we are experiencing reality as Oppenheimer experiences it, it’s subjective, throwing you directly in his mind, sometimes to the point of abstraction, the most we’ve ever gotten from Nolan. While the black-and-white segments feature what is about as close to objective reality as the story can get.
Nolan has made a name for himself the way only a handful of directors in mainstream cinema ever had. He’s makes big movies on his terms, and he has a strong commitment to the use of classic and practical filmmaking techniques while pushing technology like IMAX to the absolute limit. But with his previous films, it made sense, they were largely spectacles. Oppenheimer is a gorgeous film, with Earthy color tones, thoughtful compositions, and it definitely features the kind of explosion you might want to see on a big screen. However, it’s an intimate film, one that is almost constantly looking inward. There’s such an emphasis placed on the faces we come across, allowing us to read into them, empathize with them, maybe even see a bit of ourselves in the eyes staring back at us.
That said, this is by no means a dry drama. While it is largely a film made up of guys in suits talking in rooms, the film is incredibly visceral and breathless at times. The classic Nolan technique of intercutting multiple scenes right as it builds to a climax is pretty much how the entire movie is edited. You’re constantly on edge, always sitting with this heavy feeling of doom and gloom just over your shoulder. The burden and haunted feeling that Oppenheimer sits with is something that is thrown onto the audience as well. It’s honestly quite thrilling as a viewing experience.
It is ultimately a character study. One that dives deep into the all the questions you might imagine with a figure as controversial as Oppenheimer, and it manages to explore a lot without necessarily providing a definitive answer to everything. It’s a film that is steeped in shades of grey. It tackles the multitudes of humanity that encompasses the man, from the scientist, to the husband, to the public figure, and all the messiness that comes when those things mingle in ways they shouldn’t have, and the unforeseen consequences that come of it. It even questions how much of Oppenheimer is manipulation, a performance, suggesting the possibility that the martyrdom and self-flagellation is ultimately just another means to an end.
The ethics of the bomb are certainly a big part of the film, but in that regard I think there are some blind spots. There is nothing that explores the Japanese perspective, no talk about the Hispanic homesteaders who were displaced by the army for construction and operations of the Los Alamos Laboratory, and certainly no mention of downwinders who were profoundly effected in the years following the nuclear testing. I’m not saying the film needed to cover all these things, I understand the needs of this story are specific and explore a particular point of view, and that these ideas are probably better off being explored in stories where these perspectives can be centered. Though, the odds of any story about any of these things being given the kind of resources that Nolan has gotten from Universal are depressingly slim.
There’s plenty in the film as is that is worth unpacking, and more that I feel adequately prepared for, certainly not enough to cover all the bases in this one review. I will say that the scene where the “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” line is dropped is…one hell of a choice. And given how much Nolan’s films often feel like reflections of his own anxieties about family, abandonment, and his craft, and often all three at the same time. It’s almost hard not to see the film as a greater metaphor for Nolan unleashing a trend of superhero films that have come to dominate the Hollywood output, and the perhaps misguided guilt Nolan feels about potentially playing a role in how studios have changed the way they do business following the success of his Dark Knight trilogy.
Cillian Murphy has been a standout in Nolan’s filmography for quite some time, and a terrific actor in his own right with an eclectic body of work. This is easily among the very best work he’s ever done, having to build up so many ideas and emotions, sometimes ones that contradict each other, all while being totally non-verbal is quite an astonishing feat. And that impressiveness continues when the film itself feels like a cavalcade of character actors and big names who come in for a scene, kill it, and move on. Though, Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty does stellar work in the moments where she gets to shine. And it’s especially great to see Robert Downey Jr. play something that isn’t Iron Man, and definitely not whatever that Doolittle thing was.
Aside from the stars themselves, the other big character is the craftsmanship itself. This is now the second film with Nolan’s new creative team of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, composer Ludwig Göransson, and editor Jennifer Lame, and while Tenet certainly rules, this is where all of these creative figures have found a rhythm that works beautifully together. It’s a hypnotic, propulsive, and intimately visualized work with everyone working at the top of their game. The sound design is especially noteworthy, even if it still has some of that weird Nolan dialogue being buried effect, but the stuff that captures the interiority of Oppenheimer’s mind is startling and impactful.
Oppenheimer is a heavy sit. But it is also a very engaging and entertaining film in the way only Christopher Nolan has managed to create a brand of blockbuster that tries to balance the visual stimuli as well as the intellectual. While it may be on the surface his most reserved and lowkey and small scale in a while, it’s still as big and cinematic as anything he’s ever done. I might even go as far as to say it might just be his best movie overall, even if it isn’t necessarily the one I’ll revisit over and over again like I would with others, but not to imply that I wouldn’t see this again because I definitely would. I felt so swept away by the storytelling, the way we weave in and out of Oppenheimer’s perspective, and the way the timelines ultimately converge and reveal the true – and utterly bleak – thesis that Nolan has been trying to get across this entire time. It’s an answer worth experiencing on the big screen, that’s for sure. Oddly enough, I watched this in a double feature with Barbie, and while they might seem like totally different experiences, the fact that they both revolve around characters who have to reckon with their place in the world, the way they reconcile with the way society perceives them, and the way they may (or may not) have changed history as we know it…strangely makes for a more appropriate double feature than one would initially expect.
Oppenheimer is now out in theaters.