Who was J. Robert Oppenheimer? According to the history books he was either a saviour or a devil, and of course with his involvement in the development of the Atomic bomb he was certainly the embodiment of his famous quote lifted from the Bhagavad-Gita “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer posits Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as both and symbol and a man, but despite its expansive run-time never gives a clear answer to who he was. He remains enigmatic, a ‘sphynx’ as one character terms him. Genius, dilletante, womaniser, madman, egomaniac, innovator – all these adjectives are used to describe him, and all are correct, yet even when Nolan puts laser focus on the man and the myth, we are still left wondering.
Perhaps we are left wondering because Nolan is actually not as interested in telling the audience about Oppenheimer as he is with crafting a political thriller and a treatise on what mutually assured destruction looks like. Oppenheimer was playing a zero-sum game from the moment he was recruited as head scientist for the Manhattan project, a fact that existed in the periphery of his understanding but never quite hit home until he finally delivered the bomb Truman was intent on using despite the war being ostensibly over.
The film moves between timelines in Oppenheimer’s life. The young student who went to study in England who annoyed his professor Patrick Blackett (James D’Arcy) and impressed Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh). The same young student would attempt to poison Blackett, give lectures in Dutch – a language he learned in weeks, shake the hand of Werner Heisenberg and develop a lifelong friendship with fellow Jewish physicist Isidor Rabi (an excellent David Krumholtz) all before returning to Berkeley to set up the first quantum physics curriculum. Intercut with Oppenheimer’s ostensibly linear story (Nolan rarely uses linear even when attempting linear) is his troubled relationship with Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) the commissioner of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and the closed “trial” of Oppenheimer in 1954 in which he tried to keep his revoked Q clearance that had been taken from him under suspicion of communist activities during the McCarthy period. Nolan immerses the viewer in perspective by having Oppenheimer’s life in colour and Strauss’ machinations in black and white, including his attempt to enter cabinet as a congressman.
Nolan is a technical wizard, one with a genius touch with his choices of cinematographers (the inimitable Hoyte Van Hoytema once again pairing with Nolan), production designers (Ruth De Jong), editors (Jennifer Lame) and composers (Ludwig Göransson who scored Tenet). He is also a capable script writer, yet somewhere in all this mastery is a small hollow. Oppenheimer is intensely humanistic, melancholy, enraged but not quite engaged. Dig through the film and cut some of the bloat and there is an astonishing piece of cinema.
The bloat caveat aside, Nolan has created as masterpiece. Intelligent and insightful. The performances he elicits from Murphy, Downey Jr., and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer are marvellous. Supporting cast such as Matt Damon as Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves who brought Oppenheimer on to the Manhattan project, Benny Safdie as rival scientist Edward Teller, Josh Hartnett as the apolitical engineering scientist Ernest Lawrence, and Jason Clarke as the ‘prosecutor’ Roger Robb all give committed and elevated performances. Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer’s doomed erstwhile lover Jean Tatlock is perhaps least served by the film.
Oppenheimer’s story is too dense to recount in a simple review, so the key points of interest include his relationship with his unfulfilled and domestically resentful wife, Kitty (who was a scientist in her own right) whose affiliations with the communist party, as well as those of Jean Tatlock’s and Robert’s brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold) led him to be closely monitored for many years by the FBI. Oppenheimer’s brittle friendship with Albert Einstein (played with great heartbreak by Tom Conti), and of course his activities heading the Manhattan project out of El Paso.
The bulk of the film revolves around the race to make the bomb before the Germans do, something Oppenheimer feels is his duty not only as an American but as a Jewish American. Isidor Rabi is reluctant to join the project because he does not want to see something as pure as theoretical physics being turned into a weapon. It’s a subtle warning that Oppenheimer does not heed at the time but one that will haunt him.
There is a plenitudinous number of discussions about uranium, plutonium, core reactions, chain reactions, arguments between scientists of many allied nations (not Russia) all taking part in the race to beat the Nazis. Some of this is discussion is necessary for a sense of verisimilitude of the scientific process and also needed to show how Teller and Oppenheimer became bitter rivals. It does slow the pace of the film, which is breakneck in other areas, but once we reach the point of the Trinity trial Nolan’s exquisite mastery of form is on full display. He manages to inject small doses of humour into one of the most nail-biting sequences in the film – Richard Feynman (Jack Quaid) sits in his car and insists the windscreen will absorb the UV rays. Teller lathers himself in sunscreen. It all builds up to a crescendo where for the first time in the film Nolan employs a moment of silence during the flash of the explosion where the real voice of Oppenheimer speaks his famous line, and then the most bone rattling boom in recent cinema.
The fact that the trial happened after the surrender of Germany weighed slightly on Oppenheimer and other scientists, they thought they were building the bomb to defeat the Nazis. Yet, like the man addicted to seeing his experiment through Oppenheimer steams ahead. As soon as he has delivered the successful test he is cut out of the military loop and like everyone else in the world hears of the bombings of Japan via Truman’s announcement on the radio.
Nolan is clever enough to never show Hiroshima or Nagasaki and the aftermath. Instead, there is a sequence where Oppenheimer imagines he is stepping over burning bodies in a celebratory speech at Los Alamos. Nolan breaks with reality several times in the film and these are some of the best moments.
Cillian Murphy gives the performance of his life – his blue eyes bearing down into the camera filled with eternally conflicting emotions, and sometimes lacking emotion altogether. Robert Downey Jr. is easily giving his best dramatic performance since Chaplin and Emily Blunt is spellbinding as pragmatic but troubled alcoholic, Kitty. Matt Damon’s charm as an actor is used to every advantage as he plays off Murphy. Alden Ehrenreich is brilliant as an unnamed Senate Aide who pieces together Strauss’ conspiracy against Oppenheimer which was started by Strauss being embarrassed by Oppenheimer’s refusal to support the export of isotopes to foreign nations while Strauss was head of the AEC. The vindictive pettiness of Strauss is one of many factors that led to the slow downfall of an American hero. The other was Oppenheimer’s resistance to supporting the creation of hydrogen bombs, because as he well knew the arms race with the Soviet Union was triggered and men have a way of ensuring that the weapons they create, they use.
Oppenheimer is sombre and electrifying, dizzying and bloated, a contradiction that never quite comes together but at the same time is one of Nolan’s best and most political works to date. With a cast that is stacked with talent (not even mentioned are Casey Affleck, Dane DeHaan, Remi Malek, David Dastmalchian, Alex Wolff, Matthew Modine, Gary Oldman) and a premise that allows Nolan to mix a certain level of intimate scale as well as spectacle with his material that was lacking in Tenet and to an extent, Interstellar, Oppenheimer is a merger of what Nolan does best as a director – even if the result is sometimes flawed. Who is J. Robert Oppenheimer? As Albert Einstein tells him, that is not up to him – his legacy will always belong to whoever wants to claim it for whatever purpose it will serve.
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt
Writer: Christopher Nolan, (Based on American Prometheus by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin)
